Environmental Flyer 2019

Ethical Trading is another area we care about, and where we have focussed considerable effort, in a complex world where products are sourced all over the globe. The crux of our ethical trading policy is to only work with suppliers that have been audited by ourselves and a third party. Audits should be 2-pillar SMETA (Sedex Members Ethical Trade Audit) audits as a minimum and should be no less than three years old. It is normal now to pay a third-party professional company to do an audit on a factory, be it in China, Korea, India, Italy or the UK. This is the very least that should be expected from any business. Wherever possible we do our own factory inspections as we can learn far more about our suppliers, and work much more closely with them, by being at the factory ourselves and seeing processes first hand. We use SGS to conduct an official audit, but we then choose to go beyond this; an official audit is only a snapshot in time, and factories become good at preparing for them. The other action we have concentrated on, and it does take time and effort, is to follow-up outstanding actions from any audits, either our own or an official SMETA audit. In our own visits, we will also look at areas the audit does not cover. It isn’t a perfect world, but we like to think we do go beyond the audit and we do care about our suppliers, many of whom we have been working with for over 15 years. What about the forests? There are other areas of environmental performance that we do well in, such as continuous improvement in our power use in the Exeter property, and of course the legislative requirements on waste and packaging, but by far the most important area for us is paper and FSC (Forest Stewardship Council). Paper for 95% of our paper products (jigsaws, stationery, cards and calendars) is sourced from FSC accredited suppliers. We completed our first timber tracker document in 1996, after the 1995 Plus Group was formed by some key UK high street retailers. Back then, it was exceedingly hard to get information on paper from the mills and pulp suppliers, but the global acceptance of FSC standards since means that FSC pulp is available in most print centres of the world and there is rarely a reason not to use FSC accredited papers. What’s next…. ...over 2019, 2020 and 2021 you’ll see us bringing out a range of products with improved environmental credentials. We are working on: • Reduced plastic and plastic-free card ranges • Plastic-free packaging calendar ranges • New ceramic packaging with plastic components eradicated • New giftware and stationery packaging with plastic components eradicated • Reduced glitter usage across our card ranges • A reduced use of lamination on paper products • Plastic-free charity sponsorship card ranges where royalties will support environmental charities • Further inclusion of recycled paper stocks into our ranges • The increase of ‘recyclable’ logos and statements on all products aimed to increase consumer awareness • Improved POS and display stands where displays are designed specifically to be reused or recycled by retailers “We know our business well so by making a visit ourselves, we know how a good factory should look, how tidy it should be, what type of equipment to expect to see and how it should be run”. “We very much welcome input from our clients and please do get in touch with us, as the sharing of data, research and ideas is the way forward and enables more rapid change”. Exe Box, Matford, Exeter EX2 8FD, UK Tel: +44 (0)1392 824300 Email: sales@otterhouse.co.uk www.otterhouse.co.uk Tel: +44 (0)1392 826 482 Email: admin@carouselcalendars.co.uk www.carouselcalendars.co.uk Printed on 100% recycled paper 74355