How we reduced our plastic packaging by 92% in under 2 years

How it started - Jump back to 2020 and we were packing our products in the classic off-the-shelf plastic packaging. Blister packs, bubble wrap, polystyrene pellets, and plastic pillows all with a final layer of plastic tape. It was a lot, we know. We measured the length of plastic pockets in 2022 alone and it came to 19km, that’s the same as 40 Empire State buildings nose to nose…

Fast forward to 2022 and the pressure to lower our environmental impact took off, with Dominic Keeley, one of our Senior Product Designers and our Sustainability Officer joining the team, we pushed play on this movement. The first step we took towards this goal was to identify the aspects of our industry that can and currently cannot be changed.

Fundamentally we design and manufacture products that must perform in the harshest of conditions, which means that quality can never be compromised.

Arguably the hardest part is where to start - Looking at the user journeys of our products we identified the first potential risk is ocean contamination, as the majority of our products are fitted in or very near to the ocean. This, alongside researching data on the implications of single-use plastic, vs cardboard and finding a commonality that PP, PS, and film are not easily or often recyclable we knew that removing single-use plastics was the logical first step towards lowering our environmental impact. This has just been one step in our mission to lower environmental impact. 

Massive opportunities & time saving - As a result of changing our packaging from plastic, we inadvertently helped our OEMs as the simpler card envelope style allows for an easier and quicker opening of the product, a faster installation of the product, as typically the products now arrive ready for installation.

Alongside packaging, we are on a mission to minimise our enviromental impacts throughout the buisness, other areas we are working on include:

Operations

• We have established that newly developed products will not contain any single-use plastic as part of the packaging
• We have transitioned to using translucent glassine paper envelopes, instead of single-use Polybags
• We are systematically identifying where we can improve packaging on our legacy products
• We are working to remove all single-use plastic from our packaging, including plastic tape, bubble wrap, polystyrene etc
• We provide OEM-specific packaging on a number of products to reduce packaging weight and volumetric space
  
  

Office specific

• Committed to being NET Zero by 2040 as a company
• Office energy is from a zero-carbon energy tariff
• We will continue to evaluate and monitor our Scope 1 & 2 emissions
• We aim to reduce our Scope 1, 2 & 3 emissions each year
• We conduct environmental awareness days & training at work
• We have improved our internal recycling rates and reduced our general waste
• The Scanstrut office currently uses a carbon-neutral energy tariff
• Green office housekeeping includes, only buying refillable products – soaps/milk supplied in traditional milk bottles

Final notes
These environmental impacts are continual works in progress, ones we monitor continually.
We hope that sharing some of our changes and steps will help make your process of implementing change that bit easier.