In a bid to raise awareness among both their employees and their customers, First Fence are launching a company-wide sustainability week on the 27th of June 2022 as part of their latest campaign and sustainability plan. They have filled us in on their plans for the week and beyond.
First Fence are committed to positively impacting the public, environment, and planet. They have a fleet of over 40 vehicles on the road with over 100 deliveries made daily, it has become a huge part of the company’s future to create and implement their sustainability plan and move toward reducing their carbon footprint.
Customer Sustainability Quiz with a National Trust Membership up for Grabs.
Kicking off the week in style and in line with Great Outdoors month, their customer base will be sent a sustainability quiz directly to the inbox. Quiz winners will be entered into a draw at the end of the week, with a chance to bag themselves a National Trust membership, just in time for the school holidays.
The aim of the quiz is to educate customers in their daily lives both at work and at home. Household waste, commerce and industry continue to grow yearly by 3%.
Internal Fines for using the Printer
On Tuesday, all the internal printers at their head office in Swadlincote, Derbyshire and all depot locations will be switched off by the IT team. Employees will have no access and will need to find alternative ways to share documentation.
Team members that forget and attempt to print a document will receive a small fine which will then be donated to The Wildlife Trust at the end of Sustainability week.
According to research conducted by Kyocera, the average office worker in the UK uses up to 45 pieces of paper per day, and a staggering two-thirds of that is considered waste.
Wasteful Office Items
An awareness-building internal task will take place during the week at both the First Fence head office and depot locations. Each team member will be required to find 10 items in the office or depot that they would consider to be wasteful and then rank them in order.
Envirowise says that approximately 70% of office waste is recyclable, but on average only 7.5% reaches a recycling facility. 24% of total UK waste is made up of this.
As well as raising awareness, the company is also arranging to install more recycling bins in their locations to make them more easily accessible and utilised more often.
Power off Day
The day will consist of making sure that every member of the team turns off the lights when they leave a room, doesn’t leave their phone chargers or other devices plugged into sockets when not being used and everyone must switch off their computer at the end of the day.
It’s a bigger problem than you think, a study conducted by Utility Design revealed that 6.5 million people admit to leaving the lights on when they aren’t in the room. If those 6.5 million people were more mindful of this, it would have a huge impact on the environment and the cost of electricity bills.
Fund Raising
On the final day of their sustainability week, First Fence will be fundraising for The Wildlife Trust. All team members will be dressing ‘green’ for the day (wearing second-hand, sustainable, or borrowed clothing), taking part in sweepstakes and there will also be donation buckets placed around the office and depots to enable people to drop in their loose change.
The printer fines from earlier in the week will also be collected and donated.
Scrapping Single-Use Cups and Donating to Food Banks
Most of the First Fence team already bring in their own reusable bottle however, there are still a few that will use single-use plastic cups. Any remaining unused cups will be removed completely and donated to a local food bank to prevent waste.
Introduction of the Cycle to Work Scheme
Introduced during bike week 2022, the cycle-to-work scheme has recently been launched, which is an employee benefit that saves 26-40% on a bike and accessories. The employee scheme requires nothing to be paid upfront and the payments are taken tax efficiently from your salary by your employer.
This aims to encourage employees to get out and about more, it also benefits health and cost, as well as helping the environment.
Working Towards a more Sustainable Fleet
Moving forward, First Fence are continuously looking into ways to move towards a more sustainable fleet. Currently, they have five depots across the UK and each depot covers a specific area, this helps limit the mileage covered by our vehicles daily, providing smarter deliveries and improving vehicle efficiency. This alongside our route planning software and new, more efficient vehicles is all supporting our Sustainability Strategy.
Transport Manager, Robert Wilshaw commented “With the Future Sustainability Strategy being a forerunner in our minds, we are actively planning to become more sustainable as an organisation.
There are already a lot of plans we’ve started to put in place to continue striving towards a more sustainable fleet. However, to take it one step further we are now looking into introducing electric vehicles and continuing to grow the number of depots that we have across the UK, to reduce the number of miles covered even further
We are also exploring how we can make our depots more environmentally friendly, with solar panels, electric vehicle charging points and alternative waste handling options”
View the First Fence sustainability plan here: https://firstfence.co.uk/sustainability-plan