How we approach environmental, social and governance responsibility across the activPAL™ product and service line and our business.
Circular Economy
PAL Technologies designs its products and services around a circular economy: keeping devices and materials in use for longer and out of the waste stream. Our comprehensive two-year (extendable) warranty provides a replacement activPAL sensor where performance falls below minimum specification, and replacements for out-of-warranty or lost sensors can be purchased through our replacement service. Purchased replacements carry the same two-year (extendable) warranty as a new activPAL; warranty replacements inherit the balance of the existing warranty. To support existing users, we also offer a one-for-one trade-in discount against current activPAL models. At end of life, sensors can be returned to us for recycling or recycled locally. Together, these policies prioritise reuse and recycling over disposal and move us away from the traditional “take, make, waste” model.
Environmental
Our environmental approach starts with the same evidence-based discipline we bring to our science. Rather than treating sustainability as a marketing layer, we apply research rigour to the product lifecycle itself: validating that our circular economy measures — extended warranty, trade-in, and end-of-life recycling — genuinely reduce the number of devices manufactured and discarded, rather than simply claiming to. As a company built by researchers for researchers, we hold our own environmental commitments to the same standard of evidence we ask of the science our devices support.
Social & Governance
PAL Technologies was spun out of the Bioengineering Unit at the University of Strathclyde in 2001, and the three founding directors still lead the company today. That continuity, and our academic origins, still shape how we govern the business: our device validation and data integrity practices are built to withstand peer review, because our customers are the same scientists who will scrutinise them in published research. We work closely with academic partners across clinical and public health research to ensure activPAL data holds up to the standards their own funders, ethics boards, and journals require. That relationship — grounded in scientific accountability rather than just commercial supply — is the governance standard we hold ourselves to.