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While undertaking our ESG journey at ROBUS, we identified our packaging as an area where we could make a real difference, particularly as it relates to plastic packaging. Reducing extra or unnecessary plastic from our interior packaging became one of our first and most important goals as an ESG team. While our overall aim is to remove all plastics from our packaging, we take pride in the quality of our products, so solutions needed to be found that would not compromise this quality.
With this in mind, a dedicated taskforce was formed across product teams to explore how we reduce plastics across all ranges. A number of solutions were looked at including using paper bags for screws and accessories, cardboard protectors, plastic protector bags replaced with small amounts of film, using less plastic or removing plastics altogether. With a great knowledge of what could be achieved, we then looked at applying some of these changes to all our product ranges. Each range and change were then looked at individually when a suggestion was put forward, and a decision was made based on effectiveness, quality, cost, aesthetics and a number of factors.
While this is a process where we strive to continually improve and ensure all of our packaging is eco-friendly, we are proud of the progress we have made to this point. As of March 2023, we had managed to reduce or completely remove plastic in around 120 ranges of luminaires/lamps/drivers/accessories etc. These changes have already been rolled out on many products and will be introduced on others in coming orders. Even with the first reductions only coming in Q4 2022, we are proud that in just under 6 months we had reduced the weight of our plastic packaging by an estimated 15-20%. This has meant over 2 tonnes of plastic packaging that would have been in our products has already been removed in those 6 months in the UK alone. On top of this, we have changed to fully recyclable plastic in many cases where removing plastic was not feasible at this time. Whilst these stats are good to see, our aim will always be to remove any part of our packaging which is not eco-friendly, and we expect to reach even higher milestones as the year goes on.
Keep up to date with our sustainability blogs to see what more progress we can make, and please get in touch at technical@robus.com if there are any questions you have on our ESG journey!