đą Sapling Spirits' Tree Tracker communicates product impact. Here are 3 partners to help you do the same.
Featuring Sapling Spirits, Napolina, PANGAIA, Marylebone and more...
Happy Monday!
This week we cover:
Sapling Spirits: Tracking their impact from glass to grassland.
3 partners to help you track and communicate your productâs impact.
In case you missed it:Â Plastic Credits at the checkout? There's a new wave of offset APIs, led by startups like Treepoints.
Psst - after today, the Following the Footprints team are taking a two week summer break. Our next newsletter will be on Monday 22nd August!
In that time, weâd love to hear from you. Weâre expanding our team over the next few months, and thereâs room for everyone. Learn more here.
> Good News Last Week
đŻÂ Ellaâs Kitchen launched a joint B Corp Mentor Scheme, in collaboration with Cook Trading LTD, Lilyâs Kitchen and Pukka Herbs to connect individuals to help them grow and develop.
đŻÂ The Nue Co announced their partnership with 1% for the Planet, donating 1% of their sales to charity : water, as part of their net positive strategy
đŻ Vegan trainers Thaely added to school uniform "as a reminder of our collective, global responsibility to act sustainably". Created by a student and made from recycled plastic bags, plastic bottles and industrial rubber waste.
đŻÂ Nix & Kix received a carbon rating of A, as measured my My Emissions.
âď¸ Sofi launched the first 100% biodegradable cup. The foldable paper cup decomposes in 180 days in landfill, soil or marine environments.
âď¸ FashionCycle was launched by John Lewis as part of their Partnership Plan to reduce the annual number of textiles that end up in landfill. The textiles recycling scheme rewards members for donating pre-loved clothing and encourages a circular economy.
âď¸ Greenalls Gin announced the launch of their paper gin bottle into Sainsburyâs. The 70cl bottle will be a permanent product on shelves in October.
âď¸ Diesel announced their pilot cotton recycling project in partnership with their parent company OTB Group, their Tunisian suppliers and the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO). The circularity project will recycle fabric scraps for new clothing and become an industry first to better identify categories of scrap and start mechanical recycling processes.
âď¸ Amazon began delivering in custom Rivian Electric Delivery Vehicles (EDV) in cities across the US. The partnership aims to have thousands of EDVs on the road in 100 cities by the end of the year and 100,000 vehicles by 2030.
âď¸ Tesco announced they are ditching their own-brand multi-packed drinks to save 45 million pieces of plastic per year. This move will begin with multi-packs of fizzy drinks will which will save 12 million pieces of plastic annually.
âď¸ LâOreal Groupâs North Asia Zone achieved carbon neutrality across all operated sites, plants, distribution centres, offices and research & innovation centres spanning five geographic markets of Mainland China, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. With a focus on renewable energy production and energy efficiency, the Zone has achieved several firsts on the companyâs CO2 emissions reduction roadmap.
âď¸ Unilever launched a laundry capsule which reduces greenhouse gas emissions and the productâs carbon footprint by 16% (operating at 20 degrees on short cycles), saves customers 60% energy with each use and reduces 6000 tonnes of plastic from entering the waste stream, annually.
âĄď¸Â Marie Claire announced their UK Sustainability Awards 2022: Food and Drink Winners, brands include Halo Coffee, AllPlants, Minor Figures, Karma Drinks, The Ethical Butcher, Nucao, Wild & Stone, Canaima Gin, Journeyâs End Vineyards, DASH, Pukka Herbs, Mindful Chef, Draught Drop
âĄď¸The Irish Government passed the Circular Economy and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2022 to incentivise the use of recycles and reusable alternatives to wasteful, single-use disposable packaging. The new law is the beginning of Irelands shift to more sustainable patterns of production and consumption.
Have Good News youâre keen to share? Let us know - info@followingthefootprints.com.
> Click on each link to read more.
> Brand Spotlight
Sapling Spirits: Tracking their impact from glass to grassland.
