Marshalls plc, the UK’s leading hard landscaping business, has been
recognised as a European Climate Leader in a list published today by the
Financial Times and Statista.
Marshalls is the only UK building materials company to feature on this list.
Chris Harrop OBE, Group Sustainability Director for Marshalls, said: “Being
a European Climate Leader is such an achievement. This is a testament to the
hard work we’ve been doing for a number of years now; sustainability is a big
part of who we are and what we do. This is really significant for Marshalls and
I’m proud that we are making big changes to tackle climate change.”
Europe’s Climate Leaders 2021 is a list of companies across Europe that have
shown the highest reduction of their emission intensity, which is to say, their
core greenhouse gas emissions in relation to their revenues, between 2014 and
2019.
Chris added: “This achievement comes as we share that we have reduced our
total carbon footprint by 50% since 2008. Climate change is very real for all
of us – for us as a business but also for our customers. At Marshalls, we
understand the role we have to play and we’ve taken some really big steps to
reduce our carbon emissions, including getting approved science-based carbon
reduction targets, installing solar panels and switching to green electricity.
We also know that it’s vital that we help our customers make an active
choice to reduce the impact of their purchasing decisions. In some of the
sectors we operate in, our products have a footprint 50% lower than those of
direct and substitute products.”
Marshalls have been working with the Carbon Trust since 2008 using
methodology outlined in PAS2050 to calculate full cradle to grave carbon
footprints for all manufactured products.
Thomas Clark, Senior Partner, Statista said: “Climate change is
clearly the dominant long-term topic for us as world community. Yet it is still
very abstract for most people. That’s why the Financial Times and Statista
decided to tackle it with the intention to make it more approachable.
Considering the targets in terms of reducing greenhouse gases set in the Paris
Agreement on a global level or looking at those set on a European or UK level,
every company in our list has reduced GHG emissions at least three times more
during the period we looked at. That’s commendable and that’s why we call these
companies Climate Leaders, meaning: companies which lead our efforts to put a
halt on climate warming.”
In 2020, Marshalls had their carbon emissions reduction targets approved by
the Science Based Targets initiative –an organisation set up by the UN and WWF
to set the standard for carbon reductions. Working towards these targets, the
business has recently installed new 250kw solar panels at their Sittingbourne
site in Kent, projected to generate 10-15% of the site’s overall energy needs.
Priority areas for carbon reduction include product innovation, fleet
replacement and non-essential plastic reduction.
