Starting our journey to becoming a plastic free, environmentally sustainable business…

Confessions of a Plastic using Company

As the new year fast approaches, at Shore Vans we have started reflecting on how we run our own business and the changes we want to make. Without doubt our biggest sin is the amount of waste both reusable and single use that we generate. Our use of plastic packaging is shameful – we admit with regret that we are super reliant on-air packaging for our delicate items, specifically glass. Furthermore, we use a massive amount of cardboard. In a morning we can be taking delivery of an entire pallet of brand new, custom designed cardboard boxes only for a member of staff to be heading out to the recycling centre in the afternoon with a van full of used cardboard earmarked for recycling. This really is not something we are overly comfortable with. We are really committed to addressing this over the next year. We have just signed up with Surfers Against Sewage to become a plastic free business. (https://www.sas.org.uk/plastic-free-communities) This is a great start but we know we can go way beyond this.

Moving Forward

We are excited to be making some massive changes in the year ahead, to include

• Redesigning all our packaging to eliminate the use of air packaging and bubble wrap
• Phasing out our use of plastic tape, replacing it with paper based tape
• Reusing cardboard – we plan to create a ‘rebuild station’ where we can rebuild boxes form our waste cardboard
• Review our use of Voids as a means of protection across all packaging

We are really excited to get started on our journey to becoming a plastic free, environmentally sustainable business. We will be keeping you all up to date with our progress along the way in our news section https://shorevans.co.uk/news/ and via social media so keep an eye out for our updates!