Founded in 2018, Sapling Spirits is a Cotswolds-based distillery with the plan to bring sustainability to the spirits market.Â
To achieve this, they focus their sustainability initiatives focus on:
Regenerative farming and local sourcing > to cut down initial impact
Refillable bottles and sustainable bulk packaging > to cut down ongoing impact
Reforestation at home and abroad > to offset overall impact
Sapling Spirits takes unique approaches to engagement with both their B2B commercial customers, and individual consumers. They work with bars that purchase their products to develop a zero-waste philosophy - creating zero waste cocktails in collaboration with chefs and bartenders across the UK. They also sell 5 litre âeco boxesâ, so that their branded bottles can be refilled and reused on premise. In total, due to avoided emissions from manufacturing and transporting their heavier 40%Â recycled glass bottles, these eco boxes have saved 17,400kg of CO2 from entering the atmosphere. Together, these schemes aim to lower the companyâs impact before and after purchase.
Individual consumers are encouraged to recycle their bottles and see their impact through the Sapling Spirits Tree Tracker. Taking their corporate reforestation initiative to the next level, when an individual purchases a product from Sapling Spirits theyâre given a code that can be entered on the companyâs website. The tracker will then show where and what tree has been planted as a result of the purchase. To date, almost 90,000 trees have been planted across the United Kingdom and Morocco, absorbing a reported 134,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Some of these trees were even grown from Saplingâs tree nursery in the UK. The goal is to plant one million trees by 2027, and theyâre achieving this by donating 5% of annual revenue towards tree planting projects.Â
With more and more brands claiming to plant trees after purchases, itâs hard for consumers to either understand or see the impact their choices are having. This helps Sapling overcome that, and ultimately build trust with consumers.
Support Sapling Spirits via their shop:
> Quick Take
3 partners to help you track and communicate your productâs impact.
Communicating your impact on your product can be a challenge. Often restricted by package space, and constrained by only a few words to be able to sum up (hopefully) years worth of work, many brands struggle to put their impact in the hands of consumers. However, itâs increasingly important to do so - with multiple studies confirming that consumers are caring more and more about knowing your impact before they purchase.
Inspired by Sapling Spiritâs Tree Tracker, weâve tracked down three of our favourite partners with three different solutions to your product communication problem.
Letâs dig inâŚ
Provenance
Brands: GANNI, Citizens of Soil, Tropic Skincare, Marylebones
On a mission to make every product come with accessible, trustworthy information about origin, journey and impact, Provenance were founded in 2014. They allow brands to turn supply chain data into easy-to-communicate and credible consumer facing communications. The best parts? This can be done at scale, and all claims require a minimum level of evidence and must be verified. They also digitise third party certifications via digital badges, all of which can be seen after consumers scan an on-packet custom QR code.
You can preview the experience for Napolina here.
What3Words
Brands: Jacked Foods
One of the simplest ways weâve seen to communicate your productâs origin, What3Words allow you to tag any location via a simple three words - which save you space on your packed. We love Jacked Foodsâ partnership with them, which we covered in more detail in a previous newsletter.
Want to try it?
Head to the Jacked Foods website here.
Type in âsleep.foam.blindingâ.
Click âTrace My Fruitâ.
Voila! You can now see their entire food supply chain.Â
EON
Brands: PANGAIA, Gabriela Hearst
EONâs Product Cloud aims to digitise âbillions of products for global brandsâ. How? By providing on-label Digital IDs for each product, which can be tracked and updated with new data across a productâs lifecycle. These Digital IDs can be in the form of a QR Code, RFID, NFC or digital fingerprint. They also work with resale, recycling and repair partners which include Trove, Waste Management, The Renewal Workshop, Recurate and more - with the goal of providing a network of partners around each product.
Preview their case study with PANGAIA.
So - next time youâre wondering how to squeeze your sustainability report into a 1cmx1cm space on the back of your packet, consider putting a QR code, Digital ID or What3Words code there instead.
> In case you missed it
Plastic Credits at the checkout? There's a new wave of offset APIs, led by startups like Treepoints.
A new dawn of automation is paving the way for rapid offsets. We asked the Treepoints team our burning questions.
> Follow up withâŚ
Article:Â Reusable packaging provides untapped payoffs for business
Webpage:Â Carbon Offsets ExplainedÂ
Podcast:Â IKEA: Making a $40 Billion Company Climate Positive