4imprint Group plc
Environmental Principles Statement
4imprint is committed to a culture of continuous improvement in environmental stewardship and aims to conduct its business in an environmentally responsible manner. We recognize that we have an important role to play in addressing climate change and our impact on the environment.
Our Group Environmental Committee, comprised of a cross-functional team of senior leadership from each of our locations, is responsible for tracking and measuring our footprint, prioritizing reduction initiatives that are likely to have the greatest impact, and working with the Board to review our environmental strategy and initiatives to ensure they are appropriate and aligned. The management teams at each of our operating units, with the assistance of teammate-led committees, are responsible for the day-to-day implementation of these Principles.
We view environmental considerations through two primary lenses:
Our operations
Our physical operations cover office, warehouse and postal activities. Office activities include customer service, marketing, merchandising and other support functions. Warehouse activities include assembly of marketing collateral, sample fulfilment and embroidery production. Postal operations revolve principally around fulfilment of marketing packages and the circulation of printed catalogues.
Our guiding principles in controlling the environmental impact of our operations include:
- Minimising energy consumption through efficient operational techniques and investment decisions regarding equipment and power generation. Our aim is to prioritise opportunities to reduce the GHG impact from our energy consumption through operational improvements, using offsets and other similar programmes to achieve our carbon neutrality objectives only where necessary.
- Adopting appropriate waste management techniques and promoting reuse and recycling as alternatives to landfill.
- Using responsible mailing techniques, including recycled materials where practicable for postal packages and paper sourced from sustainable forests for catalogue production.
- Actively engaging and educating our team members to consider environmental matters and become involved in initiatives.
- Partnering with other organisations and engaging in community-based sustainability projects.
The Group became 'carbon neutral' in 2021 in respect of Scopes 1 and 2 and meaningful elements of Scope 3 (primarily transportation of product from our Tier 1 Suppliers to our customers). We are committed to maintaining our carbon neutral status and to active monitoring and measuring of both absolute and intensity-based metrics to reflect further progress in GHG management.
Our products
Our product range is comprised of around 60% hard goods, for example drinkware, writing instruments, stationery, office products and tech accessories, and 40% soft goods, including apparel, bags, towels and blankets. As a distributor, our range is very diverse, covering many different materials, substrates,
manufacturing processes and imprinting techniques. Orders are almost entirely drop-shipped via common carrier from our suppliers direct to our customers.
Consistent with our corporate purpose, the products that we sell are designed to promote our customers' messages time after time through repeated usage and impressions. Promotional items are typically products that people use regularly in their everyday lives, with one significant difference: they carry the logo of our customers. As such, the most effective promotional products are lasting items that people use time and again rather than throw away. That said, just as there are opportunities to make sustainability improvements to the products we all use each day, equally there are many opportunities to make sustainability improvements across all the product categories we offer. Our priority is to identify and deliver a number of specific sustainability projects that are realistic, measurable and will make a difference. These initiatives will be driven in accordance with the following themes:
- Curate and educate: We aim to provide our customers with a curated, easy to access range of products with sustainable characteristics, allowing them to make informed decisions over the items that they purchase. We believe that this will help promote and grow the interest in, and the market for, products with these sustainable characteristics which over time will influence the promotional products industry overall. This will include:
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- The launch of our 'Better Choices™' initiative aiming to highlight promotional products with sustainable credentials, thereby giving our customers the ability to research product attributes and certifications related to sustainability and environmental impact.
- Being vigilant in excluding products with false 'Eco' claims.
- Actively partnering with our suppliers on developing sustainable product initiatives in the supply chain.
- Educating our customers through emphasising items that will be used many times over a long product lifetime.
- The 3 R's: We will be guided by these environmentally-friendly practices as we assess and evolve our supply chain and product range:
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- Reduce: Less raw material, packaging, waste, scrap, and pollution
- Reuse: Ways for products not utilised or at the end of their useful life to be repurposed or returned into the product stream to avoid the landfill.
- Recycle: Inclusion, where possible, of recyclable products and products manufactured from recycled content, along with information on what and how to recycle.
- Collaboration with our suppliers: As part of our work in achieving 'carbon neutrality', along with other initiatives to reduce our environmental impact, we aim to share this information with our Tier 1 suppliers. We are also working to understand the environmental objectives and initiatives that our Tier 1 suppliers are undertaking, working together to drive improvement in this part of our supply chain as a current priority.
This Principles Statement will be reviewed annually or in line with changes in the business.
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4imprint Group plc published this content on 22 February 2022 and is solely responsible for the information contained therein. Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 22 February 2022 15:34:22 UTC.