The team at The Beeswax Wrap Co. are conscious of their impact on all aspects of society, including economic, social, and particularly environmental. They are continuously striving to do better.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a self-regulating business model that helps a company be socially accountable—to itself, its stakeholders, and the public. The winner of the Gloucestershire Live Corporate Social Responsibility Award stood out to the panel of judges because their whole business model is built around this principle with a particular focus on sustainability.
Key business points:
- The Beeswax Wrap Co began in 2017, born out of a need to find a sustainable alternative to single use plastics like cling film.
- Their wraps are made at their solar powered workshop in Nailsworth from locally sourced beeswax, pine resin, organic jojoba oil and organic cotton.
- The wraps are sold direct and stocked in over 500 independent stores across the UK, as well as Oxfam, The Design Museum, Morrison’s, Ocado, and Somerset House.
- They employ 12 staff locally.
The winning entry:
The Beeswax Wrap Co. team are constantly challenging themselves to do better for our planet. After they became B Corp certified in 2018, they wanted to understand their carbon footprint in order to reduce it. This led them to becoming certified by The Planet Mark, who review their carbon footprint annually and set them a new target each year. Through these audits and reviews they have been able to make amazing progress in the way that they conduct their business sustainably.
There are many examples in which improvements have been made in every area of their business with the environment at the forefront of their decision making:
The packaging has been redesigned to be glueless, eliminating the thousands of peel off strips that were sent to landfill and reducing the energy needed to create them. All of the paper and card is FSC certified and they worked with their printers who became one of only ten printers in the UK to be certified by The World Land Trust. All of the packaging is now carbon balanced from the manufacturing of the card right through to the delivery at the workshop.
The business moved to a larger workshop which had solar panels already fitted and enabled them to move most of their energy consumption to solar power.
They implemented recycling systems for food waste, cardboard and plastic recycling, and a Teracycle bin to recycle all other plastic (film, crisp packets etc).
Two new product lines were created from reviewing their product waste; their Bits and Bobs pack which are smaller wraps made by cutting down any larger wraps that do not meet the quality standards, and firelighters which are made from the resulting offcuts. This reduced their waste by 95% within one month alone.
As a proud Living Wage employer, with flexible working hours, they also offer two paid volunteering days a year to give back to the local community.
Since their award entry, they were named one of B Corps Best for the World 2021 for their environmental impact, putting them in the top 5% of B Corps globally!
The Gloucestershire Live Business Awards 2022 will open for entries in March.
