I worked on my first sustainability project 23 years ago. We spent a huge amount of time discarding several failed methodologies for synthesising key chemical ingredients from renewable resources. It was not disheartening though; it was uplifting to find that early community of people working tirelessly away in the background to increase the longevity of our planet’s resources.
This kind of work is vital to ensure that future generations have the consumer products we rely on every day. A few years later, it was exciting to see a paper that solved the puzzle I had worked on, with a new catalyst that led to the mainstream production of that family of renewable ingredients.
My career had then moved on to manufacturing efficiency projects within the industries of healthcare, personal care and home care. I found there that, as soon as you start to think about any small improvement to aspects of products, services, or processes, you start to see more and more opportunities.
The more you start exploring and thinking about the possibilities, many of these turn out to be quick wins. Ultimately, they are all commercially sensible choices in the long-term. In my current role as a commercial manager at Asda Opticians, I have been using these learnings to shape our sustainability programme.
It is fully integrated into our commercial plans, rather than being an additional plan running alongside. I find this to be efficient and effective. We are continually making improvements in what and how we trade. The elements include products, packaging, logistics, consumables, retail signage and travel.
This is an exciting time to be in the optics industry, it feels like we are starting to gather real momentum in making the necessary changes. These include reducing waste, minimising use of virgin material and reducing carbon footprint. When I first started in this industry, seven years ago, I was laughed at by account managers for asking them to reduce the amount of tertiary packaging they needlessly include with products.
A lot changed quickly after that. I am delighted to see every supplier now making some reference to sustainability in most meetings. Not only talk, but lots of action too. I found the Eyes on Sustainability conference to be eye-opening in many ways. It was great to see so much enthusiasm and engagement.
It was encouraging to see that many businesses are well on their journey to reduce their impact on the planet. However, it was slightly disappointing to see fewer businesses represented there than I was used to from events within other industries. It is my hope that next year there will be far more representation at the event.
Colleagues within all optics businesses would appreciate and learn from the wealth of knowledge and improvement building within the industry. During my talk at the retail panel, I presented examples of actions we have taken and projects that are in progress. I also used the opportunity to make five specific proposals of market-wide activities that we should all work on together.
The aim of these proposals is to make significant reductions to our industry’s impact on the planet by coordinating efforts. The proposals are:
- Dummy lenses should be made from easily recyclable plastic. By easily recyclable I mean mainstream plastic recycling. There are businesses working on this and I ask that the material supply be made fully available to everyone.
- Bare minimal packaging, with no exceptions. Primary packaging’s purpose is to protect the product and display required information. Tertiary packaging’s purpose is to protect the primary packaging or product to avoid damage/waste during transit and storage. Examples of packaging that should not be included for eyewear are marketing information cards, additional outer boxes, second temple covers. An example of feasible packaging reduction is in eye drops, outer box should only be the required width. The card outers are often double width of the bottle, using twice as much card as is required to serve the purpose of the card.
- Forward planning to use sea freight instead of air freight whenever possible. Air freight emits around 30 times more CO2 than sea freight.
- Test and approve reusable consumables where we currently use disposable versions. Cleaning and re-using can be just as hygienic as disposable items, but we need validation and guidance in place.
- Let us set up an optical industry idea sharing hub on the back of the first Eyes on Sustainability event. Over 10 years ago, Asda formed its Supplier Sustainability Exchange, our collaborative approach to making grocery industry-wide progress in environmental sustainability. It has been a source of huge moves in our industry. I think it would be great if we could do something similar within our industry. We are all on this planet together and need to protect its conditions and resources for our future generations. That will be much easier if we collaborate (in areas that are non-competitive). I have asked the team at Optician to collate and publish all ideas you submit to them. Watch this space for their plan. With our ideas we should think big as it is limiting trying to reduce our footprint by making tweaks within the constraints of our current set-up. We will make material change when we step back and reconsider what we do and how we do it.
• Please send any ideas to opticianeditor@markallengroup.com