Our mission to be a champion of Carbon Negative and Impact Positive (also known as our Journey to be a responsible Corporate Citizen).
We were founded with the ambitious goal of creating a more sustainable world and eliminating single-use plastics. We have achieved considerable success, but that does not mean we are not continuously seeking ways to improve and make a greater environmental impact. Therefore, we are constantly updating our statement of impact to showcase both our accomplishments and areas for improvement.
Successes
Social & Ethical Impact
- We have made a move from overseas production of our products, to a UK centric solution, we are currently at 72% UK manufactured, which reduces the carbon footprint of our UK made products by an additional 12% from reduced supply lines.
✅ Achieved June 2020.
- We only work with companies that are SEDEX member, or have a proven ethical approaches to their supply chain and workforce.
✅ Achieved June 2018.
- We actively source materials that use plant based waste from agriculture, so that we can offer additional income to farmers and minimise our environmental impact.
✅ Achieved Aug 2020.
- We will always be transparent about what we do and how we do it and will add this to our “Let's be transparent” page, we will be open about our financial information including profit margins, net profit, shipping charges and costs, and pay scales.
✅ Achieved Aug 2023.
- We strongly believe that zero hour contracts are only acceptable if the employee asks for it, we work around the lifestyles of our team & always look for ways of working that help our team to work happy and not just effective.
✅ Achieved July 2018.
Economic Impact
- We work with our supply chain to help them to be a driver of change.
✅ Achieved August 2020.
- We hire people based on their values & not their CV, we work with people who may be considered disadvantaged, but to us they are considered someone valuable and worth investing in.
✅ Achieved July 2018.
Managing the worlds finite resources responsibly
- We were told we could get around the plastic tax by adding 30% recycled plastic to our products, we will never sell plastic based products, even when it financial hurts us, we only do plant based products, no compromising here.
✅ Achieved July 2018.
- We track the carbon footprint of all of our products and if there is a way of creating our products with better environmental outcomes, we change our products.
✅ Achieved July 2018.
- We look at our impact and find ways of doing it with minimum (or preferably, no impact), we offset our servers carbon, eliminated paper brochures & incentivise our customers to order in bigger quantities to reduce the shipping carbon.
✅ Achieved April 2021.
- Our company vehicles are low Co2 or electric.
✅ Achieved October 2022.
- We encourage our team to work from home.
✅ Achieved October 2022.
- We utilise technology to avoid needless journeys, so nearly all of our meetings are done online.
✅ Achieved October 2022.
- We have reduced paper and ink usage by using label printers where possible, and avoiding printing of documents, all financial records are now stored in the cloud and not printed, we have also avoided printing brochures and marketing and created all marketing for our customers as downloadable assets.
✅ Achieved October 2022.
- We until recently brought our waste down to 1% of our production and we undertook serious planning to eliminate the remaining 1% from our supply chains usage of plastics (a number of our products are made in factories that use plastic shrink wrap for pallets) and we now use a garden shredder to shred our shrink wrap and waste cardboard for use in protective shipping packaging, re-using a waste product.
We have also repurposed our office food and coffee waste by using this to test the decomposition of our products, which means we now create zero waste.
✅ Achieved September 2024.
- We are now certified as using 100% renewable energy which makes our energy carbon neutral.
✅Achieved December 2024.
Our obligations to our customers
- We will always act in the most honest and transparent way, if we get it wrong we will be honest we got it wrong, even when it hasn't been noticed, we will always do the right thing.
✅ Achieved July 2018.
- We will always be transparent about what we do and how we do it and will add this to our “Let's be transparent” page, we will be open about our financial information including profit margins, net profit, shipping charges and costs, and pay scales.
✅ Achieved Aug 2023.
- We want to empower you and give you the facts that help you to make the right choices, we don't believe in the current narrative of telling you that you are an awful person, messing the planet up, we give you the information to make an informed choice.
✅ Achieved July 2018 to April 2022.
- We created our carbon audits so you can drive sales, just by doing the right thing, we recommend sharing with the world the amazing difference you are making.
✅ Achieved April 2021.
- We will work out the carbon footprint for all of our products and create a comparison of their plastic equivalent to show the actual carbon saving by switching.
✅ Achieved Feb 2020.
- We are here to support you, see us as your free environmental experts, advice is always free and non judgemental, we will also create the tools to empower our customers to make them more aware of the difference they are making.
✅ Achieved Feb 2020.
- We will do our best to get the success stories of environmental wins to counteract the negative media stories that are creating climate anxiety, we will do this by using facts and educate people about their options to empower people and not disengage people, our message will be factual but positive.
✅ Started May 2020 and ongoing.
Work in progress
Social & Ethical Impact
- We have signed up to the SME Climate Hubs Race to Zero , the aim for all businesses to go Net Zero is for 2050 , we predict we will achieve this by end of 2025.
Started Dec 2024 and due to achieve Net Zero by end of 2025.
- Sadly 2022 to 2024 has been one shock after another, which has meant we have been running at a loss, this has sadly meant that their has been no profits to donate to local charities, and to financially assist our team members, we have gone through a restructuring that should mean we return to profit by 2025, when we plan to return to sharing 10% of our profits to local community organisations and 10% to our team.
We have already returned to being back in the black and predict we can start rehiring in April 2025 and start sharing profits in April 2026.
Economic Impact
- Sadly 2022 to 2024 has been one shock after another, which has meant we have been running at a loss, this has sadly meant that their has been no profits to donate to local charities, and to financially assist our team members, we have gone through a restructuring that should mean we return to profit by 2025, when we plan to return to sharing 10% of our profits to local community organisations and 10% to our team.
We have already returned to being back in the black and predict we can start rehiring in April 2025 and start sharing profits in April 2026.
Managing the worlds finite resources responsibly
- We have already made a move from overseas production of our products, to a UK centric solution, we are currently at 72% UK manufactured, which reduces the carbon footprint of our UK made products by an additional 12% from reduced supply lines but our aim is to souces the 12% shipped in products in the UK.
We have looked into this additional 12% but the issue seems to be the availiability of certain materials in the UK , so we are unsure of whether we can ever source or create this final 12% in the UK, although this is something that is ongoing and we will keep revisiting this.
- We have plans to purchase our own premises, where we will use solar and wind energy, when funds allow.
We are hoping we can afford our own facilities in 2027.
Things we are still debating
We have been looking at ethical banking, but we are undecided as these banks exclude fossil fuels as part of their portfolio, we are aware of the bigger picture of a need for fossil fuels in the short term and exclude extraction and importing fuel actually adds 286% extra carbon than UK extraction, so we are still debating this subject - Find out why we are undecided here.
Updated - 20/01/25