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Sustainability & Impact Policy

GAILARDE LTD. SUSTAINABILITY & IMPACT POLICY

“At its essence, sustainability means ensuring prosperity and environmental protection without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. A sustainable world is one where people can escape poverty and enjoy decent work without harming the earth’s essential ecosystems and resources; where people can stay healthy and get the food and water they need; where everyone can access clean energy that doesn’t contribute to climate change; where women and girls are afforded equal rights and equal opportunities.”

Ex-UN Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon

GAILARDE HERITAGE

Gailarde Ltd. is a family run business which was established over 40 years ago to provide Household Textiles manufactured explicitly for the Contract Trade. We have four generations of knowledge in this area, dating back to when our current Director’s great grandfather set up a textiles company in the heart of London’s East End in 1897. The business is currently run by Richard, his two sons Ben and Dan and his son-in-law Jonny.

While most companies look at the next quarter, or at best a 1-3 year time horizon, Gailarde has always viewed the business in generational terms. As a family business, we hope that our grandchildren and their children will take over the running of the company. This motivates us to invest in a business that will last and also a world and society that is healthy, happy and prosperous to underpin it, and is why sustainability is so important to us.

As a textile company with a global supply chain, Gailarde has the potential to create significant impact through our business. But as with many others, we are on a journey. We are proud of the achievements we have made, however with the start of a new decade, Gailarde will take the opportunity in 2020 to revisit its sustainability strategy and to set ambitious targets for 2030.

GLOBAL STANDARDS & INITIATIVES

The UN Sustainable Development Goals

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were established by the UN in 2017 and are the blueprint for achieving a better and more sustainable future for all. They provide a framework to address the global challenges we face, including those related to poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace and justice. Gailarde fully endorses the SDGs and uses them to guide our principles and actions.

Net Positive Futures

The NET Positive Futures tool is a supplier engagement online toolkit which has now been adopted by over 40 Higher Education Institutions to identify and support businesses to promote sustainability in their practices, covering economic, social, ethical and environmental aspects. We see this tool as pivotal in our company development to ensure we generate ideas and create objectives which demonstrate and can innovate ongoing sustainability development that is relevant for our clients.

International Organization for Standardization

We commit to holding a minimum of ISO 14001 (Environmental Management) and ISO 9001 (Quality Management) certificates that ensure we are meeting international standards on these issues.

RESPONSIBILITY

Company Director and Joint CEO, Ben Roston, manages the Gailarde sustainability programme, with other senior management involved on specific topics.

This senior-level engagement is crucial to ensure that sustainability is core to Gailarde’s strategy.

SUPPLY CHAIN

“As the head of a family business, it is important to me that our supply partners uphold the values that are core to our company. I make sure that I personally visit every one of our factories at least once per year, and labour standards and human rights are the key areas I look at.”

Richard Roston, Chairman, Gailarde Ltd.

We have a global supply chain in an industry with potentially significant social and environmental impacts, however we are pleased to have long-term relationships with trusted factories.

Nonetheless, we recognise the responsibility that we share with our suppliers to source products in an ethical manner. It is crucial that customers can be confident that the people who make our products are treated fairly, are not exploited and are not exposed to unsafe working conditions.

We commit to:

Ensure that all our factories are accredited to internationally recognised standards, such as Sedex, BSCI, or equivalent, or be able to prove that they are taking sufficient steps to attain such accreditation.
Explicitly forbid undisclosed sub-contracting of suppliers.
Not use any new factory before a Senior Gailarde representative has visited and audited the site.
Visit and audit each factory at a minimum of once per year by a senior member of the Gailarde team.
Arrange for a local representative of Gailarde to visit each supplier at a minimum of once per year, or more frequently where necessary.
Enforce that each supplier (and their suppliers) abide by our Supplier Code. These include the following:

Our Ethical Trading Policy
Our Cotton Ethical Policy
Our Modern Slavery Policy
Oeko-Tex 100 Standard or G.O.T.S. requirements (where relevant)

SDGs impacted

HANDLING & PACKAGING

“I am proud of our zero accident record in our warehouses.”

Matt Done, Head of Warehousing, Gailarde Ltd.

Storing and distributing our products provide significant social and environmental challenges to overcome. In addition, as protecting our goods from manufacturer to end-user to from dirt and other damage en-route is key, traditionally the industry is a heavy plastic wrap user.

We make the following handling commitments:

To have a zero-tolerance attitude towards health and safety in our warehouses.
To ensure that our main distributors align with our environmental values and demonstrate the ability to efficiently deliver our goods using innovative collection systems and efficient vehicles.
To use efficient shipping methods to minimise our emissions from inter-continental locations.
To use second-hand cardboard boxes where possible. Where new boxes are required, a minimum recycled pulp mix of 80% is allowed.
To work towards removing plastic packaging for our products. This includes a target to reduce the usage of plastic packaging by 85% by the end of 2020 and complete eradication of single-use plastic packaging by the end of 2021.

SDGs impacted

OUR LOCATIONS

“Our suppliers and their workers are located in some of the areas most at risk from the impacts of global climate change. Sourcing 100% renewable electricity for our office is one way we are playing our part to help mitigate our own carbon emissions.”

Sarah Blakeley, Logistics Manager, Gailarde Ltd.

Minimising the impact of our premises is a way for us to ‘walk the talk’ and to engage and educate our staff.

We commit to the following:

Offer extensive recycling options within the office and warehouse.
Eliminate our Scope 2 carbon emissions procuring clean energy tariffs through our energy supplier.
Provide an inclusive and supportive working environment for our staff.

SDGs impacted

OUR COMMUNITIES

Sands, a stillbirth and neonatal death charity, is Gailarde’s nominated charity. Gailarde also engages with community projects in Bangladesh in conjunction with suppliers.

SDGs impacted

OUR PRODUCTS

“It’s great to be able to support our clients’ sustainability efforts by launching the Gailarde Green range of low-impact, innovative products.”

Dan Roston, Joint CEO, Gailarde Ltd.

Gailarde’s products include natural and synthetic textiles and other homewares.

We commit to:

Offering ethical alternatives to traditional products including organic, fair trade and products made using post-consumer waste.
Continue to work with our suppliers to expand our ethical product range.

SDGs impacted

END OF LIFE

“One of our exciting projects at the moment is working with a textiles recycling company that collects used ben linen from one of our large clients and turns them into new textile items. We hope to launch these products this year to get us one step closer to true circular economy production.”

Ben Roston, Joint CEO, Gailarde Ltd.

Our responsibility for the environment doesn’t stop once we’ve delivered the goods. Disposing of our products at the end of their life in a way that limits the impact on the environment can be a great challenge to our clients and its essential that we help them.

We commit to:

Providing a service to collect used goods that will either recycle or responsibly incinerate used textiles.
Working towards a goal where none of our products goes to landfill.

SDGs impacted