Striving For A Better Fashion Future
Our record of the conscious efforts that we are making to improve our operational effects upon the environment.
Evaluating Our Internal Operations
From the beginning of this year we have developed an internal Sustainability Working Group who meet monthly to discuss topics such as our environmental impact, plastic reduction and energy consumption.
The group includes employees from all areas of the business who work in different departments at various levels to gain a holistic approach to our internal reviews. Our company founders and directors Nick and Kath Whitworth also attend these meetings and have an active role in driving a working environment that is positive for their employees and the environment alike.
Since 2015 we have Achieved:
- 60,000 less single use plastic bags used in our storage and shipping processes.
- With 35,000 of those removed from products made in our workshop.
- 25,000 cardboard wraps ordered in replace of plastic bags.
- These sleeves are made in Cornwall and constructed from varying percentages of recycled product, they’re also 100% recyclable.
- The plastic bags that do enter our warehouse, are now circulated around 7 times before being disposed of responsibly.
- We also reuse cardboard packaging as much as possible.
- 1/3 of all business waste is recycled.
The Next Steps
Our main focuses include responsible disposal of all company waste and developing recycling education and initiatives, alongside encouraging employees to use pencils and recycled stationary over disposable single use plastic goods.
In collaboration with our support of Surfers Against Sewage, we are also evaluating alternatives to our plastic packaging in the warehouse. Whilst this is currently 100% recyclable, we feel like we could be doing better. For this reason, we are trialling the use of alternative materials to ensure that we are operating with maximum consideration for our environment and our customers.
If you have any suggestions for us on any of these area’s or additional focuses for medium businesses to make significant change, please don’t hesitate to contact us, we’d love to hear from you.
Watch this space for exciting updates...
Little Steps – Big Impact – January 2019 Update
Following the beginning of the new year, we would like to share with you the small steps that we have developed and implemented into our everyday operations, to limit our impact on the environment.
Our biggest improvement to date is that from October 2018, we stopped using single use packaging in the shipment of our products, therefore our customers will now only receive their orders in fully recyclable packaging. We have also improved our in house recycling capabilities by creating waste sorting points at the warehouse stations, allowing our team to responsibly dispose of waste, with ease. We have substituted plastic tape and pens, for a paper based alternative and pencils and improved the waste disposal options in our canteens by introducing composting bins. Additionally, we promote upcycling of sheepskin offcuts and wooden palettes within the team wherever possible, and look forward to seeing what these ‘waste’ materials can be transformed into.
Addressing your feedback
We love receiving feedback and comments from customers which always help us to improve our processes and actions. We recently received a very interesting query around the process of composting teabags, so after investigating further, we wanted to share our findings…
We have been advised by our current teabag brand that they are suitable for composting. The material used to make the actual tea bag is a mixture of mainly cellulose fibres and a small amount of polypropylene fibres to give the heat seal. Under normal composting conditions the cellulose fibres will break down, as will the tea, leaving the very small polypropylene fibres which are normally so small they are not seen. They are exploring alternative sealing materials that will also breakdown and we are also looking at alternative tea brands and of course considering loose leaf tea. Watch this space…
