Green Thinking News

Interaction reveals CSR charter

European office supplies purchasing alliance Interaction has launched its first Q-Connect Ecological and Social Responsibility Charter. It outlines how the organisation has built its CSR and ecological credentials over the past 15 years and where it is heading.

Interaction is repositioning its Q-Connect brand around sustainability with a focus on the entire supply chain. Its plans centre around three pillars, with each of them also incorporating the relevant United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The three pillars are:

• Valued people: this component comprises providing quality education, enabling people to discover and reach their potential, and ensuring gender equality. • Meaningful products: this pillar revolves around responsible production and consumption and taking urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. It will include initial targets of reducing single-use plastic in packaging, using packaging in the most sustainable way and reducing Q-Connect’s ecological footprint by onshoring where possible. • A better planet: attaining a better planet will mean assisting life on land and below water. Initial targets here encompass encouraging suppliers to make their production more sustainable – with the help of the BEPI self-assessment tool (Business Environmental Performance

Initiative) – and, at a later stage, demanding improvement in terms of sustainable production from suppliers.

Lyreco expands electric fleet

Lyreco has invested £2.3 million ($2.6 million) in the expansion of its electric van fleet in the UK, taking the number from 17 to 67. A total of 50 new Ford E-Transit electric vans have been purchased to join the firm’s existing 17 Renault Master Z.E. all-electric light goods vehicles.

The Lyreco EV Fleet is now planned to be deployed across 13 of the firm’s 24 regional distribution centres (RDCs) in the country, in areas including Dartford, Edinburgh, Manchester and Oxford.

The vans at the Lyreco National Distribution Centre site in Telford will be charged by electricity generated by the reseller’s own renewable energy solar panel-powered charging stations.

Lyreco has invested more than £124,000 in charging infrastructure across the RDC network to ensure that vehicles are charged taking advantage of REGO (Renewal Energy Guaranteed Origin) electricity. Plans are currently being put in place to install charging stations at Lyreco’s remaining sites in 2023.

Joint paper cup recycling programme

Stora Enso and packaging company Huhtamaki have launched an industrial-scale recycling programme for paper cups in Europe. Called The Cup Collective, the initiative – claimed to be the first of its kind in Europe – aims to recycle used paper cups on an industrial scale.

Starting in the Benelux region, paper cup collection bins will be available in restaurants, cafés, office buildings and transport hubs in the Brussels and Amsterdam metropolitan areas.

The Cup Collective hopes to recycle half a billion paper cups in the first two years and, as it is designed to be scalable, has the capacity to significantly increase recycling volumes in Europe.

The programme has issued an open invitation for partners from across the supply chain to get involved in working towards a systemic European solution. While it is initially funded by Stora Enso and Huhtamaki, the plan is for the initiative to become self-financing over time.

Mondi tackles plastic pollution

Mondi is among the 80+ organisations – including fellow business supplies companies such as 3M and Kimberly-Clark – to announce a common vision of a circular economy in which plastic never becomes waste or pollution.

The newly launched Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty brings together stakeholders along the plastic value chain to accelerate global action to end plastic pollution in the environment and oceans.

Convened by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the World Wide Fund for Nature, the coalition plans to develop ambitious policy recommendations, engage with treaty negotiators, and build confidence in the business community on the benefits and necessity of an effective global plastics agreement.

It aims to provide a clear voice in the discussions to find solutions to end plastic pollution and will remain active until the multilateral negotiations on the treaty conclude in 2024.

Thomas Ott, CEO of Flexible Packaging at Mondi, said: “Global challenges such as plastic pollution require global answers. Mondi is proud to join this international coalition because we understand that collaboration is vital to drive progress at scale.

“With our approach of ‘Paper where possible, plastic when useful’, we advocate a holistic approach to sustainability, which is in line with the vision for a circular economy for plastics.”

Through its sustainability framework MAP2030, Mondi has committed to making 100% of its packaging and paper solutions reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025 (currently 78% based on revenue and applying Mondi’s Path to Circularity Scorecard criteria). European MRO and business supplies reseller Manutan has developed an innovative system to help choose products according to their environmental and social impacts. The approach consists of providing comprehensive information for each product considering five impacts: resource conservation, waste reduction, limiting carbon footprint, users’ health and well-being, and social inclusion.

Customers can identify responsible products with the dedicated logo or by filtering their searches according to the impact(s) that interest them.

The following categories are currently included: cleaning products, bin bags, indoor waste sorting bins, cardboard boxes, protective packaging, workshop chairs, standing stools, stationery and office supplies, and protective work clothing.

Manutan extends environmental and social impact offering

Kimball releases ESG report

US-based contract furniture vendor Kimball International has released its 2021 Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Report – Crafting a Sustainable Future. The report concentrates on five focus areas: environmental management and sustainable products; investing in people with personal development; diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging; product quality and safety; and responsible supply chain management. Key goals for 2023 include:

• Reducing combined Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by the end of fiscal year 2030 from a 2018 baseline. • Obtaining zero waste certification at three facilities by the end of fiscal year 2025. • Driving accountability on its supplier expectations, with a set goal to achieve 90% of strategic suppliers signing the Kimball International

Business Code of Conduct by the end of fiscal year 2023. • Hiring diverse talent and enabling it to meet or exceed racial/ethnic representation in the communities served. • Maintaining its strong culture of ethics and integrity, and increasing visibility in measuring performance, with a set goal to achieve a completion rate of 95% in Ethics and Compliance training for enrolled employees year over year.

TD SYNNEX partners with Treedom

Technology distribution giant TD SYNNEX will plant trees on behalf of all its global co-workers. As part of the company’s first anniversary celebrations – SYNNEX and Tech Data merged in September 2021 – it has partnered with Treedom, a tree-planting platform that funds agroforestry projects, to create a TD SYNNEX forest.

Treedom will plant a tree for each of TD SYNNEX’s 22,000+ employees around the world and will add to the forest one new tree for each person who joins the business. At the outset, the forest will offset close to 5,000 tons of CO2 throughout the trees’ lifespan. China-based print giant Ninestar has been recognised for its environmentally friendly products. The company was presented with the 2022 Green Sustainable Development Contribution Award at the International Green Zero-Carbon Festival in Beijing in August.

Ninestar was honoured as a key performer and contributor to helping economic transformation and upgrading, sustainable development, and creating a green, zero-carbon future.

By the end of 2021, 5,808 of the company’s products had been acknowledged by the attestation of Chinese environment mark. In addition, 1,851 Ninestar products received Energy Conservation Certification while 37,343 products comply with RoHS and 35,755 items conform to REACH.

The company said that last year, it had collected, recycled and remanufactured approximately 20 million toner cartridges and 18 million ink cartridges.