Here's what Nisbets are doing to reduce our impact on the planet
To enable us to work towards creating a sustainability development plan, our teams have compiled a sustainability audit. This plan will allow us to focus on what we will do in the future to reduce our environmental impact.
Our ESG strategy is now focused on the following 4 pillars:
Environmental Sustainability - Ethical Trading - Nisbets in the Community - Great Place to Work
Sustainable Development Goals
Aligning to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals - a collection of 17 global goals designed to be a "blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all" - we have established an ESG committee with the aim to drive our Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) activities.
Ensuring we focus on the right development areas, we carried out an exercise engaging with our customers, colleagues, local communities, suppliers, business partners and small businesses to understand what was important to them. This formed a Materiality Matrix, which was then reviewed alongside the business impact of these items and the interest from our stakeholders.
At the end of this review, we established our 5 key focuses:
Packaging reduction
We’re working closely with our suppliers and supply chain partners to identify opportunities to reduce and improve the sustainability of our products and delivery packaging.
In our warehouses:
- Before we package our products, they are carefully catalogued, measured, and weighed. This allows us to use correctly-sized boxes saving on unnecessary cardboard, packaging and transport space.
- We have removed over-boxing and now send these directly to customers with no additional packaging, thereby reducing cardboard waste.
In our supply chain:
- We’re working with suppliers to reduce the amount of packaging used, changing from plastic to paper or cardboard, increasing the recycled material content and removing polystyrene wherever possible. These changes have saved over 1.6 tonnes of plastic in 2023, the equivalent to 137 thousand plastic bottles.
Products:
- Since December 2023, the Rowlett range of toasters have had all plastic removed from their packaging for all new orders.
- Polar have removed all polystyrene from 290 refrigeration products. As of December 2023, all future orders for these products will be polystyrene free.
Energy use and climate impact
This has always been a key area of focus: reducing our costs to keep our prices low, and reducing our climate impact across our supply chain by minimising wastage and energy usage.
In our warehouses:
- In 2022 we opened our new Leppington warehouse. Built to the local “5-star green star rating” this warehouse has solar panels, sustainability sourced timber, and rainwater collected for irrigation. It utilises daylight to reduce the need for the use of low power LED lighting, which covers 100% of warehouse space.
- We separate and recycle 89% of our waste.
- Our forklift truck fleet are electrically powered.
- All pallets received through our warehouses and showrooms are reused within the business.
- Any old collected white goods from customers are sent for recycling instead of sending to landfill.
In our offices:
- We have updated our aftercare system to stop printing, saving thousands of sheets of paper being used.
- We're proud members of APCO - Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation.
- To align with our commitment to sustainability, all our printed marketing exclusively use recycled materials. From brochures to promotional banners, our dedication to reducing waste and supporting the circular economy is evident in every piece of promotional material we produce.
- We have installed electric vehicle (EV) chargers at our Leppington locations in Australia. This eco-friendly initiative not only encourages the use of electric vehicles, but also contributes to reducing carbon emissions by providing convenient charging solutions for our customers and the community.
- We make sure only low-energy appliances are used in our buildings.
- In 2023, we launched the Fiesta Recyclable and Compostable marketing campaigns, emphasising our dedication to eco-friendly practices. These campaigns not only showcased our sustainable product ranges but also educated and encouraged customers to make environmentally conscious choices. By promoting recyclable and compostable options, we aimed to contribute to a greener and healthier planet.
In our supply chain:
- All pallets collected from customers and used within our business, between our carriers, are reused.
- We only work with transport companies who are committed to reducing their carbon footprint and so have made it a key scoring metric for our tenders.
Customer energy saving
We actively engage with the industry to promote eco-friendly practices. One notable initiative is our "Save Energy" range, which includes appliances designed to reduce energy consumption. By offering these solutions, we empower our customers to make environmentally responsible choices while simultaneously lowering their operational costs.
- Conducted product training for our retail and customer care teams to ensure we can help customers make an informed choice.
- Energy efficient innovative products were launched in induction products, refrigeration, pest control and water heating.
- We launched induction hobs and food warmers for our Apuro brand. Induction cooking and the electrification of kitchens is major focus as it can save up to 70% of energy vs gas cooking.
- We introduced a range of A-rated Polar refrigeration products that have significant savings of up to 60% energy use vs older lower rated products.
- The Easyzap LED lighting-based pest control saves up to 50% of the energy of the older fluorescent bulb products. Also, the LED bulbs last twice as long reducing wastage.
- In 2023, we launched energy-saving manual fill water boilers, which are double skinned and insulated - saving 60% energy compared to older, more basic models.
- Offering our customers options to hire energy-saving products using our Silver Chef Leasing Service, spreading the cost of investing in new products and easing the transition to more energy efficient products.
- Ensuring that all our products comply with energy efficiency regulations.
Information security and technical resilience
We take this issue very seriously. The risk of disruption to our customers as well as our business is huge, which is why we continue to invest in this area to keep ahead of constant new threats.
In our head office:
- We have upgraded our IT systems (i.e., network and connectivity) to enable our office-based workforce to have a hybrid working week.
- We’ve also facilitated Hybrid and distance working, which would otherwise have been face-to-face meetings involving some form of travel across our warehouses, stores and offices, including foreign travel.
- We continue to update security systems to support safer hybrid working.
- We've partnered with cloud-based systems to move our backend servers to cloud-based data centres. This IT infrastructure will be using fully renewable energy by 2025 and should attain Zero Waste certification by 2030 - a move which will save us 7t CO2e per annum.
- We have partnered with an e-waste recycler to reduce the amount of electronics ending up in landfill. Electronic products are comprised of valuable materials such as precious metals like gold, silver and platinum along with copper, aluminum, plastic and glass. Through the recycling process, these materials can be reclaimed. Most electronic devices are nearly 100 percent recyclable.
- Annual training with courses on cyber security, phishing, social engineering red flags and internet security.
Product quality, reliability and repairability
This has always been a key focus for Nisbets as we know how significant the impact that products not working will have on our customers’ busy hospitality businesses. We have in-house quality and compliance teams based both at our UK head offices, as well as our sourcing offices, to ensure product quality, reliability and repairability. And we work and share data with all our suppliers to focus on continuous improvement.
In our warehouse:
- We’re committed to repairing products wherever possible, rather than replacing them. With our Uropa service division, we complete repairs at the customer’s address.
- We’re very proud of our industry-leading first-time fix rate, which saves us hundreds of thousands of miles every year in second visits to customers.
- We use our technicians' location and set service areas to find the closest technician, saving on fuel and travel time.
In our head office:
- Due to the fantastic reliability of Apuro appliances, in 2023 we decided to increase the warranty from 1-year parts and labour to free 2-year parts and labour. This provides customers with the opportunity to repair their Apuro appliances rather than replace them.