In 2017 with lots of environmental news about plastic pollution we started to think about our own plastic consumption. We were by default dealing with a lot of plastic within our daily operations and we decided to act.
We saw in our local newspaper an article from a voluntary organisation called 'Plastic Free Windsor', who are supported by 'Surfers Against Sewage' (SAS). Plastic Free Windsor were looking to get local businesses onboard to cut their plastic usage, we made a call and the journey began.
After listening to advice and shocking facts from PFW, we decided to immediately put pledges in place to firstly reduce and then to illuminate all plastics from our business.
In 2018 we pledged that by 2020 we would reduce 90% of plastics from the business, we contacted our customers asking for their support and ideas.
By September 2019 we had already met our target!
Many of our ironing only customers were happy to have no poly roll garment covers over their returned items and for those who did still want covers and for our laundry customers we introduced a cloth made zip up reusable garment cover, this gets returned to us so we can use it again and again. This allowed us to immediately stop the usage of poly roll covers saving about 1.5 tonnes per year of single use plastic just on packaging alone.
Further to this we asked our customers to stop sending their items in plastic such as bin bags and supermarket carrier bags, we introduced a range of long life bags that we give our regular customers and we no longer accept items in any single use plastic!
We went further, looking at what supplies we buy and how they are packaged. Where possible we only buy laundry supplies that are not in plastic, all laundry powder is now supplied in cardboard boxes and we swapped plastic hangers for more durable steel wire hangers.
From January 2020 we have reduced our plastic usage by 95% and we continue to look for ways to reduce further.
For more information on Plastic Free Windsor please see their Facebook page :
https://www.facebook.com/plasfreewindsor/
or Twitter:
https://twitter.com/PlasFreeWindsor
For more inforation on Surfers Against Sewage please see their website:
or Twitter:
https://twitter.com/sascampaigns