🌱 Competition for a cause: How SailGP embedded impact metrics into their leaderboard, and Great Wrap's post-potato award-winning product.
Featuring Great Wrap, Bundlee, Little Freddie, SURI and more...
Happy Tuesday!
This week we cover:
Quick Take: Racing for a better future: How SailGP embedded impact metrics, and created a competition for a cause.
Brand Spotlight: Great Wrap: Unwrapping plastic waste, with a product made from potatoes.
In case you missed it: 🤝#5 - Meet the Partners: bodo, featuring co-founders Brandon Neman and Jack Green.
> Good News Last Week
🎯 Bundlee announced that they will launch a crowdfunding campaign, enabling communities to own part of their company. They are the UK’s first rental subscription service for childrenswear.
🎯 Little Freddie Organic Baby Food published their 2022 Sustainability Performance Report. Some highlights are 59% carbon reduction in upstream transport emissions and 45% waste reduction across their warehouses.
🎯 SURI announced that they are now B Corp certified, scoring 88.9.
⭐️ Ralph Lauren introduced the industry's first-ever Cradle to Cradle Certified® Gold cashmere sweater, inspired by MBDC. Cashmere sweaters can also be repurposed through Ralph Lauren's Cashmere Recycling Program in partnership with Reverso.
⭐️ HelloFresh in Sweden partnered up with the company MoveByBike Europe AB to deliver meal kit boxes by bicycles - taking 40 meal kit boxes per trip, to reduce overall emissions within HelloFresh markets in the Nordics.
⭐️ LEON is phasing out carbon neutral claims previously made on their ‘carbon neutral burgers and fries’. The company has also committed to be net-zero by 2030 and reviewing more projects to do in order to achieve that. They have partnered with ClimatePartner to deliver their initiatives in reducing and offsetting their emissions.
⭐️ Tesco teamed up with WWF UK and AgriSound to launch a smart listening device to monitor and protect pollinator populations called ‘Polly’. The aim is to measure biodiversity benefits of wildflower margins across commercial apple orchards and their impact on pollination. Tesco also confirmed that they have surpassed their target to ensure that 85% of surplus food is redistributed to communities.
⭐️ Hubbub announced they have re-homed 15,000 phones, tablets and laptops through their campaign, ‘Community Calling’. This campaign aims to reduce e-waste and tackle digital exclusion rehoming unused smart devices. They are working together with Virgin Media O2.
⚡ Science Based Targets Network (SBTN) published the first science-based targets for nature and biodiversity. Building on the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), SBTN is opening the guidance first to just 17 pilot companies and will be released to the public in 2024.
> Click on each link to read more.
> Quick Take
Racing for a better future: How SailGP embedded impact metrics, and created a competition for a cause.
At Bread & Jam’s Future Summit last week, we left the final panel pondering two big questions from Ellie Pinfield (Co-Op’s Incubator Programme buyer) “is measuring margin, sales and volume allowing buyers to make decisions that benefit the planet?” and “should we be measuring other sustainable metrics alongside the P&L”?
To deep dive into this you can read our previous take on Belu’s SDG aligned Purpose P&L, or stick with us here as we take a look at how embedding impact metrics in a similarly competitive environment - SailGP’s Impact League - has had amazing results.
So who are SailGP and what is the Impact League?
The SailGP championship is a calendar of high speed sailing events taking place around the world. With an ambition to be the world’s most sustainable and purpose-driven global sports and entertainment platform, their Chief Purpose Officer Fiona Morgan built the Impact League in 2019, which is now a year round competition. As research from MIT concluded, the cultural and global influence of athletes is trusted by the public more than academics and politicians. SailGP’s league encourages the athletes to use their voice and put climate risk front and centre within the sport.
How does it work?
The Impact League has a set of social and environmental sustainability criteria which encourages teams to choose more positive actions, reduce their carbon footprint and help accelerate inclusivity in sailing. Each team is awarded points based on its fulfilment of this criteria. These points are externally audited, and the score is added to the overall Impact League leaderboard. The teams at the top of the podium win prize money for their impact partners.
