EnvironmentReducing the environmental impacts of our business

We are committed to identifying and managing the environmental impacts associated with our activities.

Our aims are to promote greater efficiency and progressively reduce our environmental impacts.

The most significant of these are carbon emissions due to the consumption of energy at our facilities, the use of paper in our printed catalogues and packaging for our products, the generation of waste, and water use.

We use a set of key performance indicators to assess and monitor the environmental performance of our sites and businesses. This helps us to identify performance improvement opportunities.

We encourage areas to gain certification to ISO14001:2004 Environmental Management Standard where this supports our business objectives. We also aim continually to improve the quality and coverage of our environmental reporting.

We participate in the Carbon Disclosure Project and have been recognised as a FTSE 350 sector leader for our CO2 emissions performance and reporting information.

All the pulp for our paper catalogues is sourced from either the Sustainable Forestry Initiative or PEFC accredited forests, with all the printing carried out in ISO14001 certificated facilities.

We emphasise the importance of waste reduction and recycling initiatives across the business by spreading best practice, including moving to electronic invoicing, the inclusion of buyback clauses in supplier contracts and the reuse of transit packaging.