Happy Monday!

This week we cover:

Sapling Spirits: Tracking their impact from glass to grassland.
3 partners to help you track and communicate your product’s impact.
In case you missed it: 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, we’d love to hear from you. We’re expanding our team over the next few months, and there’s room for everyone. Learn more here.

> Good News Last Week

🎯 Ella’s Kitchen launched a joint B Corp Mentor Scheme, in collaboration with Cook Trading LTD, Lily’s Kitchen and Pukka Herbs to connect individuals to help them grow and develop.

🎯 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

🎯 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.

🎯 Nix & Kix received a carbon rating of A, as measured my My Emissions.

⭐️ Sofi launched the first 100% biodegradable cup. The foldable paper cup decomposes in 180 days in landfill, soil or marine environments.

⭐️ 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.

⭐️ Greenalls Gin announced the launch of their paper gin bottle into Sainsbury’s. The 70cl bottle will be a permanent product on shelves in October.

⭐️ 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.

⭐️ 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.

⭐️ 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.

⭐️ L’Oreal Group’s 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 company’s CO2 emissions reduction roadmap.

⭐️ Unilever launched a laundry capsule which reduces greenhouse gas emissions and the product’s 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.

⭐️ A partnership between online fashion retailers About You, Yoox Net-a-Portner and Zalando announced the launch of their free online learning platform to support brand partners in setting science based emissions reduction targets.

⚡️ 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, Journey’s End Vineyards, DASH, Pukka Herbs, Mindful Chef, Draught Drop

⚡️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 you’re 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.

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 ‘eco boxes’, 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% recycled glass bottles, these eco boxes have saved 17,400kg of CO2 from entering the atmosphere. Together, these schemes aim to lower the company’s 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 they’re given a code that can be entered on the company’s 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 Sapling’s tree nursery in the UK. The goal is to plant one million trees by 2027, and they’re achieving this by donating 5% of annual revenue towards tree planting projects.

With more and more brands claiming to plant trees after purchases, it’s 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:

Shop Sapling Spirits

*Sapling’s Vodka Bottle. Source: @saplingspirits.*

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> Quick Take

3 partners to help you track and communicate your product’s 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, it’s 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 Spirit’s Tree Tracker, we’ve tracked down three of our favourite partners with three different solutions to your product communication problem.

Let’s dig in…

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 we’ve seen to communicate your product’s origin, What3Words allow you to tag any location via a simple three words - which save you space on your packed. We love Jacked Foods’ 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 ‘sleep.foam.blinding’.
Click ‘Trace My Fruit’.
Voila! You can now see their entire food supply chain.

EON

Brands: PANGAIA, Gabriela Hearst

EON’s Product Cloud aims to digitise ‘billions of products for global brands’. How? By providing on-label Digital IDs for each product, which can be tracked and updated with new data across a product’s 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 you’re 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.

*Viewing Napolina’s supply chain information, via Provenance. Source: provenance.org*

> 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.

Read the Full Article

> Follow up with…

Article: Reusable packaging provides untapped payoffs for business
Article: Better-for-the-Earth Booze? We’ll Drink to That
Webpage: Carbon Offsets Explained
Podcast: IKEA: Making a $40 Billion Company Climate Positive

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Following the Footprints

🌱 Sapling Spirits' Tree Tracker communicates…