Blog

Members of our team has recently donated dried foods, tins, toiletries and more to Bridgwater Food Bank.

A generous bunch

Our staff are a very generous bunch and when some of them approached us about organising a collection, we knew everyone would give as much as they could.

It is great to see the team coming together for such a good cause and we hope this will become a regular thing that we do as part of our work in the community.

The Bridgwater Food Bank

The Bridgwater Food Bank provides three days’ worth of nutritionally balanced emergency food and support to people who are referred to it in crisis.

It is part of a nationwide network of foodbanks, supported by The Trussell Trust, working to combat poverty and hunger across the UK.

Since opening in 2013, it has fed a total of 30,000 people, including 11,634 children. In the last five years, 321,752 metric tonnes of food has been donated.

We have recently unveiled our vision for the future including sustainability and reducing the environmental impact of our manufacturing process.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is key to our ongoing success.

Another successful 50 years in business

We’ve had a successful 50 years in business, and we want to have another 50 years, and even more, so to do this, we must become more environmentally friendly and move with the times. We’ve recently worked with some larger companies, which has helped us focus our attention on understanding our carbon footprint. Not only is this planet positive, but it also makes good commercial sense too as it is becoming increasingly common to have to report such data in tenders.

Recruiting Millennials and Generation Zs

We have also recruited many Millennials and Generation Zs into our team, and they have a different, but wonderful, mindset and have helped increase our awareness of the environment and the need to project a positive image. COP 26 and subsequent government legalisation has also intensified the need for action and we’re right behind this.

We are currently undertaking a review of our carbon footprint, highlighting usage and output. There has also been an internal review to assess the measures we can control ourselves.

Waste management reviews

We have been accredited to the Environmental Standard ISO14001 since 2004 and as part of that process we regularly undertake waste management reviews, which have resulted in an increase of recycling across the company, a reduction of the amount of waste sent to landfill to proportion of goods sold, the installation of recycling stations across each area of the business, and increasing employee awareness. Other measures we have taken include optical character recognition (OCR) to reduce paper usage and storage, ongoing replacement of lighting to LED, upgrading buildings to improve energy efficiency and, post Covid, continuing to engage with our customers and suppliers online rather than in person.

Our vehicle fleet

As well as all of this, we have also moved all company cars over to hybrid models and are reviewing the effectiveness of migrating our vehicle fleet to electric. We are also looking to create sustainability champions within our work force to help increase employee awareness and engagement, backed up with ongoing training.