SUSTAINABILITY

We are aware of the need to pay attention to the environmental impact of everything we do, as Paul Davidson, our Managing Director says,

‘As a socially and environmentally responsible family business we are strongly influenced by the families’ children’s views on the environment, as they are the future of both our business and our planet. By shaping our policies and practices around what they believe, we are confident of building a far more sustainable future and, although we don’t have all the answers yet, we’re doing our best to find them.’

And as James Crilly, our Operations Director, points out 

“Our ambition is to be 100% reliable on electrical energy over the next five – ten years, whilst looking to increasingly re-use and reduce the energy we’re using in recycling. As a business that makes premium glassware designed to last a lifetime, we believe this is fully achievable and must be at the heart of what we do.”

As we strive to achieve our goals we have already:

Installed an extensive Solar PV and energy storage system and the energy generated by the system will be over and above the required amount for the company to run off and be entirely independent on. Any excess electricity generated from the system will be sent back to the grid and can be repurposed for other local usage. This system has also enabled us to immediately reduce our gas usage by 60%, with the plan for this to rise over eventually leading to removal of gas energy altogether over the next ten years.

Installed a new air conditioning system for the factory floor, thus removing the previous gas heating system, immediately reducing gas usage across the business by 60%, with this figure continually increasing over the next 12 months.

Added electric car charging points in the company car park – meaning that all company cars are now either fully electric or hybrid.

Focussed on day-to-day office functions such as recycling and packaging with the ambition to re-use and reduce, rather than just recycle, removing the use of plastic packaging entirely over the next five years. We work with Viridor – a scheme to collect all cardboard and paper from the site that is taken to be recycled. However, this is also under further review as we look to install an industrial shredding machine, enabling all cardboard waste to be shredded and re-used for packaging purposes, thus making the business self-sufficient within this area, rather than relying on resource-heavy recycling methods.