All Articles A Sustainable Future Is In Store

A Sustainable Future Is In Store

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

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!

Reuse

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

Recycle

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

Our teams are totally committed to making the Scout Store more sustainable, and their enthusiasm for the environment even extends beyond the office! There are already talks of a team beach clean later in the year, a tree-planting party, and a challenge day on which everyone must travel to work by either public transport, car-share, cycling, running or walking.

If the hive of eco-activity at the Scout Store has inspired you and your young ones to get involved, you can find out more about protecting our environment from our community page, supported the World Wildlife Fund. There is also the Scouts environmental conservation badge up for grabs for those who want to prove their commitment to protecting our planet.

If you have any other suggestions on what can be done to create a sustainable future, get in touch with the Scout Store Eco Team at [email protected].