Behind the Scenes: The Road to a Greener Business
With so much focus on the products that make Vicars Game so popular with customers, its easy to miss the numerous changes we make behind the scenes that help us to continually improve the business. 2024 is the year that our attention has turned to our impact on the environment and what we can do to reduce that impact.
So What Have We Done?
Well to start with lets talk about renewable energy. As you can imagine, it takes quite a lot of electricity to power all the fridges, freezers, lights, and machinery on the premises. Because our requirement is so great, we have made a substantial investment in solar power and installed 720 ground mounted PV modules which should supply up to 300 kW of power to the site. This switch to solar power is estimated to lower our CO2 emissions for the site by 55 tonnes per annum which is the equivalent of planting 2,554 trees. Any surplus electricity produced will be exported to the grid.
What About Waste?
Being both a wholesaler and retailer means that we generate a lot of waste materials. Increased costs and frequency of waste collections mean that simply separating recyclable materials is no longer enough. Therefore, we have decided to go one step further and invest in a cardboard compactor, and a bailing machine for our plastic waste. These machines, along with new contracts with waste management companies, allow us to reduce the frequency of our waste collections. It also ensures our recyclable materials such as cardboard and metal, go directly to recycling centres.
Is That All?
Not quite. We have also begun the process of changing our retail packaging for recyclable alternatives. We have already switched to paper carrier bags in the shop and compostable takeaway coffee cups in the café.
So What's Next?
Our next project is additional recycling facilities for customer use, with dedicated bins for cardboard, plastic, and cans. We are also starting to introduce reusable trays when delivering to wholesale customers, rather than single-use boxes.
