As part of FSC Forest week, taking place this week from the 21st September until the 27th September, we share how we are working to improve our own sustainability.
At The Sash Window Workshop, we are proud to have always been at the forefront of innovation within our industry, especially with our mission to be a sustainable business.
Carbon Neutral Plus
We believe we were the first window company in the UK to achieve Carbon Neutral Plus status, having first achieved this in 2022, and this has encouraged others in our industry to work to improve their sustainability.
We undertake yearly independent audits of our carbon footprint, undertaken by Carbon Footprint Ltd, to help monitor our aim to continue to reduce our carbon emissions. We have recently had our results from our 2023 audit back and we are proud to announce that we reduced our emissions per £ million turnover in 2023 by 4% compared to the previous year.
2023 Carbon Footprint results
Our 2023 carbon emissions came to 223.43 tonnes of carbon for the market-based emissions and 347.02 tonnes of carbon for the location-based emissions. Our tonnes of carbon per £ million turnover dropped by 27.5% from our base year in 2019 to 31.48 tonnes.
The assessment includes all of our scope 1 and 2 activities, along with several scope 3 activities. We are really pleased with this result as this also includes more of our scope 3 emissions than we included in our base year.
Like previous years, the majority of our emissions were from our vans (68% of market emissions). We are actively monitoring improvements in electric vans to be able to use them when viable.
Taking into account the business growth in 2023, we are proud to have kept our carbon emissions low. We will be looking to offset our 2023 carbon emissions as we continue our efforts to control our environmental impact.
FSC Certified
FSC® certified timber is sourced from responsibly managed forests, helping provide environmental, social and economic value and benefits.
FSC® forests guarantee that the biodiversity and ecosystem is maintained and that there is a long-term management plan to ensure that this continues. The forests need to be profitable without generating profit at the expense of the forest resource, ecosystem, or community.
We originally achieved FSC® Chain of Custody Certification in 2016. This shows that the timber we use in our new windows and doors comes from sustainably managed forests. By opting for sustainably sourced timber, you are helping to reduce the carbon levels in the atmosphere.
Sustainably sourced timber is also more environmentally friendly than plastic windows, as timber windows require substantially less energy to manufacture and can be recycled at the end of their lifespan.
Our efforts to be environmentally friendly
Our business requires some of our employees to travel daily to carry out their work. To help reduce our carbon footprint, our directors and sales team have electric company cars.
We also try to reduce our paper usage by utilising technology to communicate across the business, including in our workshops and with our installation team. The software system that we use was originally designed internally to meet our business needs to reduce paperwork and improve customer service. Today this software is a separate standalone business, helping to improve standards across our industry.
As much as possible, we try to recycle. We have recycling bins in the office. We also have a burner which takes the waste timber from our workshop and converts it to provide heating.
We were also an early adopter of using Accoya, which is a sustainably sourced, FSC certified timber, for our windows and doors.
Find out more about our environmental and sustainability policies.
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Reducing our carbon footprint in 2022
The Sash Window Workshop achieve Carbon Neutral Plus
Reducing our carbon footprint by 39%
Why we use Accoya for our windows and doors
