Waste Management

Preventing waste is central to conserving natural resources and protecting our environment. That’s why we maintain a keen focus on waste prevention, reusage and recycling. We look for ways to remove waste from every stage of our cards’ journey to stores – from the forests that provide our wood pulp to manufacture and distribution. Our aim is to reduce operational waste by good design and review of our processes. Ultimately our goal is to eliminate all operational waste to landfill by 100%, and maximise recycling.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Reusing packaging – We reuse more than 500,000 packaging boxes used by our suppliers to protect shipments to our distribution centres, using them to package our own deliveries to customers. This alone has reduced the volume of new materials that would otherwise be needed by 41%, helping to conserve natural resources. Our aim is for 100% of our products to be shipped in fully recyclable, FSC®-certified boxes.

Sustainable returns and old stock – We take a strategic approach to preventing returned products and obsolete stock (products that are no longer saleable to our customers) from becoming waste. Our business analyst teams tap into consumer trends, use sophisticated sales forecasting models and work closely with our retail partners to anticipate demand and minimise waste.

Waste separation and recycling – We separate all the different types of waste we produce in our operations – from plastic to paper to cardboard – enabling us to reduce the frequency of non-recyclable vendor waste collections. See Environmental Impact for more information.