How we impact the environment and what we are doing about it.
Does your business have an impact on the environment?
Yes, of course it does, as do all businesses. Anything to do with vehicles of any kind seems to be the favourite target of the green groups at the moment. At The Wax Man we fully acknowledge that we produce heavily carbon dependant products, we package them in more carbon and then distribute them around the world producing... yes you guessed it... more carbon!
Is this bad news? Well... yes, but not as bad as it may initially seem. Firstly approximately half of our product weight on average is made up of plant waxes and oils. These took CO2 from the atmosphere in order to grow and produce the waxes and oils that we use. As our parent company, Ryklyn UK Ltd, did, The Wax Man decided very early on that we would do something about it and we have.
Below you will see what carbon we produce, how we calculate it and more importantly some innovative projects to not only save what we use, but how YOU can help us to actually save more than we use. Every purchase will add to this figure so buy from us and feel good about it.
What do you produce?
We will have recieved and disposed of 32Kg of waste in 2008.
We will have sold over 480Kg of products.
We will have heated and powered our premises and equipment (1050kWh).
We will have used 8Kg of packing boxes and envelopes, 6Kg of paper, 35Kg of plastics and 2Kg of other materials.
We shall be publishing our waste and power usage at the bottom of this page each year on year along with what we have done about it. This will include any certificates issued by third parties. As you will see below we have researched a viable method to ensure that our emmisions are not only reduced but fully compensated and more. Our business does not only cause no harm to the environment but actually has a positive impact and is helping to offset the damage from those that are not so considerate.
OK so not so bad as businesses go, but what have you done?
Right from the start of 2007 we decided to monitor what we produce and what we sent our clients so that we could answer questions like this and more importantly so that we could make a positive plan on where we could reduce our impact and what we could do about what we could not.
Any company can reduce what they produce and any company that says that they are running at maximum environmental efficiency is kidding themselves and their clients. We are not running at maximum efficiency, but we are close. Their are aspects of our business that mean we will always have a detrimental effect on the environment, but there are ways in which we can not only reduce this but actually make the planet a better place because we are here.
Below are the efforts we have made so far:-
Of the waste we received, much of this was packaging from products we bought and the inevitable junk mail. We recycled 98% of this either with Woking Borough Council or by re-using, leaving just 0.6Kg of landfill waste.
Generally speaking every 500Kg of product we sell is made up of approximately 200Kg of wax, 75Kg of plant and vegetable oils, 100Kg of water and the remainder are solvents and carriers. The waxes are harvested from the plants that produce them in ways that do not kill the plants or infact harm them in any real way. This is sustainable cropping. The plant and vegetable oils are mainly fruit and leaf pressings and are again largely sustainable. The solvents and carriers are produced via fermentation or the refining of oils, mainly using crude as the first base.
We have grown our premises in relation to the space we really need. Much of our administration is performed at home where we run 2 computers. The energy usage of our admin dept is just 150KWH per annum. Our storage facility is just 12.5sqm in size and is currently fully insulated on two surfaces with the rest planned for this year. The heating and powering of our storage facility is just 900KWH per annum and this is likely to reduce to just 600KWH by the end of next year year. This is essential heating as our products do not react well to subzero temperatures.
All of our paper and paper/board packaging is at least 1st generation recycled already, hopefully our clients are recycling this again. Much is second generation recycled when it leaves us as we re-use most of the smaller boards. We also obtain waste packaging from clean companies to re-use. A lot of our plastics and packing materials come from Lloyds Banking Group plc. This saves them having to throw it out, reduces their impact and gives it a second life. We only use material that is free from contamination of any kind and that has been used to house paper or paper products. This is just one way of how our business is helping other businesses reduce there carbon footprint. We haven't bought a new corrugated box or any soft filler packaging in 2 years.
Even our website has been engineered to light up less pixels on your screen, saving you power and reducing your own footprint.
Very good, but what more could you do?
We welcome any ideas from anyone on how to reduce our footprint. Obviously we cannot do this in all areas. Wax is Wax and Oil is Oil. But even so we can still do something about this. MAny of our products now degrade naturally if not on your vehicle, meaning that even run-off will not polute waterways. We are using more and more vegetable carriers rather than oil based solvents.
Should you have a reasonable idea on how else we can reduce our footprint please get in touch. We are more than willing to work with you.
We will, from April 2010, be sending all invoices by pdf direct to the email address you leave. This will inform you that we have received your order and let you know that we are processing it. This would save around 2 reams of paper, 500 document packets. We will use simple address labels on the packages. We can print between 16 and 24 on each A4 sheet depending on the format we decide on.
Finally we are not aiming to just reduce our carbon usage, we are not happy to even nullify it. We actually want to save more than we use or produce. Why shouldn't a company do more than is required?
We want you to have a clean car and easy delivery but we want you to feel good about it as well. We are working 
with Climate Care to offset the remainder of the carbon we use or produce by investing in projects that will directly save further usage. But we are not happy there... we will be offsetting an additional 25% next year of the carbon we produced this year and will be increasing this each subsequent year to 45% in 2009, 65% in 2010, 80% in 2011, 90% in 2012 until in 2013 we will be helping to save double the carbon we are using or producing that becomes or remains our responsibility.
Who are Climate Care?
Climate Care are a group that build and manage projects that are designed to remove carbon from the energy cycle. Run by the well known JP Morgan Group, such projects include a Wind Farms and Methane Recapture (as pictured) they currently have 5 worthwhile projects ongoing. They are regulated by the two currently highest standards www.cdmgoldstandard.org & www.v-c-s.org.Having researched who we were going to offset with for several months, Climate Care proved themselves to be an ethical company with the correct outlook and business practices. We are currently assessing our carbon impact for all of our operations.
Unlike other companies we are also including the carbon within our products, even though they are produced by other manufacturers, as well as our power requirements, non-recylcable waste received and paper based materials sent out, irregardless of whether you then recyle them or not. We are literally covering all the bases and more. The only impact we are not covering is the Royal Mail's impact in getting your parcels to you. We know however that the Royal Mail have their own projects to deal with this.
It sounds great but isn't that expensive?
Yes is the simple answer. We can afford to do this without any price increases because of the savings we have made elsewhere, such as re-using packaging and reducing our heating and power bills. Rather than reduce the prices by just a few pence a bottle, or worse still add it to the profits, we decided to do something really positive with the savings.
So can I wash and wax my car knowing that I am actually helping the environment?
Currently you can rest assured that very few other businesses run as efficiently as we do.
Carbon used this year by the whole group will be offset + 25% next year, once we have the correct figures. The certificates will be posted here year on year so you can track the carbon saving along with how we calculated the quantities. So yes, keeping your car clean and shiny will actually help the environment when you use our products. Even several of our products are fully degradable and most do not contains any toxins of any kind.
And don't forget that a clean and shiny car creates less drag when you drive it, sometimes upto 20% less so you can actually reduce your footprint too and that saves you money.
Don't forget to recycle what we send you including the box or envelope, the invoice and any paper/board packing. All that should be left is a little airfilled plasic weighing just a few grams.
So how can I check what you are doing?
We will publish our breakdown of energy consumed and products produced. As mentioned earlier, most companies simply offset energy. This is the easy option and totally inadequate.
We are offsetting every gram of Carbon, be it CO2, Wax, Solvent, Oil or whatever. We want our business to have a positive effect on the environment.
Below are the pages that proove what we are doing as well as a simple way that you can help.
Click on the year to see our full report or on the image to see that years certificate.