Waste and resource management may not be the first sector people associate with major social value creation.
Yet these essential services touch every household and business in the UK. As recent events in Birmingham have shown, society feels the impact immediately when waste services stop.
So when FCC Environment published its first ESG Report in March 2025, few inside the business were surprised by the headline figure: £428 million of social value created in 2024.
What the report did reveal, however, was the scale and breadth of FCC’s contribution—from recycling and waste treatment to employment, training, community support, and safer workplaces.
That top-level quantification was made possible by the Thrive platform empowering FCC Environment to measure, evidence, and report this value in a consistent, credible way.
Capturing What FCC Has Always Done Well
Head of Treatment Development, Dan Murphy, reflected on the shift:
“We live and breathe reuse and sustainability, but historically we didn’t capture it very well. I wanted to take us from a company doing great things to one that could evidence them effectively in tenders.”
Head of External Affairs, Julie Fourcade, agreed:
“We’ve been delivering social value for years without realising how much of it counted. Thrive has helped us recognise and quantify what we’ve always done.”
A Track Record of Impact
FCC’s ESG Report highlighted achievements including:
- 27% reduction in carbon output since 2019
- 82% reduction in Lost Time Accident Frequency Rate since 2010
- 32 awards for safety, environment, and innovation—11 in 2024 alone
- 50 graduates welcomed into the business since 2008
- 1,400 bicycles refurbished through prisoner rehabilitation programmes
- Over 100 FCC Community Action Fund projects supported in 2024
Why Measurement Matters
With local authorities as FCC’s primary customers, the ability to prove social value is increasingly essential. Tender evaluations now routinely allocate 10% or more to social value criteria, making robust evidence a competitive advantage.
Before Thrive, social value data sat within individual projects. Now, centralised reporting has transformed FCC’s approach:
- Best practice can be shared across contracts
- Independent auditing and clear evidence guidelines give confidence to FCC and its clients
- Proven, evidenced initiatives can be reused in future bids, saving time and improving quality
Focusing on What FCC Does Best
Even before PPN 002 formalised expectations, FCC had already learned that effective social value delivery requires focus. Dan explained:
“We concentrate on 20 to 30 measures we know we can deliver well. We model them in Thrive, understand the impact, and refine them. Some activities are low cost for us but deliver huge value for the contract.”
Strengthening Culture and Engagement
Thrive isn’t just improving FCC’s external reporting—it’s helping reinforce the company’s culture.
Julie noted:
“It’s an amazing tool for thanking our people authentically. We can show them the value they add. Now colleagues are even using Thrive evidence when nominating each other for our Perks recognition scheme.”
Looking Ahead
Work is already underway on FCC’s next ESG Report, due in March. With new Procurement Act requirements, the integration of recently acquired businesses, and more than 270 active sites, the task is significant.
But with Thrive now embedded across the organisation, FCC can rely on robust, consistent, and accessible data to tell its story.
FCC Environment is committed to raising the bar on social value – capturing it, evidencing it, and continuing to deliver it every day through the essential services communities rely on.
At Thrive we specialise in helping companies track, measure and amplify their social value in line with the Social Value Model. If you want to discover how you can measure your social value more effectively and report to stakeholders quickly, don’t hesitate to contact us. We’d love to help you uncover more opportunities to showcase your impact.
Alan Boyce
Senior Researcher More articles by Alan >
