Privacy Policy
Who we are?
Responsible Commodities Sourcing Initiative is a not for profit organisation. We are registered in England and Wales under Company number 07968009 and our registered office is at Hilden Park House, 79 Tonbridge Road, Hildenborough, Kent, TN11 9BH, United Kingdom.
Responsible Commodities Sourcing Initiative (RECOSI) was set-up by large utilities who recognise that by working together they can have a much greater impact on improving the sustainability performance of their commodities supply chains. RECOSI aims to drive continuous improvement in responsible commodity sourcing. We do this through the development of sector-specific assessment and assurance programmes that monitor and evaluate ESG performance; with third-party verification at the core of our work.
What is this Policy?
We do not offer services to individuals and our services are all B2B. As such, we process very little personal data. However, where we do we are committed to protecting your privacy. Any personal information you provide us remains private and is only used for the purposes outlined below.
This Privacy Policy explains how we collect your personal information, what we do with it and how we protect it. Please read it carefully. If you have any questions you can contact us directly on the details set out at the end of this policy.
What personal information do we collect from you?
We only collect a limited amount of personal information that we need for what we do. The types of personal information that we may collect and hold about you are:
your name and business contact details;
your URL and IP address when you access our website:
your preferences in relation to our events.
How do we collect your personal information?
We usually only collect information directly from you, but at times we may collect information about you from third parties with your consent (for example, the organisation that employs you, if it is a RECOSI Member). We collect your personal information when you:
visit our website at recosi.com (as explained in more detail below under the heading ‘What happens when you visit our website’);
or you or your employer submits application forms for RECOSI membership or Lead Assessor;
register to receive RECOSI communications;
register for or attend any of our events or online webinars;
participate in our public consultation processes and surveys;
nominate for or are appointed to our Board or join one of our committees or working groups;
speak at our events;
inquire about or apply for a position with us;
follow or interact with us on social media; and
communicate with us.
How do we use your personal information?
We collect and use your information for the purpose of communicating with you, to comply with our legal and contractual obligations and to pursue our legitimate business interests, including (where relevant) to:
process applications;
manage your membership or Assessor approval process;
communicate with you regarding your organisation’s involvement in one of our producer assessment processes;
help us understand and respond to your interests and needs;
record the identity of individuals submitting comments or questions as part of standards-setting processes and consultations;
provide materials for, and retain a record of your attendance at, meetings, teleconferences, webinars and online training;
communicate with you about our activities and inform you of our upcoming conferences and events (unless you elect not to receive such information);
to ensure that content from our website is presented in the most effective manner for you and your computer.
For personal information related to public consultations, we will seek your agreement to include your name and/or organisation before it is included in any published records. Email addresses and contact details are not published.
How do we disclose your personal information?
The RECOSI Secretariat process your information in the United Kingdom, and our website is hosted in the United Kingdom, in the European Union.
From time to time we may engage third party service providers to assist RECOSI. Where this involves those service providers processing personal information on behalf of RECOSI, RECOSI ensures that such processing is governed by strong privacy and data security terms. Our providers may carry out:
mailing operations;
event registrations;
information technology services;
account management services; and
website and event usage analysis.
Where necessary for legitimate business purposes or for the purposes of compliance with our legal or regulatory obligations, we may also disclose your personal information to:
our professional advisers;
government and regulatory authorities and other organisations, as required or authorised by or under the law of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales or a foreign law in relation to any of our activities that take place overseas.
What happens when you visit our website?
When you visit our website, its web servers may record information such as the time, date and URL and IP address of your request. This information helps us to improve our website.
Cookies: To improve your visits to our site, we may also use ‘cookies’. A cookie is a small text file that our website may place on your computer as a tool to remember your preferences. This Privacy Policy places all users of our website on notice about our use of cookies. Your continued use of this website confirms to us that you are aware of our use of cookies and have no objection to this. You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser. However, if you do this, you may not be able to use the full functionality of our website.
Links to other sites: Our website may contain links to other websites operated by third parties. These are meant for our users’ convenience only. We are not responsible for the content or practices of these other websites and they are not covered by this Policy. Before disclosing your personal information to another website operator, you should read their terms and conditions of use.
Google Analytics: Our website uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. We will use reports provided by Google Analytics to evaluate website traffic and webpage usage. Google Analytics does not identify individual users or associate your IP address with any other data held by Google.
