More reasons to boycott Mitie
In support of this campaign, Ethical Consumer researched Mitie and found that it has an EthiScore of 0 – the worst you can get.
People
Limiting the right to protest
Mitie provides services that aim to minimise the impact of protest activity. It proudly says that during Extinction Rebellion protests from 2019-21, Mitie’s Intelligence Hub reported on over 100 protests, and ran real-time alerts providing clients with pre-Rebellion intelligence.
Involvement in military activity
Mitie lists “Defence and Aerospace" as sectors it operates in, and they have contracts with BAE Systems, the UK's largest weapons manufacturer.
Supply chain management
Mitie received Ethical Consumer’s worst rating for Supply Chain Management and lost a whole mark in this category.
Mitie says it’s “one of the UK’s largest commercial solar PV developers” since it acquired Custom Solar, yet despite the prevalence of conflict minerals in materials commonly used in production, it has no policy safeguarding around this important human rights issue.
Politics
Anti-social finance
Mitie’s head office is based on level 12 of The Shard, London’s iconic luxury building.
Its highest-paid director Phil Bentley received £3,869,476 in 2022.
It received our worst rating for tax conduct because it has subsidiaries in known tax havens including, Guernsey, Jersey, Ireland and Switzerland, including high-risk company types for tax avoidance such as holding and investment companies. It’s published no explanation for why the subsidiaries are based in tax havens.
Lucrative nuclear clean-up contracts
Since 2003 Mitie has been awarded contracts around the decommissioning of the nuclear site Sellafield in the north of England. Over this period the Sellafield site has faced strikes from workers on site, been accused of site management bullying and sexually harassing staff, and of spending too much money.
Environment
Mitie scored our worst rating for toxic chemicals because despite being one of the largest specialist cleaning providers in the UK, it doesn’t have a policy that restricts the use of hazardous chemicals common in household cleaning products such as parabens and phthalates.
While Mitie has a 60-page environmental and social governance report, there’s little actual information in it about what its main areas of environmental impact are and what it’s doing about them. As such Mitie received Ethical Consumer’s worst rating for environmental reporting.
It received a middle rating for its approach to carbon management and reporting because it has Science-Based Targets Initiative approved goals for its scope 1 and 2 emissions, however, it doesn’t currently report on its scope 3 emissions, which are often a large part of a company’s overall emissions.
Animals
The company website stated, "Mitie is one of the largest specialist cleaning providers in the UK" Therefore the company was likely to use large amounts of cleaning products, which is a product type at high risk of containing ingredients that have been tested on animals. Yet it had no policy related to animal testing – as such it received our worst rating for its animal testing policy.
It also provides catering services, yet provides no information about animal welfare. As such, it’s likely that the meat and dairy Mitie provides as part of its catering services are sourced from conventional farming methods. It lost a whole mark in both the Animal Rights and Factory Farming categories.
