We’ve Got a Big Green Announcement!
Below, find out more about how sustainable we are operating and how Gillies has become a Carbon Neutral company.
The talk around climate change is at an all-time high, especially with the recent COP26 summit being held on our home soil. During these vital conversations, it has become even more apparent that change must come from all walks of life, including many sectors of business as well as our personal choices. With every human activity having a carbon footprint we must all cut emissions to avoid the devastating consequences of climate change.
It therefore makes perfect sense for us to tell you what we are doing here at Gillies!
For around 15 years, we have been invested in ecological changes to our business that will directly help reduce our climate impact, many of which you can find on our ‘Gillies Goes Green’ page. We recognised a long time ago that it was important to drive down any environmental impact our business was creating, and set about achieving this. Over the years we have: fitted ultra-low-wattage energy efficient LED lighting to our showrooms and warehouses, installed hundreds of solar panels to 3 of our stores, achieved our target of recycling 100% of the packaging our goods are delivered in, becoming one of the first companies to recycle all carpet offcuts and customers uplifted carpets, replenishing our vehicles regularly to take advantage of the advances in fuel efficiency and ad-blue, as well as implementing smart-routing technology to ensure our vehicles complete their deliveries in the most efficient manner. We even have stringent heating policies in-store to make sure we are minimising energy consumption!
Despite all the hard work we have put in over the recent decades, we continue to want to do better, and set about achieving a much larger goal. A goal that would push the boundaries of modern retailing. A goal that would be one of the first in our industry. Our goal was to become Carbon Neutral.
To achieve such a high standard, we enlisted the help and advice of an approved, and independent, carbon-assessing company who we worked with to audit our business and establish what more we could do, and to provide us with ways to go about our challenge.
After robustly demonstrating our efforts and commitment, as well as some new exciting initiatives, we are very pleased to announce that Gillies has not only achieved The Carbon Neutral standard, but because of our exceptional efforts to sustainability, have become a Carbon Neutral PLUS business.
Many of the steps we have taken in-house to reduce our emissions have been immensely successful, especially our solar panel network and our recycling achievements, and by embracing additional carbon-offsetting changes such as planting trees in Scotland, commissioning tree planting in Kenya, as well as investing in action that has prevented deforestation in Borneo, we can achieve a more sustainable way of operating as a business.
Our green journey doesn’t stop here, we are continuing to investigate additional ways to do better and to make sure that our business is on track for an even greener future.