Here at Westbury Packaging we don’t only produce sustainable packaging, we also produce packaging sustainably. We’ve also gone one step further than most by achieving Carbon Neutrality.
Carbon Neutrality is achieved by calculating your carbon footprint and reducing it to zero through a combination of in-house efficiency measures and supporting external emission reduction projects.
Part of the process involved setting up a robust environmental policy, which covers everything from energy, recycling, fuel, vehicles, lighting, office/factory temperatures, travel, employee behaviour, and much much more.
We’ve implemented a number of changes to achieve Carbon Neutrality:
- Energy – all our power comes from sustainable sources.
- Vehicles – we’ve been using hybrid vehicles for the last three years and are now updating our fleet to electric. We also installed electric vehicle charging points in 2019.
- Lighting – our factory is lit by LED lighting.
- Environment – fast close doors on the factory mean that is it more efficient to maintain temperatures within our facility.
- Recycling – all waste from the manufacturing processes are baled in-house and are recycled back into the supply chain.
- Mindset – carbon neutrality needs full support from the whole team. A combination of training, policies and procedures means that everyone is right behind our initiative.
According to research by edie, 68% of UK shoppers say the environmental impact of a product’s packaging affects their purchasing choice. Since our certification we are working to move all our customers over to using only FSC® certified cardboard. This means that we are helping secure a long-term source of paper and therefore packaging whilst also meeting our customers’ needs.
We’ve also invested in two schemes to offset any vehicle fuel we are using whilst we transition our fleet to electric vehicles. The schemes are tree planting in the UK and supporting a project which prevents deforestation in Uganda.
We don’t plan to rest on our laurels now though. We’re always planning and designing more ways of improving our workplace so that it reduces the impact on the environment.
Ben Tupman, MD of Westbury Packaging, explains “The climate and the future of our planet is critical and we owe it to future generations to reduce our direct carbon impact. I am extremely proud of the team for achieving Carbon Neutrality and we are all committed to continuing this journey.”