Best Sustainability Initiative
Asendia UK – 100% Carbon Neutrality
At Asendia, we believe it’s possible for e-commerce brands to expand into new markets around the world, while keeping the carbon impact of delivery minimal, and giving consumers the choice of greener parcel shipments.
In January 2022, Asendia announced the landmark achievement of operating with 100% carbon neutrality, blazing a trail in the logistics industry and helping e-commerce businesses progress their sustainability journeys.
As Asendia does not own a physical transport network, but rather works with a comprehensive global network of best-in-class delivery partners, we achieved this by offsetting our carbon emissions.
Asendia now not only offsets all international transport emissions, the 100% carbon neutrality initiative means we also offset emissions from collection and last mile delivery partners, parcel returns, building emissions, machinery, and necessary business travel.
Carbon neutrality has been achieved by Asendia investing in EcoAct-certified wind farm projects in India and China, which promote renewable energy and support local communities.
The initiative is part of a wider ESG programme across Asendia, and dovetails with our drive for purposeful commerce and higher levels of employee engagement and retention.
Harts of Stur – Reduce, reuse, recycle – upping our green credentials whilst lowering our carbon footprint
As an independent, fourth-generation family business based in the beautiful North Dorset countryside, Harts of Stur is committed to do all we can to ensure the area we live and work in can be enjoyed by future generations, so we have worked hard to reduce the impact our business has on the environment. Whilst already recycling over 300 tonnes of wooden pallets, cardboard, plastic, metal and electrical items each year, we were keen to look at other aspects of our business where we could implement significant changes. As a large percentage of our business is mail order dispatch, we were keen to reduce the amount of non-recyclable packaging used on the thousands of orders dispatched each week. Another key area was to lower our carbon footprint during the redevelopment and expansion of our store. The reaction to our eco friendly packaging solution has been nothing short of overwhelming. With documentaries like the BBC’s Blue Planet II highlighting the devastating environmental impact of single-use plastics, consumers are now far more aware of the impact their purchasing decisions are having on the environment. This shift in purchasing behaviour means having environmentally friendly packaging is essential to maintain and grow our customer base.
Iceland – Fresh or Free Guarantee
If food waste were a country, it would have the third-biggest carbon footprint after the USA and China, and it’s a challenged faced by every grocer. Following on from their industry-leading initiatives to remove Palm Oil and plastic packaging from their range, Iceland turned their eye to food waste, to see how they could approach the problem differently and come up with a novel solution. Iceland.co.uk’s Fresh or Free Guarantee promises customers a reasonable use-by date on their fresh products, otherwise the customer will still receive it, along with a refund.
Launched in December last year, Iceland have made a serious impact on their in-store food waste, given away thousands of products and received amazing feedback from customers.
nShift – Emission Tariffs
Studies performed by Deloitte and Forbes show that 90% of consumers want help from retailers to make a difference, and over 65% are choosing brands that showcase ethical and environmentally friendly business practices. So, it is safe to say that companies that are looking forward and already are beginning to measure their carbon footprint are likely to get an edge on their competition. However, basing your carbon footprint calculation on bad or incorrect data must be avoided.
By creating the Emission Tariffs concept, calculating a transport’s carbon footprint by utilizing emission data conforming to the EN16258 standard, nShift has made it possible for shippers to access a system based on a established methodology to immediately start calculating their transportation carbon footprint based on validated assumptions and with time refine their own carbon footprint to be able to measure effects of operational and strategical improvements in goods consolidation, fuel efficiency, route planning, vehicle types and so on.
Rodial – Sustainability
Rodial has committed to creating a more sustainable brand and is focusing on various areas of the business. This year Rodial was awarded the status of being a Carbon Neutral Business by Carbon Neutral Britain. The brand has done so by investing in emission reduction projects around the globe, like generating carbon offsets from activities such as renewable energy, biogas, and reforestation.
On the product side, Rodial has been 100% cruelty-free and has a lot of vegan skincare and makeup products. Rodial has been active in becoming more sustainable on the packaging side as well. The cartons Rodial uses are FSC board certified and fully recyclable and Rodial has introduced refillable powder compacts to the makeup range.
Additionally, Rodial has worked with a circular economy company called Handle to launch a recycling scheme. Customers can recycle their beauty packaging and Rodial covers the full cost. The recyclables are then repurposed so it can be re-used in the manufacturing of more beauty packaging or turned into Handle’s collection of sustainable beauty products.
Techbuyer
Techbuyer is a global provider of sustainable IT solutions designed to reduce the environmental impact of e-waste, decrease the carbon intensity of data centres and enterprise IT, and maximise the productive life of technology and materials. Techbuyer helps businesses reduce their IT budgets by supplying cost-effective, new, and quality refurbished servers, storage, memory, and networking equipment from over 150 brands including HPE, Dell, IBM and Cisco. Not only does Techbuyer sell a large range of enterprise IT hardware, but we also buy used parts and turn them into first-class refurbished IT equipment.
