Our role in the design, development and manufacturing of retail displays offers us a great opportunity to drive sustainability within the industry at each stage:
Design
We are always researching alternative materials and processes to reduce the environmental impact of our projects. For example:
We design to maximise the lifetime of units and reduce the cost of replacing broken or outdated components e.g. cassettes that can be easily replaced without the need to replace the whole unit or larger part of the display
We design units to be easily disassembled at the end of their in-store life, to be re-used, re-deployed or recycled
Specifying Greencast 100% recycled acrylic instead of virgin acrylic
Using bamboo panels instead of MDF or solid wood
Production
We are currently integrating advance production planning software to the business to minimise waste from all areas - just a little extra effort and planning can make significant cost savings for you whilst being better for the environment too
Our teams are also implementing Lean techniques that by their
Scrap and offcuts are recycled whenever possible, or re-used for other projects
We are working towards the Bronze Award with Investors in the Environment
Closing the loop
We encourage clients to make sure units are properly dealt with at the end of their time in-store – we are always happy to talk about ways we can achieve this together!
As consumers are increasingly basing buying decisions on demonstrable sustainability practices, we are doing all we can to support our clients in this. The narrow view of considering materials only doesn’t go far enough.
Much of the work we do uses plastics. Whilst the current backlash assumes ‘plastic is bad’ and ‘cardboard is good’ it’s not that black and white:
Cardboard can not always be recycled depending on the inks, varnish finishes or other treatments used on it or if it has come into contact with grease, oil, wax or resin. Cardboard displays are usually only used for a short amount of time as they damage easily too
HIPS and Acrylic plastics can be recycled easily. They create durable displays so are often a better option for something that needs to stay in store for more than a few weeks
We are on a journey. There is always more that we can do to reduce our environmental impact and will be posting regular updates as we do.