Having recently spoken to PMF about the environmentally beneficial changes that Saxon Brands was making to its product packaging, Clair Seymour, the company’s commercial & product manager, is back to expand on the initiative and the wider issues our industry faces.
I’ve always felt close to the environment and I work with various outdoor operations in my spare time, but like many of us, much of my time has been spent locally rather than further afield. From this, I could clearly see — just in my local area — how much waste was evident, whether it was excess packaging or disposal of products at the end of their useable life.
The impact the global pandemic will have on our environment and our attitude to the environment is only just starting to settle, but one clear change is the monumental take up of online ordering and the associated amount of additional packaging that is now required throughout the sales chain. Government legislations on waste materials coming into play from 2022 will have an industry-wide impact that, due to the financial penalties for not hitting compliant and recycled material targets, will lead many of us to reassess business operations.
With thousands of products in the Saxon distribution network, it’s an issue we have been reviewing thoroughly. Working alongside environmental agencies and experts, one shockingly consistent theme is just how varied the approach to recycling is – and that’s not just limited to consumers. One local council may recycle all kinds of materials, whilst a neighbouring borough may only recycle a fraction of that content. We work with the OPRL scheme to help guide this process and provide consistent messages to consumers on how to best discard any product packaging.
Outside of packaging though, a key aspect of sustainability and being aware of our impact on the environment is managing the fine balance between materials and cost, and the quality of the product. For example, it’s not just about the air compressor that you want to sell today, but also about sourcing a long-lasting product that can outlive our current disposable society. What are the robust components that you choose manufactured from and how far do they have to travel to arrive to you? What will the demand be for the item, and where?
The public are without doubt aware that much production sits outside of the UK, and it’s a production process that often still carries with it the stigma of poor quality and standards. This is also something we are actively working to change, and is something we consider throughout the entire production process.
We begin by assessing our choice of who we want to partner with by focusing on their environmental standards and trading ethics, and this evolves into a defined monitoring and auditing process. We’ve also seen a tighter relationship build through education; highlighting the changes to our legislations and the attitudes and needs of the UK consumer. This allows our factories to share in the responsibility of providing the right product to the right place in the right way, whilst remaining competitively priced.
The automotive industry will always have to work just that little bit harder on where people see it fitting on the ‘environmentally friendly’ scale, with it generally pigeon-holed as a toxic industry full of oily factories churning out gas-guzzling cars. Large initiatives, such as the move away from diesel and the wider adoption of EV’s, will undoubtedly help this outsider image, but within the industry, there are many opportunities for us to work with a greener footprint, both at home and abroad.
