Retail Giant Reaps The Rewards
By employing the services of Greenstar, a specialist waste management company, leading high street retailer Laura Ashley is realising waste management costs savings of up to 30%.
The rewards for Laura Ashley are not just financial. Because Greenstar is a recycling-led waste management business; Laura Ashley is also able to address its own strict, self-imposed environmental, waste and recycling targets – enhancing its green credentials in the process. Indeed, among its many environmental obligations is one that reads: '[we will be] monitoring waste production (products and packaging) within all divisions, and seeking to reduce, reuse and recycle waste where possible'.
"Laura Ashley is a perfect customer for us to be able to demonstrate our capabilities to their full effect," explains Mark Cook, national sales manager, waste management and recycling at Greenstar. "Before we came on board Laura Ashley employed a variety of service providers all delivering different levels of service at a variety of different prices. It was difficult for it to equate exactly what its outlay was for its national waste management activities. We estimate that on average we can save companies between 10 and 35% - so the 30% saving demonstrated here is a superb illustration of our capabilities.
"We set ourselves a selection of well defined targets with regards to our activities with Laura Ashley. These included simplifying the supply chain, becoming a single point of contact for all locations, reducing the amount of administration, standardising in-house procedures and implementing site-specific audits and recycling strategies – all governed by a specific roll out plan with the target of achieving 30% savings
"Since we implemented our management system the company now has complete cost transparency – it is able to more accurately budget for these sorts of services at new shop sites and warehouses. It also now has a single point of contact and a single invoice for all of the waste activities handled by us. We also introduced a range of processes for other waste management activities such as hazardous, electrical (WEEE directive) and confidential waste."
Laura Ashley was keen to introduce its green ethics not just at distribution level but also at store level. Indeed, in many cases Greenstar will supply all of the necessary hardware and equipment for stores to undertake their own recycling activities while, in some cases, dealing with local handlers appointed and governed by Greenstar. For the smaller stores where space is more of an issue, recyclable materials will be returned to the distribution depots on the return runs and processed using the depot's own recycling infrastructure.
The phased introduction of store-based recycling is currently being implemented at many of the larger stores. Each implementation is preceded by a full analysis so not only can Greenstar ensure the correct equipment and services are specified but also so Laura Ashley has an immediate indication of the expected costs savings. Following these activities, the programme will filter down to the smaller stores. "No two stores will be the same," explains Cook. "We have to be practical to meet our obligations to Laura Ashley and to this end we will tailor our activities to suit each individual store's requirements, capabilities and circumstances."
"We currently use Greenstar's services at 90 of our 180 stores, the remainder having existing agreements within shopping centre schemes and the like," explains Rob Lambie, group risk manager at Laura Ashley. "As is the case with many shops, a lot of our waste was destined for landfill, the cost of which is becoming less attractive as it starts to attract higher taxes. We turned to Greenstar to help us define a national strategy for our waste management functions not only at distribution level but also right down to our smallest store.
"We set ourselves some pretty stringent environmental targets last year and 2006 will see these getting even tougher, it was therefore essential that we made use of a company like Greenstar with its experience and capabilities within this arena. We have been with them for 18 months now and we expect to save a significant sum already concerning our waste handling activities – and this is even before recycling has been bought into the equation.
We also expect our saving to be even greater year on year as landfill taxes climb." To put these costs in context £280,000 worth of waste collection and landfill tax in 2006 will rise to nearly £450,000 in 2013 with landfill tax being by far the biggest cause of the increase.
"Working with Greenstar has been a remarkably easy process, with most of our core objective being defined, agreed and implemented in just a few meetings." Lambie continues. "Greenstar has also undertaken a lot of "hand holding" – producing packs for all of our stores explaining all of the who, what when, where and why they need to know about these new activities. I have to be honest, I was expecting a lot more 'incidents' after the implementation of the plan, but instead, since October last year, I have had just six phone calls relating to it and they were all minor issues. In fact I often joke that I now no longer know how a new store opening is going purely because there are so few issues – I rarely need to get involved."
Now that the system is in place both Greenstar and Laura Ashley meet on a regular basis not only to discuss past and present levels of service but also to define potential future needs and issues. Indeed, it is only by evolving the current plan that Greenstar will deliver even greater levels of service to Laura Ashley, helping it to meet its own ever more stringent environmental targets.