Born Circular: Going Beyond Carbon

In FY2025, we engaged with the University of Exeter’s Centre for Circular Economy to examine how Speedy Hire has integrated circular economy principles into its business model. The study has shown that we have evolved from an inherently circular rental model into one that has strategically leveraged and expanded circularity as a competitive advantage, demonstrating our industry leadership in the transition to a more circular business model through: 

1. Strategic leadership and transformation.
2. Demonstrating how sustainability leads to value creation.
3. Using data-driven decision making to deliver sustainability goals and commercial objectives.
4. Implementing circular economy principles into asset lifecycles; and
5. Developing partnerships with suppliers to bring circular solutions to market. 

Our approach to the sustainability innovation of our assets has two focus areas. 

For fuel consuming assets, we focus on shifting these to cleaner technology and cleaner fuels. 

For assets that do not consume fuel, we look to circularise. By investing in low-emission fuels, renewable energy adoption and battery technology, we have made significant progress in improving the environmental footprint of our fuel-consuming products. 

In FY2025, we have put focus on improving the circularity of assets that do not consume fuel. Our approach to increasing the circularity of our products is built on three key principles. 

1. Circular product design as 80% of the environmental impact is in design.
2. Repair, refurbish, retrofit and recycle to extend a product’s lifetime.
3. Making hiring the norm through our trade and retail partnerships.