Environmental aims:

• To design and sell products which have a proper regard to environmental factors.
• To reduce waste of energy and materials
• To recycle waste materials.
• To minimise the impact of our business on the environment.

Implementation:
Sales and Marketing

When looking at our environmental footprint we need to consider the business as a whole and not just individual departments. The majority of Bridgedale socks are made in our own factory in Newtownards, near Belfast Northern Ireland. This means the socks that are purchased in stores across the UK and Europe have not been shipped from the other side of the world and therefore have a lower carbon footprint.

Bridgedale socks are also built to last, socks made with Woolfusion come with a 3 year guarantee and therefore need to be replaced less often.

1. Website
The www.bridgedale.com website is designed to be a consumer and trade resource that enables our end consumers and trade partners to gain the information they require relating to the brand without sending out catalogues or CD’s.

2. Packaging
Our packaging is printed in locally and therefore has less distance to travel. The pack is made from card that is recyclable. We are currently looking into the possibility of introducing packaging made from recycled card, vegetable inks and cellulose laminate.

3. Trade Workbooks
We are now printing our trade workbooks from recycled paper and encouraging our trade partners to use our range information from a CD which helps us to save paper and print less workbooks.

We encourage our sales people to work from home where possible and avoid driving long distances to regional offices.

The Production Dept

1. Yarns
All yarns are supplied by Certified Oeko-Tex suppliers who comply with standard 100. The yarns do not contain any AZO dyes, Pentachlorophenol and derivatives or Formaldehyde according to European legislation.

For companies in the textile and clothing industry, the Oeko-Tex criteria catalogue a uniform, scientifically founded evaluation standard for the human ecological safety of textiles, against the background of the globalised and fragmented nature of the textile manufacturing chain.

In addition to which we require all suppliers to sign a Bridgedale Environmental Certification of Conformity regarding use of only approved dyed & chemicals in accordance with latest EU legislation and US recommendations.

We send our old yarn cones to a resource centre for use in playgroups.

2. Production process
We no longer wet process socks which has reduced our water usage from 35000 gallons per week to 100 gallons or less. We also do not heat the factory as the knitting machines provide sufficient heat to keep our people warm in the Winter.

We have moved from heavy fuel oil boilers to high efficiency natural gas and reduced our fuel bill by 70%, we have further reduced our boarding and bulking cycles to minimise the use of steam.

We have recently invested in a variable speed compressor to reduce our electricity demand for compressed air by 40% and therefore our carbon footprint

All employees are expected to make a positive contribution towards reducing wastage of power and making suggestions of how the business can improve even further its environmental footprint.

3. Card and paper
We recycle our cardboard which our suppliers use and the paper we use in the office.

We have moved to the Syscom computer system which has reduced our paper usage by approximately one half

4. Factory waste.
We send sock waste to RFD who use it as wipes during the manufacture of inflatable lifeboats.