From plastic in the sea to chemicals in the soils and greenhouse gases in the air, we are in the midst of a major challenge to clean up our act and find environmentally friendly alternatives to our planet-polluting activities. The burgeoning global populations is increasing the pressure on Earth’s precious resources, and the United Nations has launched 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which aim to support economic growth and reduce inequalities while protecting the natural world. It’s a daunting task that will require everyone to do their best to do their bit, and the Scout Store is excited to be taking big strides towards its own sustainability goals. We want to leave the planet in good shape for young people and so are constantly reflecting on and improving what we do. This means rethinking our production line, from the materials we use to how we deliver them, and changing our behaviour behind the scenes to create an eco-friendly office. Our main aims are to reduce our reliance on plastics, go paperless where digital will do, cut our energy consumption, and generally be less wasteful. These may seem like small steps, but together they’ll take us a long way to shrinking our carbon footprint. Scout Store has kickstarted its sustainability campaign across all departments simply by sticking to the three Rs: reduce, reuse, recycle.
Update on our progress for our 4 existing pledges for 2023
1. Reduce all single-use plastic by 50% with 5 actions:
i) Avoid selling as many plastic goods as possible: replacing plastic woggles and wristbands with non-plastic alternatives to save around 180k of plastic; ii) We have eliminated all poly bag usage in all products by replacing with more sustainable alternatives: approximately we reduced 80% the usage of single-use plastic; by changing this one product we stop using 400,000 poly bags a year which equals to 8,000 kg less single-use plastic in circulation for every year. iii) We have removed the innards of the shirt packaging reducing and separate care labels reducing unnecessary packaging on 227,000 units; what does it mean? We’ve reduced our plastic packaging by 2,000kg. iv) We change the badge packaging from all single wrapped to reduce by roughly 500kg the single-use plastic in circulation each year. v) All silicone wristbands now sourced as recycled polyester alternative.
2. Introduce more sustainable products by sourcing products with an eco-first approach.
3. Reduce usage of paper by 50% - we have reduced around 30% of it thanks to 3 actions:
i) We reduced the number of free publications we sent out and encouraged the use of the free to download options ii) We’ve re-use supplier cartons for despatch with a cardboard perforator iii) Reduced by 8-% our print to order options: this alone saves around 88 trees per annum.
4. Eco-friendly culture:
We have an eco-committee in Scout Store which has led to many improvements from LED lighting by default and recycling of hardware, challenges the decision making process and hold the business to account to reduce our environmental impact by introducing in-office recycling bins and lead to changes in the way we worked across our operations team.Still, we thought there's more we can do. As part of the evolution of our pledges we feel it is important to develop new ones that align with the UN SDG’s and that are recognised across the retail industry as key objectives. These new pledges in effect act as the next steps from our 2019 commitments.
Revised Environmental Pledges by 2030
- As part of the evolution of our pledges we feel it is important to develop new ones that align with the UN SDG’s and are recognised across the retail industry as key objectives. These new pledges in effect act as the next steps from our 2019 commitments.Scout Store will be a carbon net zero operation by using a carriage supplier (DHL) that’s committed to achieving net zero too and by offsetting any other emissions either through our support for carbon offsetting projects externally or internally through our extensive estates (we have 800 acres of woodland in our estate).
All products to come from 100% sustainable materials. All packaging to be 100% reusable, recyclable or compostable by sourcing packaging that can be as easily and locally recycled as possible.
Here’s how we applied the 3 Rs in our working environment: Reduce
- Energy
- Switch off all lights and computers that aren’t in use
- Single use plastic
- No more bottled water at meetings
- Massively reduce product packaging
- Replace plastic packaging with paper
- Swap to green jiffy bags for deliveries
- Plastic content of products
- Source alternative materials where possible
- Use recycled materials
- Paper
- No more printed invoices. Accounting will go digital
- No more return forms. Returns will be done online
- Waste
- Fewer bins means fewer bin bags!
- Drinking bottles – reusable flasks provided for all staff
- Old stock and samples – sent back to suppliers or donated to charity
- Plastic post bags – sent to an art project, not landfill
- Clothing and accessories – our eco-range uses recycled materials
- In the office – recycling bins on every floor and staff trained
- Packaging – shirt packing made from recycled plastic bags