The sustainability criteria:
Has the Impact League embedded sustainability action into the sport?
In short, yes. Within one year of implementation:
And that’s not all, teams reduced their boat fuel usage by more than 10%, removed single use plastics from selected boats and across the sport via the Big Plastic Pledge (more on this here), with over 60% of athletes are choosing meat-free diets at events too. Furthermore, Sail GP achieved a 56% reduction in temporary power related emissions, a 29% reduction of Scope 1 & 2 carbon emissions per average at events and The Rockwool Denmark SailGP was the first 100% clean energy event. Teams are also funding research, including the protection of kelp forests and their regeneration with Live Ocean, and are producing digital education resources with programmes to highlight the science behind sustainability projects in partnership with Protect our Future. A great example of carrying these embedded values forward, The New Zealand SailGP Team signed an agreement to address the conservation emergency facing seabirds that migrate across international waters, threatened by commercial fishing practices. In partnership with Live Ocean, the NZ SailGP team actively uses their platform to drive environmental action and long term impact, far beyond the event itself.
Disproving initial concerns that the Impact League would distract from performance, the innovative initiative has clearly had the opposite effect - mobilising athletes to pull up a chair and join in the conversation for working towards a better future. Ahead of World Ocean Day on June 8th, we’re confident there are lessons all brands can learn from SailGP’s strategy.
> Brand Spotlight
Great Wrap: Unwrapping plastic waste, with a product made from potatoes.
(Almost) everyone knows that we need to tackle the plastic pollution problem. With businesses across the UK being met with a growing list of regulation, high taxes and PR scrutiny, plastic recycling remains at the forefront of the climate challenge.
For FMCG brands, of the worst offenders in this battle is plastic wrap. The stretchy, hard-to-recycle yet-widely-used film is a waste nightmare for businesses and consumers alike. So how do we tackle this? Today we’re spotlighting Australia’s Great Wrap, a dual B2B and D2C startup who launched the world's first compostable pallet wrap in March this year. This follows the success of their Great Wrap cling film, both of which are made from food waste sourced from the potato chip industry.
Before we dig in, here’s a quick explainer on the complexity of cling film: Cling film is made from low density polyethylene or polyvinyl chloride, which presents significant recycling difficulties due to its thinness. Because of this, most councils do not accept cling film for at home recycling. In the UK, stores like Tesco now accept certain soft plastics for in-store recycling, however, the successes and challenges of such schemes are a topic for another day.
From Potato to Product…
Founded in 2020, Great Wrap is reshaping plastic packaging through a combination of material science, engineering, bio-design, and scientific expertise. Made from a mix of plant-based oils, potato waste, tapioca and pbat, they also have future plans to utilise their own biorefinery in the future - allowing them to process not just any food waste, but specifically local food waste.
By substituting compostable wrap for traditional plastic, they’re not only reducing carbon emissions (plastic uses fossil fuels to produce) but they’re also enriching soil with organic matter. Great Wrap's film breaks down completely in home composting environments within 180 days, providing a sustainable solution to a long-lasting problem. Not stopping there, their PHA is also marine degradable too - so if any does end up in our oceans, it won’t harm the ecosystem.
Unwrapping the Traditional Business Model
Their business philosophy focuses on circularity, transparency and community. Great Wrap see their product development as a journey, requiring continual alterations to improve their products for both consumers and the environment. Taking their values internally, they’re scaling their business through shared ownership with employees too. A strategy that’s clearly working, they’ve recently launched in the US and certified as a B Corp in the past year alone!
Great Wrap's dedication to sustainable packaging has garnered recognition, with accolades from design platform Dezeen and media company Shondaland. By leveraging food waste to create compostable packaging, Great Wrap exemplifies the principles of a circular economy, transforming a problem into an opportunity. Whilst they’re not yet available in the UK, we’re keeping our eyes peeled for their inevitable expansion.
Take a closer look at Great Wrap:
> In case you missed it
🤝#5 - Meet the Partners: bodo
MITIGATE DATABASE - Featuring co-founders Brandon Neman and Jack Green.
