Sustainability

At Better Equipped we want to ensure we are operating in the most sustainable and environmentally responsible way we can. We recognise the duty we have to avoid, reduce or offset business activities which may impact the environment. Below is a summary of some of the things we do to achieve this. We know there is always more we can do, and we are working on a number of initiatives in addition to those highlighted below.

Carbon Offsetting

We have teamed up with a specialist company in this area. They work to both offset carbon now by helping to fund a number of carbon reducing projects around the world and at the same time planting trees to help offset and take in carbon in the future. Here's some more detail about their projects... 

• Offsetting 21.19 tonnes of carbon each month via sponsoring live projects such as wind farms in Taiwan, alternative energy projects in India (to remove reliance on coal), upgrading cooking stoves in Ghana and protecting existing forests in Peru (to name just a few). So over 254 tonnes of carbon offset in a full year via sponsorship of live projects.
• Sponsored planting of 298 trees per month for future carbon capture benefits, that’s 3576 trees planted in a full year. A focus is on planting mangrove trees which are extremely efficient at taking in carbon (four times as much carbon per acre than tropical rainforests) and we know their root systems provide nurseries and shelter for tropical fish, so a win win.

Packaging Material

For many years we have already been using eco-friendly packaging options, such as biodegradable air fill pockets, biodegradable bubble wrap and reusing cardboard boxes. As technology has changed new options become available to us to make further improvements. Read in detail about our sustainable packaging options below... 

• Our Cardboard boxes are made in UK (from FSC certified responsible sources and a high percentage of recycled board).
• Used cardboard boxes (those we receive from our suppliers) are shredded for cushioning/box fill material in order to reuse this resource and avoid using any new resources. This shredded cardboard can be further reused or recycled. 
• We pay a specialist company to collect any excess cardboard we have on site for recycling.
• All air flow/filled pillows (the green cushions we use in our packed boxes to keep products safe in transit) are made in the UK & are biodegradable. We’ve used these for quite a few years now and love this as a solution rather than using traditional plastic air filled pillows.
• In the past we've had to use traditional plastic bubble wrap to ensure the laboratory glassware we supply can be protected in transit and arrives in once piece. We swapped to bubble wrap made from biodegradeable material in the second half of 2021.

Paper & Printing

Over the last few years we have massively reduced the amount of paper we use and the amount of printing we do…

• Catalogues are printed in the UK and use FSC certified paper from responsible sources.
• We’ve reduced by 50% the quantity of catalogues printed and sent for delivery since 2019.
• Our catalogues are delivered in FSC certified paper wraps instead of plastic wraps.
• We stopped printing customer orders and remittances in 2019.
• We stopped placing copy invoices in envelopes May 2021.
• We plan to stop printing picking lists for use by our warehouse team by the end of 2022.
• We implemented digital recording of supplier invoices rather than printing in 2022.

Electricity Consumption

Our electricity consumption is fairly modest. We use LED lighting for the warehouses and office, and power for computers, our air fill machines, rechargeable battery operated forklift and cardboard shredding machines. We use LED lighting to reduce the amount of electricity used in our office sand warehouses.

Both ofour two warehouses use electricity from 100% renewable sources.

We don’t currently have solar power on our site but we plan to review this as an option in 2024.

Team Members commute

• We prefer to recruit from the local area and as such our start point for recruitment is always our local area.
• We encourage car sharing (pre & post Covid).
• We have cycle to work scheme in place and secure internal parking for team members bikes.
• Some office and sales team members now work from home on a permanent basis.

Click here to download our Bees in the Environment information sheet.

If you have any comments or suggestions for us regarding our sustainability then we’d love to hear them. Please contact us at care@betterequipped.co.uk