Bunzl Sustainability Success Story - Plastic Use Reduction

Plastic Use Reduction SUSTAINABILITY SUCCESS STORY

As part of the Bunzl Sustainability Strategy, responsible supply chain is one of the key themes. This requires us to commit to becoming a responsible supplier to our customers. Across the business this has manifested in many ways, but one simple yet effective change is in our packaging operations. Many of our Service Centres across Cleaning & Safety have made a change in their packaging process by swapping plastic packaging tape to a paper gum-based tape. Some sites have taken a step further and invested in machines that provide their operators with pre-cut lengths of paper tape to save time and increase efficiency by reducing waste. Across the board, all sites have seen savings in both cost of consumables and plastic waste. Our Wednesbury site that serves our NSS, Lee Brothers, Protec and WBT orders has seen the greatest savings of all. Since investing in 5 tape machines and make the swap to paper tape, the site is expecting to total savings on consumables per annum of £2,770 and 1,005kg of plastic. The individual savings of each Service Centre are dependent on the volume of products processed at that site, however the average annual saving per Service Centre is 219 kg of plastic. If all Service Centres within Greenham make the swap, we could be saving over 4000 kg of plastic alone – the equivalent weight of two rhinos.