Environment

Like the people who wear our products, we care greatly about the environment and look for ways to reduce our footprint over time.

Our dedicated facilities team coordinates our efforts to keep our footprint low, and all Berghaus staff play a role. New starters have an environment, health and safety induction on their first day, and we regularly update the team about environmental issues and ways they can contribute through posters, emails, bimonthly company meetings, dedicated notice boards and newsletters.

We host several green events each year, such as promoting cycling to work during ‘wellbeing week’, activities to celebrate World Environment Day annually, and ‘Fairtrade Fortnight’. We also encourage employees to continue their environmental efforts outside of the workplace.

Our priorities are to use less energy, to recycle more, and to use water and other natural resources responsibly. Environmental activities include:


ENERGY
We make an effort to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions at our sites.

Our energy tariff includes energy from renewable sources, and we have a wind turbine on the roof of our office that helps reduce the amount of energy we purchase. We have installed low energy lighting wherever possible, as well as motion-sensitive lights in our warehouse and open plan office areas, and encourage people to turn lights off when they leave a room. We have also reduced the number of vending machines in the building from five to two. Our efforts at the warehouse have reduced energy use by around 50% over the course of a year, despite an increase in hours worked.

Business travel is another factor. Many Berghaus team members need to travel to visit manufacturing sites and our global offices, but we avoid flights where possible by using state-of-the-art videoconferencing technology. We have also switched to lower emission vehicles in our company fleet. We encourage employees to car-share on their journeys to and from work, and are delighted that nearly a third of staff have chosen this option.


WASTE
We promote recycling and have centralised waste bins that help employees to quickly and easily segregate paper, cardboard and plastics. We ask people to remove general waste bins from their desks, to further encourage recycling. We also separately collect wood, metal, electronic waste, and photocopier and printer toner cartridges. Where possible, we donate unwanted furniture, as well as surplus product, to charity. Our warehouse uses a large number of cardboard boxes, to store product and ship it to customers. We reuse boxes if possible and recycle them if not. In total, we recycle around 75% of our office and warehouse waste.

Employees save paper by printing double-sided and using scrap paper to make notebooks. They use their own mugs to make tea and coffee, eliminating the use of plastic cups in our hot drinks vending machine.


WATER AND OTHER NATURAL RESOURCES
Installing water-saving ‘hippos’ in all our bathroom facilities has cut water use by around 200,000 litres, and we have also replaced bottled drinking water with mains-fed chilled water dispensers.

We try to use other natural resources responsibly too, and bear this in mind when we’re buying office supplies. Our printer paper is made from 80% recycled content, and we provide staff with recycled stationery. We clean our offices with natural and water-based products, and we stock a Fairtrade choice in vending machines. Our outdoor picnic tables are made from 100% recycled plastic.

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