Social media: Our website uses interfaces with social media sites such as LinkedIn. If you choose to “like” or share information from our website through these services, you should review the privacy policy of that service. If you are a member of a social media site, the interfaces may allow the social media site to connect your site visit to your personal information.
How do we protect your personal information?
Security measures. Where appropriate we may use encryption and pseudonymisation to protect your personal data.
We also apply the ‘need to know’ principle – restricting restrict access to your personal information to those people or service providers who need to know that information to communicate with you and administer our activities.
All information you provide to us is stored on our secure servers. Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share a password with anyone.
Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.
We will not keep your personal data for longer than is necessary for the purpose or purposes for which they were collected, unless there is another legal reason for us to retain the data. We will take all reasonable steps to destroy, or erase from our systems, all data which is no longer required. For details on the retention periods for different types of data, please refer to our Data Retention Policy.
Your Rights with regards to your Personal Data
We endeavour to process all personal data in line with your rights under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In particular, you have the rights to:
Where we are relying on your consent to process your personal data, you may withdraw your consent to our processing your data at any time. You can do this at any time by changing your “preferences” when you log in to your account or by contacting us at info@recosi.com. In certain circumstances, we can process your personal data without your consent in line with the lawful processing requirements in GDPR. These include (amongst other reasons) where processing is necessary to comply with a legal obligation, or to protect your vital interests.
Ask us to rectify inaccurate or incomplete personal data. We would seek to rectify the data as soon as possible and usually within one month unless the request is complex.
Ask us to erase your personal data. This is commonly referred to as the right to be forgotten. This right is only applicable where there is no compelling reason for the continued processing of your personal data. There are some circumstances where this right to erasure does not apply and in such cases we would notify you of the reason(s) why we need to retain your personal data (unless prevented to do so by law).
Restrict processing of your personal data where, for example, the data is inaccurate, being processed unlawfully or where the data is no longer relevant to the specific purpose for processing. In such cases, we would retain the data but we would not process it further without your consent, or if processing your data is for establishing, exercising or defending a legal claim, or for the protection of rights of other individuals, or for public interest reasons. In such circumstances, we would let you know that we intend to lift the restriction on processing your personal data.
Request access to your personal data via a subject access request. Your request should be made to us in writing and we may ask you for proof of your identity before providing you with the data. There is usually no fee for making such a request however, in limited circumstances, we can charge an administrative fee (which will be based on the administrative cost of providing the information).
You have the right to ask us not to process your personal data for marketing purposes (including profiling). We will usually inform you (before collecting your data) if we intend to use your data for such purposes or if we intend to disclose your information to any third party for such purposes. You can exercise your right to prevent such processing by contacting us at info@recosi.com.
Obtain and reuse your personal data for your own purposes across different services (right to data portability). This right is only applicable to data that you have provided to us, where we are processing the data based on your consent or for the performance of a contract and when the processing is carried out by automated means. Where this right applies, the data will be provided to you in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format.
What to do if you have any questions or complaints?
You can contact us by email info@recosi.com or by writing to us at Responsible Commodities Sourcing Initiative, PO Box 534, Sutton, SM1 9TB, United Kingdom and we will usually respond within 30 days. If we think it will take longer to resolve your issue, we will provide you with a date by which we expect to respond.
We hope that you will contact us in the first instance if you have any concerns regarding our use of your personal data, however, you can contact the the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at any time if you wish to make a complaint. The ICO’s details are: ICO helpline 0303 123 1113
You can also visit their website for information on how to make a data protection complaint.
How do we correct your personal information?
We take reasonable measures to ensure that the personal information we collect, hold, use and disclose is accurate, complete, up-to-date and, when we use and disclose, that it is also relevant. However, the accuracy of that information depends to a large extent on the information you provide us.
If any personal information you provide us changes, or if you think that any of the personal information we hold about you is incorrect, please let us know using our contact details at the end of this Policy. We will need to verify who you are. We will notify you in writing if for any reason we will not correct the information in accordance with your request and we will explain how you can complain about our decision if you are not satisfied.
How to contact us?
You may contact us via email or you may write to us at:
Responsible Commodities Sourcing Initiative
PO Box 534
Sutton
SM1 9TB
United Kingdom