Following Ellard's win of the Indutrade Sustainability Award for Environment, we'd like to share some of the work we have been doing on our sustainability journey. Over the past year, our ESG group has been working hard to extract and collate Ellard’s CO2e figures for 2022.
Our carbon footprint consists of scopes one through three and focuses on all elements of the business. This has aided in uncovering our most relevant climate risks and identifying areas where it is possible to reduce our emissions.
Each scope covers how and where the company emits CO2e emissions in its daily operation. Here's how each scope affects our Carbon Footprint.
Scope one
Our scope one covers Ellard’s greenhouse gas emissions that we make directly.
This includes company vehicles. Currently, we emit 76 tonnes of CO2e as a result of sales and site visits. We have significantly reduced this number by providing the travelling sales team with electric and hybrid cars, and we will soon be changing all Ellard vans to hybrid.
Scope two
These are the emissions that Ellard makes indirectly. This will include any electricity or energy that we use that we have not directly generated.
We have significantly reduced emissions in this scope by switching to renewable electricity. The installation of the solar roof, completed in April 2023, will result in us no longer relying on the national grid and rising energy prices. This further decreases our scope 2 emissions and increases the company’s profitability as we will send excess Pv generated back to the grid.
Scope three
Scope three is the largest category and is responsible for most of our emissions. These are the emissions that we are indirectly responsible for through upstream and downstream activities.
For example, our purchased goods equate to 3,824 tonnes of CO2e, which contributes to 88% of our carbon footprint. As a distributor of automation products, we heavily rely on purchased goods and understand that we will never be able to completely erase this number, but we will continue to look to find solutions to improve it.
This also includes employee commuting, which works out to 32 tonnes of CO2e. Last year, we put in motion the EV salary sacrifice scheme, which has been a success with numerous employees choosing to move to an electric car! This action will help us significantly reduce emissions produced in scope three.
What our carbon footprint means for you
We have calculated our overall footprint as 4,325 tonnes of CO2e, and have managed a 53% reduction in both scopes one and two in 2022. When it comes to sustainable action, we will be 100% transparent with our journey as we continue on the path to reducing our carbon footprint. From the data we have received in 2022, we are aiming to further reduce by a further 50 tonnes by the end of 2023.
Currently, the carbon footprint of Ellard products is 292g of CO2e per £1.00 spent with us.
If your customers ask for any CO2e values or you would like to know information for your own reporting, we are happy to provide a calculation. We are always happy to help, so if you have any questions please do not hesitate to get in touch at sustainability@ellard.co.uk
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