Starting Your Sustainability Journey: Top-tips For Retailers

1 - Carry out a simple impact assessment on your business.

You need to have a clear understanding of what impacts your business operations and what activities have on the environment and your local community. A good place to start is by doing an audit of environmental and social impacts across the whole of your business.

2 - Speak to your local schools about what is important to them.

3 - Take action from the insights gained from the assessment, aligning with the 3Rs of sustainabilityReduce, Reuse, Recycle.

The first priority here is always focused on ‘reduce’ so think about:

a) What can I reduce or remove completely? e.g. energy consumption or consumables such as paper and plastic packaging.

b) Where can I reuse materials? e.g. carton packaging.

c) What can I recycle? e.g. plastic, carton, food waste.

4 - Use wholesalers that have lots of sustainable products & eco credentials!

5 - Measure and record what you are doing – as what gets measured gets done!

Start by taking monthly meter readings for electricity and heating. Also record your business travel mileages, type of fuel/consumption, water and sewerage as well as a record of waste collected.

6 - Set yourself 3-5 key goals that are realistic and achievable.

Taking small steps and actions really do make a difference.

7 - Engage and involve colleagues in every step of the journey.

Engage colleagues every step of the way depending on the size of your business. If you can set up a green task force then great, but at the very least have someone designated as the sustainability lead to support driving the change. Just one simple idea from a colleague could be a real game changer for your business.

8 - Finally, enjoy the journey and share what you are doing with us.

If you have any questions about measuring your carbon footprint, then don’t hesitate to contact SER@banner.co.uk.

Together we can build a greener and fairer future.