| Topic: | Re:Car Use, Climate Change, Carbon Footprint | |
| Posted by: | Ed Saper | |
| Date/Time: | 18/09/21 13:07:00 |
| "Ed, sorry single you out but I think you are the only person who has talked about his company with David on here. I believe that most if not all your business is done via mail/internet order/delivery and that you have no high street presence (Sorry if I have got that wrong). But would you be prepared to get a shop and stop all deliveries, or even change your line of work to reduce your own carbon footprint? I’m guessing like me the answer would be “no” as It’s a difficult and life changing decision." No worries - happy to answer briefly. About to jump on the bike to pick up the kids from CHR and take them onto a school fair. I mention because small personal choice to avoid using the car - as much for personal fitness (I put on a lot of weight during lockdown!) as anything else. Our company works with third party stores - we have two excellent ones in Chiswick - Planet Organic and Windfall and we'd be unlikely to open our own ones. Reducing our carbon footprint is a priority - the first step is to measure it. We are a manufacturer (in South Acton), so we do at least have data on the carbon produced during manufacture, but we need to track back and work out the carbon footprint of the production of ingredients as well. It isn't just about distribution CO2. We are hoping to move to a bigger factory (also in Acton) where I vetoed the use of gas and we are putting in additional electricity capacity (via green generation). Our biggest B2C export market is in the USA. Previous we shipped products directly to customers across the US. We have just opened a facility in Ohio. We estimate saving around 50 tonnes of CO2 flying goods to the USA. And for the last mile we are using a service that is 100% carbon off set. In the future we'd like to deliver to city markets like London, NY and Paris via zero emissions vehicles - although that is starting to happen anyway as operations like Fedex invest in electric vans and cargo bikes. Our aim is to save as much CO2 as possible across all operations and be at least carbon neutral and ideally carbon negative. We have some way to go! But the short answer to your question is no. I wouldn't consider scaling back what we do from a small company with global ambitions to a small company that is only local - and losing the majority of our (local) workforce in the process. I believe we can have profitable, global British enterprises without producing a commensurate amount of CO2 as we grow. |