We discarded the description “working towards a lower carbon footprint” to describe our environment stance. It is too vague, seriously meaningless, and SO boring.
What we are doing we describe as -
You are very entitled to ask what (on earth) that means! Well... it commits us, and targets us, on some very specific activities:
We are working with National Retailers to develop re-usable bags specifically for their merchandise and customer usage to ENSURE maximum re-use. Otherwise a re-usable bag is that only in name, and that does not help the environment, or you, our customer.
We are actively promoting “one material” packaging to ease recycling. (ever discarded a potato chips tube that’s made from card, it has a plastic lid, and metal base? –do you recycle it as card, chuck it in the tin bin, wonder what to do with the lid, or give in and chuck the whole lot in the landfill bin? With our Anglo products, we are closer to helping you eliminate that dilemma) And that helps your customers.
Something else we can’t talk about yet, because we keep getting copied by our competitors - but we CAN say we are working on something seriously big which will help a particular type of packaging be more easily composted. This will help your customers.
If you want “Bags for Life” and Re-usable bags, you have come to the right people, we are seriously keen! We are delivering bags for life in Jute, Cotton, and Woven Polypropylene
We further the promotion of recycling and re-use by insisting on and helping our clients have an appropriate message printed on their branded bags to re-use and re-cycle
Anglo like to use Plants who have Certification for Environmental Management System - ISO14001:2004.
In 2008 we will be introducing purchase of energy from “clean” resources.
Anglo do not operate company cars above 135 g/km CO2 emissions.
We sea freight our overseas manufactured products. Stock control, and in time re-ordering, not panicky Airfreight at the last minute, is part of our Anglo business offer. (we will airfreight small quantities but we will really try to organise you out of needing this)
We recycle our warehouse corrugated board.
We recycle our office paper and card.
It’s a small thing, but we switch off our lights, computers, screens & printers whenever possible, and always at night. (except our website computer, we take orders online 24/7, 365)
Our warehouse lights are switched off in non-active areas.
In winter we wear warmer clothing so we can turn our office heating thermostats down a notch to save heating CO2 emissions.
We are always looking at other ways of reducing our CO2 emissions and minimising waste –in any case, it helps us to be more competitive and makes good business sense.
A look at the small print
“Throwaway” supermarket bags have become a symbol of a “throwaway culture” and understandably there’s a strong lobby to “ban” plastic and possibly paper single trip bags. The Carrier Bags Consortium, a trade group, argue that this brings unintended consequences, like actually increasing CO2 emissions. The science is on their side, but they will lose the battle because they are missing the point: people are fed up with throwaway bags, and more importantly, the “waste” they represent. In fact single trip carrier bags may now be an icon for a lot of things that people are beginning to feel they can try doing without. Like erm.. hmm, well, all that fun junk you can buy in Christmas catalogues that needs batteries, gets broken, trashed and trodden on in about 3 weeks, how much CO2 goes up making all that? Hmm. How many heat emitting transformers at home? Printer, phone, mobile charger, laptop charger etc
Yes, we can do our bit with Environmentally friendly packaging. Correctly purchased and used, it is an icon of sensible change to save litter and landfill and it may reduce some production and distribution CO2 emissions, but compared with power generation, marine, air, and automotive emissions, it’s a tiny tiny proportion
We will leave you with a couple of Thoughts, our Materials “ Quick Take”, and if you are interested, some links:
First the thought: what if, just if, Al Gore and others are right, and the Greenland ice shelf is in danger of sliding in to the sea and raising sea levels 20 feet plus because of global warming? It would be black humour indeed to mention our efforts to minimise this risk through purchase of Enviro bags... We all have to do a lot more.
Second Thought: Want to consume? Great, but Let’s be prepared to Re-use, Recycle, Reduce, Repair. Waste not, want not.
Third, here’s the link to our Materials “Quick Take”. We hope it helps
Fourth, you would like some further information? - You could start by looking at these sites. Prepare to be amazed. (on the WRAP site we learned that a Family must recycle their glass for 200 years to save the same amount of energy that they would save by swapping their SUV for a saloon for just one year)
We hope you have found these notes and links stimulating and helpful. Anglo’s been around over 20 years. Our MD has been a member of Greenpeace and FOE for over 30 years, our company is expanding fast, –so we are satisfying our customers– but we are still small enough that we don’t need to be too PC. Relief.
If you would like to discuss how to achieve the best for the environment and to progress your business through environmentally sensitive packaging, please telephone our branding team managers, Jackie Broughton or David Crooks on local rate 0845 838 7552. Or please email info@anglopackaging.co.uk.
We would very much like to hear from you if you have any comments and suggestions on our environmental policy and notes. Please contact one of our directors, Nick Varlow, on info@anglopackaging.co.uk.