Gillies Goes Green

The world we live in is a precious place that as a population we are learning more about the importance of looking after it each day. We thought we’d share what Gillies is doing to minimise our carbon footprint to make for a greener tomorrow!  As a company we do our best on a daily basis to operate renewably, and we believe that sustainability and green thinking is fundamental for our future… all of our futures!

Our passion for recycling began decades ago, when we realised that there must be a better way of disposing our waste then sending it to landfill. The volume of manufacturers packaging has driven environmentally friendly changes for our business and has encouraged many new pro-green procedures. We want to not only ‘do our bit’ but we intend to act as a spearhead for sustainable changes in business protocol and continue to make the necessary adjustments to reduce our environmental impact.

Furniture Packaging

In our furniture distribution centre, we have three compacting bailers for recycling all our cardboard, polythene, and polystyrene packaging that comes as protective packaging for our products. By separating and compacting all these recyclable materials into cubic tonne bails we are then able to partner with a Scottish recycling company and have the materials recycled of in the greenest way possible.

Carpet Recycling

In September 2015, coinciding with the opening of our new carpet and flooring distribution centre, we had another -more specific- cubic tonne compacting bailer installed. Whereas we were using 3 skips a month to deal with offcuts and customers used carpets, our newly installed bailer now compacts the unwanted carpet into a moveable cubic metre which is uplifted by The Vanheede Alternative Fuels Company- it is then re-used for animal blankets.

How Green are Gillies?
On average we recycle 30 cubic tonnes of packaging per month and have now achieved our goal of sending zero supplier packaging to landfill.

Solar Panels

In May 2012, our Broughty Ferry shop and our main warehouse have had a significant investment by way of the installation of solar panels on the roofs of these premises.

With the ever-challenging question on the most environmentally friendly way to create clean energy, we at Gillies have significantly reduced our carbon footprint by capturing the sun’s rays and using it to create energy. Even in Scotland you would be incredibly surprised at how much power can be created, even in winter!

How Green Are Gillies?
On average our solar panels save 50 tonnes of Carbon Dioxide going into the atmosphere.

Let there be light!

With technological advances in commercial lighting, Gillies has undertaken and completed the challenge of improving out energy efficiency by way of upgrading our showroom with low wattage lighting. Each showroom light fitting houses a 35watt bulb, and replaced three 50watt lights when we carried out the upgrade (that is a reduction of 115 watts, or 76%). The costs of converting the lighting was not small – each light fitting plus bulb is £95!

How Green Are Gillies?
By making the change we have been able to considerably reduce the amount of electricity used each day by around 75%.

 Prepared for Winter!

Each day we receive dozens of wooden pallets and crated goods from suppliers when delivering into our warehouse, ultimately once used the have no purpose. We therefore decided to install our furniture warehouse with two large multi-fuel eco-stoves.

Throughout the warmer months we accumulated excess wood until the colder winter months where it is used to fuel the heaters. The addition of these two heaters alone to our warehouse has caused a massive reduction in the amount of gas and electricity we traditionally needed for heating, plus it has the added benefit of turning the unusable wood into energy, whilst removing the harmful elements at the same time.

Bio-Plastic Bags

Since the statutory carrier bag charge came into effect in 2014, we began charging 5p per carrier bag; however, we noticed this was not the only thing we could do to reduce the pollutive impact of single-use bags.

This year we have switched from regular plastic bags to Polyair™ which is the first polythene product in the UK to be officially carbon negative. This is a bio-based carrier bag that is made from 70% sugar cane-based polythene; this is an organic based polymer which is 100% recyclable.

“Polyair™ is truly the greenest material we know of…this product will not only improve your green credentials and dramatically reduce your carbon footprint”

Whilst in an ideal situation everyone would remember to bring a bag with them, we’ve all been caught out on this before and had to buy one at the check-out; at least now at Gillies our new bags are sustainably made and just as good at carrying your purchase home!

Our Fleet

Our horse and cart was retired a number of decades ago and now we rely on specially made furniture delivery lorries and carpet fitting vans to get you purchases to your home safely.

With the ever-changing advances in fuel technology and vehicle efficiency standards, we review and upgrade our fleet annually so that our vehicles can be as environmentally friendly as possible; also, is there any better smell than that of a new car (or Van!).

We have also looked very seriously into the way we perform our deliveries. Instead of having our vans and lorries travelling hundreds of unnecessary miles through poorly planned delivery points, we have developed a sophisticated routing system to minimise fuel usage!

There are so many different ways that we can reduce our carbon foot print and continue to deliver the high-class level of service that we have done for over 120 years. At Gillies we will remain committed to reducing our carbon foot print and the whole company is excited to see where future developments can take us.

What’s Next?

We are currently trialling re-usable custom-made furniture bags to further minimise any packaging materials we buy in to provide added protection when going into customers’ homes. We already use a lot of quilted upholstered bags to protect furniture but we hope to extend this further still!

Having recently completed an upgrade to our computer software, we are hoping to reduce paper consumption by making a number of elements of the business paperless utilising tablets and other portable electronic gadgets.

Watch this space for more developments…