By Adam Valvasori - Values Manager
Green Team Member, Deb Vukic presents her team's findings to the rest of the business.
The Body Shop Australia's total Scope 1 & 2 C02-e emissions for FY 2009/10 was 3,225 tonnes or 3.2 kilo tonnes.
This covers our Retail, Online and At Home Party Plan channels in our Australian* offices, stores and warehouse. The graph below shows where our emissions come from.
Our total emissions puts us well under the Federal Government's mandatory reporting threshold of 87.5 kilo tonnes (see below diagram of Government Thresholds)
Despite being under the legal reporting requirement, The Body Shop is committed to our core value to
PROTECT OUR PLANET so we have decided to pursue strong voluntary actions to reduce our carbon footprint.
We want to be carbon leaders, even if Australia as a nation, is still
dragging it's feet in this regard.
We are committing to being a carbon accountable business. We aren't perfect (and have never claimed to be) but everyday we continue to learn and take steps towards improving our environmental bottom line. Our carbon reduction journey couldn't have begun without various fantastic external partners like
Green Steps,
GreenPower,
Grow Me The Money,
Climate Friendly and
Net Balance. With their help we feel we have adopted some practical, best practice carbon management principles into our business.
A highlight over the past 12 months has been the re-birth of a The Body Shop's Green Team. Through a structured Grow Me The Money program, representatives from each department of our Head Office have measured, investigated, researched, brainstormed and developed recommendations for the business to improve it's sustainability. Along the way we picked up an
Award for our Action Plan. We eventually divided into three different groups and focuses:
- Less Energy (Lighting)
- Less Travel & Transport
- Less Paper Wastage
1. Less Energy (Lighting)As you can see from the graph above, electricity is responsible for the largest amount of The Body Shop's CO2 emissions and we believe the main culprit is inefficient lighting.
Unfortunately, the problem doesn't stop with our stores - in FY 2007/08 our head office used more energy than all of our Victorian stores combined!
So reducing electricity usage is clearly our biggest carbon problem but also our biggest opportunity. We are genuinely excited about the challenge in front of us to reduce.
Another problem we discovered along the way is that we currently don't recycle any of our lighting - this is a major concern as spent lighting products are the largest source of mercury contamination in municipal landfills. Did you know Australia dumps more than 2000 kg of waste Mercury annually and it's estimated to increase. Government, if you're reading this, we desperately need legislation here as only 1% of fluros are recycled responsibly!
Approved Green Team Recommendations for Action!- Review and overhaul lighting procurement & maintenance
procedures for stores and offices.
- Recycle all fluorescent lights used by The Body Shop Australia to avoid Mercury going to landfill.
- Replace metal halide lights in Warehouse with low emission fluorescent globes.
- Phase out all incandescent and energy inefficient lighting at Head Office
- Trial "the mock shop" and upcoming new store fit-outs with new generation fluorescent or LED Lighting .
2. Less Travel & Transport
Transport and Air Travel are the second largest contributors to The Body Shop’s CO2 emissions. We're particularly keen to work out ways to reduce the number of flights and our Green Team have come up with the following ideas
Approved Green Team Recommendations for Action!- Fuel Efficient Car Purchase and Hire policy. (Already purchased 3 Toyota Priuses)
- Design & implement a car pooling program at Head Office
- Review and update Travel Request form to include “Reasons for Travel”
- Carbon emissions included in quarterly air travel report (department based)
- Roll into the “Computers in Store” Feasibility Project Feb 2011 – proposal to trial video conferencing to possibly reduce number of flights needed.
- Continue to work with freight & postage suppliers to better understand our carbon footprint in relation to product transport.
- Work out a sustainable percentage of C02 emissions from flights we can afford to offset annually.
3. Less Paper Wastage
Sadly, our Head Office uses a lot of paper.
This is due to:
- paper intensive business practices,
- stores not having computers (making most comms paper based) and
- paper towels in our bathrooms!
Not sure how this compares with other businesses out there, but we used approx 110 trees worth of paper on FY2009/10.
The advent of new generation hand dryers is an exciting discovery and like most environmental improvements they have good economic advantages as well. We calculated that installing brand new hand dryers, costs the equivalent to a year's supply of paper towels... not to mention we'll be saving 2.25 C02-e tonnes a year.
It's funny how once you start digging you find out easy-to-fix problems which can reduce your scope 3 (supplier's) C02 emissions, through wiser business purchasing choices. For example we discovered our current model of paper towel comes from Canadian forests and are pulped in China!
Approved Green Team Recommendations for Action!- Replace / install new generation hand dryers and remove paper towels from all bathrooms.
- Switch to a model of Caprice paper towel for the kitchenette, training etc to one grown & pulped in Australia for a reduced carbon footprint.
- Appoint Green Team member as our first official Chief Office Paper Cutter – she will conduct workshops and empower teams to create their own paper reduction plans in the coming months. Rewards for team who reduce their paper usage the most.
- “Computers in Store” Feasibility Project group commences Feb 2011.
Offsetting
Since 2007 we've been offsetting our electricity with 100% GreenPower accredited renewable wind energy projects. In 2010 we will be extending our offsets to cover our Scope 1 and 2 C02-e emissions and switch to using 100%
Gold Standard renewable energy offsets - which are considered world's best standard. Stay tuned for more on that!
So the great news is that for FY2009/10 we are/ were what they consider to be "carbon neutral". However we know the job is never done and we want future Green Teams to continue to identify ways of avoiding and reducing all of The Body Shop Australia's C02 emissions including those in Scope 3.* The Body Shop Australia's carbon accounting begins when The Body Shop International products arrive in Australia by ship or air. We believe the sourcing the ingredients, manufacture of products, packaging and transportation to Australia are covered by The Body Shop International.
