Negativity isn't something we encourage around our offices, except in carbon terms!
We were founded on the principle of having as little environmental impact as possible, using sustainable materials and processes wherever possible.
Deliveries to customers are one of our biggest carbon emitters, of which we completed over 3,500 in 2020. For bulk business orders we use DPD's carbon neutral service, but to households we use Royal Mail.
There is little recent research in to the footprint of a single delivery, and Royal Mail have reduced their own footprint massively over recent years, however we found an article written by Professors from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, which estimates the footprint of a clothing delivery as 72g per item.
We've calculated our footprint for 2020 as around 300kg, which is exceptionally small for an active company like ours. We've managed to keep it this low in 2020 due to using carbon neutral green energy to power our offices and machinery, mostly using public transport to travel to meetings, and of course using only sustainable materials in our products.
In reality the footprint is likely to be lower than this as efficiency has advanced since the report was written in 2009, but in lieu of any other information we used this figure to estimate our footprint. We not only want to keep our footprint as low as possible, but eliminate it entirely through offsetting schemes.
Carbon offsetting isn't an exact science (for laymen like us anyway), and we wanted to make sure we weren't just offsetting the bare minimum. So we have decided to offset TEN TIMES our calculated footprint, just to make sure we are having a positive impact on the environment!
Every year we want to support different offsetting schemes, and for our 2020 offset we've chosen a scheme close to home - planting trees right here at home in the North West of England!
Our trees will be planted through the Carbon Footprint Organisation near North West schools, and under the scheme for every tree planted another tonne of carbon is saved through a certified avoided-deforestation scheme in the Amazon rainforest.