The journey so far

We strive to ensure that our products are reusable, recyclable or compostable and have been making progress in sustainable packaging innovation. Our pre-paid gifting boxes are made from 93% recycled material and our pre-paid packaging bags are made from 40% recycled materials and are certified as 100% recyclable.

We are incentivising our e-commerce business customers, who make up the vast majority of our
parcel deliveries, to use less packing material when preparing their goods for postage, by utilising volumetric pricing. They can avail of improved pricing for parcels that are lighter and have smaller dimensions. This means that households that receive parcels can reduce the volume of packaging material that requires recycling.

In 2022 we reduced our total waste by 38% and our general waste by 24% compared to 2021. Due to this overall reduction in waste, our recycling rate decreased from 80% in 2021 to 76% in 2022. Two initiatives contributed to this reduction:
• Less paper used on sites due to the completion of our laptop rollout and increased use of double sided printing as a default setting.
• Significant reduction in cardboard waste.

In 2022, we achieved a further reduction of packaging waste by 7% due to reduced volumes of envelopes and headed paper purchased for our offices. Following engagement with Repak, we will be updating the scope of our metric in 2023 to include the packaging used in the shipping of the goods from our business customers to our distribution centres, for example shrink wrap.

In 2022 we collaborated with several suppliers to install a biodigester at our Dublin Mail Centre (DMC). This converts food waste into a dry, safe, and usable by-product that deals with waste at source, closing the waste loop, and helping us to implement circularity. This valuable by-product has been used at our DMC site to replenish soil with carbon, ammonia and phosphorus. Our biodigester has also reduced emissions associated with the transportation and disposal of food waste off-site for onward processing. This has avoided over 300kg of general waste per month which equates to approximately 76 tonnes of carbon emissions annually.

This year, we continued to monitor our water usage with our 34 smart water meters, which enables us to quickly detect and resolve leaks as part of our objective to reduce annual water usage by 5% per annum. We also continued to use our vehicle steam washing system to eliminate the use of chemicals and reduce waste water. These two initiatives reduced water usage by over 14,800m3 in 2022 compared to 2021.