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Tuesday 09 August 2022

The Sash Window Workshop Reduces Carbon Emissions by 39%

We are proud to announce that, despite opening a new workshop and doubling our manufacturing capacity, in 2021 we managed to reduce our carbon emissions by 39% in comparison to 2019.

Both reports were carried out by Carbon Footprint Ltd, who help businesses conduct independently verified reviews of their carbon emissions.

At The Sash Window Workshop, we believe that it is important to do everything we can to reduce our carbon footprint and improve our sustainability, while also providing a high quality product and service.

Having previously assessed our carbon footprint for 2019, we set ourselves a target to reduce our carbon footprint as we understand that it is important to work to reduce carbon emissions, rather than just offset them.  Reducing our emissions means that the carbon is not released into the atmosphere, whereas offsetting is compensating for carbon emissions.

The Sash Window Workshop

In 2021, we started switching our sales team to using electric cars to help reduce emissions as well as installing electric charge points at our workshop for employees and visitors to use.

The switch to electric and hybrid vehicles saw the carbon footprint from our company car travel decrease by 58.6% (to a total of 13.62 tonnes over the year).  With many of our sales team making the switch to electric vehicles during the middle of the year, we hope this figure will reduce further in 2022.

Our scope 1 and 2 market-based emissions for 2021 totalled 194.36 tonnes of carbon, with our total tonnes of market-based emissions totalling 214.50 tonnes of carbon.

Market-based emissions differ from location-based emissions as they reflect the emissions for the electricity tariff that the company has chosen.  In comparison, location-based emissions take the average carbon footprint from the national grid emissions.

The majority of our emissions in 2021 came from our company vans (40.7%).  Unfortunately, the electric and hybrid vans currently available are not suitable to allow us to transport our windows and doors to customer’s properties.  However, we continue to investigate the potential to switch to hybrid or electric vans and will look to do this as soon as the technology has improved.

Our second largest area of our emissions is from site electricity (34.9%).  We strive to select an energy tariff that uses more renewable energy and has a lower carbon footprint than the average electric available on the National Grid.  This is reflected in the fact that our market-based site electric footprint was 35.75 tonnes, as opposed to the 95.70 tonnes for our location-based site electric.

Carbon Footprint Standard CO2e Assessed Organisation

Richard Dollar, Managing Director at The Sash Window Workshop, commented:

“Having worked towards being environmentally responsible for several years, I am proud that we have not only achieved our goal to reduce our carbon footprint but that we have reduced it by an impressive 39%.

From becoming FSC certified in 2016 to undertaking our first carbon emissions assessment a couple of years ago we have made multiple changes over the years to be as environmentally sustainable as possible.

Each wooden window made from sustainable wood saves approximately 160kg of carbon dioxide in comparison to a plastic window (source: Heriot-Watt University).  This means that by using sustainable wood to manufacture our windows and doors, we use the most sustainable and the greenest choice of any material.”

As we look to reduce our carbon footprint further in the future, as an environmentally responsible company we believe it is important to offset any carbon emissions made by the business.  We will therefore be offsetting our emissions for 2021 by investing in independently verified carbon offsetting projects.

To find out more about our efforts to be an environmentally friendly, sustainable business, read our environmental and sustainability policy.

Alternatively, you can read about the report of our 2019 carbon emissions.

Environmentally friendly Accoya sash windows

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