How to Order Sustainably

A life cycle assessment as it sounds, is a way of looking at the impact of a products across their entire life span.

Stages in looks at are – Material Sourcing > Component manufacturing > Product final assembly > Product transport > Product use > End of Life. It also looks for key sustainable indicators. These are :- Low carbon design > Energy efficiency > Renewable electricity > Direct emissions abatement > carbon removal > Water stewardship > Zero waste to landfill > Mapping & engagement > Assessment > Innovation.

It uses the EU PEF (Product Environmental Footprint) which has been introduced to deliver a common European evaluation method to measure the environmental impact of each of the LCA stages, so covering the entire lifecycle of the product.

The criteria used by the EU PEF are – Climate change, total > Ozone depletion > Human toxicity, cancer > Human toxicity, non-cancer > Particulate matter > Ionising radiation, human health > Photochemical ozone formation, human health >Acidification >Eutrophication, terrestrial > Eutrophication, freshwater > Eutrophication, marine > Ecotoxicity, freshwater > Land use > Water use > Resource use, minerals & metals > Resource use, fossils.

This broad spectrum of analysis gives an incredibly accurate view of the impact and footprint of a product. it also has a clear picture of what a sustainable product should look like.

This is a simple one, they are not ours. We don’t create our carbon footprints not can we change or influence them, we just pay for them because we know it is right. They are created by an independent company, based on the information supplied by our suppliers at our request. Where that information is not forthcoming or available data from Wellow is used. They hold a massive amount of data on all areas that effect the footprint of a product like energy consumption and creation across all countries, as well as the impact of transport, and end of life disposal and how that differs in geographical locations. So in short we leave that to the experts, so you can have full peace of mind that the figures are more than just surface deep.

We believe the best way to explain this is first of all to focus on the why. We use the metaphor of a restaurant menu that shows all the calories of every dish and almost makes you feel guilty for selecting anything. It is the same with carbon footprints on products, we know you need the goods so rather than feeling guilty for buying your essential products we help you buy better by focusing on the savings, this helps you make active reduction decisions in line with Scope 4. To do this we compare the carbon footprint of the product you are buying against an industry standard product. If they are different volumes or units we take that in to account by breaking it down by usable product in kgs and building it back up again, so that the saving of buying a super concentrate that makes 100 spray bottles compared to a box of 6 x RTU spray bottles is calculated on how many boxes of 6 x RTU bottles would you have to buy to match it then creating the real cost in use carbon saving on that basis.

What products do we compare to, we did a a lot of research to make sure our line in the sand products are correct. Paper toilet rolls and hand towels are compared to a standard plastic wrapped 320 sheet and c-fold hand towel coming out of Spain & Italy.  Chemicals and soap although a lot do come from Europe & further afield more are made in the UK so it is a UK chemical with virgin plastic containers and no recycled packaging that we use. Waste sacks are compared to a Chinese import. All of these allow us a real line in the sand product as bought currently in the UK and help us encourage people to buy better, whether that is products with more recycled or natural material  ingredients, or ones simply made closer to home.

The short answer is no. Lime Sustainable Supplies as a business is committed to creating a greener, cleaner earth and we believe in it so much that we are not just investing profit but turnover in to the tree planting and offsetting.  The systems we have invested heavily in are to help our customers buy better, by doing this we are helping slow down and reverse the impact we are having on the environment. We invest in the trees and carbon offsetting for the same reason, it is tangible metric that our customers can see so acts as a carrot to incentivise our customers to improve their sustainable profiles.

Everyone needs to make a profit, and as we are also competitively priced on top of all the functionality we offer it is always going to be a larger challenge for us. We believe that customers will understand the importance of what we do, and by building a larger community and bigger business we will make a real difference even if it does hit our bottom line!