Hello Earth Day, bye bye plastics!
Hello Earth Day, bye bye plastics!
This year’s Earth Day focuses on Planet vs Plastics, and we’ve been working hard to reduce our own plastic use across our full product range. Since the launch of the Thermostat Mini in 2022, on this product alone, we’ve reduced 1.2 tonnes of plastic waste¹ AND 11 tonnes of carbon emissions² – equivalent to supplying 19 homes with electricity for a year!
We spoke to Stuart Potts, Hive’s Packaging and Print Manager, to find out how we’ve successfully reduced our plastic waste and made our packaging even more sustainable.
Hive’s packaging makeover
‘For me, Earth Day provides a moment to stop, reflect and fully appreciate what we have in our natural environment, and then look at how we can protect and preserve it,’ says Stuart. ‘Reducing our use of plastics goes a long way in doing this.’
So how exactly did we make our packaging more sustainable? Stuart tells us, ‘As part of our recent packaging refresh, we simplified our designs, reducing the overall ink coverage and totally removing all laminate film from our product range. This has helped also to reduce the number of manufacturing processes needed to produce our packaging and decreased our carbon footprint at the same time.’
Going beyond plastics
Of course, plastics aren’t the only problem. We asked Stuart how the refresh helped cut our packaging waste overall: ‘We now have reduced information in our quick start guides, directing customers to the Hive App. This both reduces the volume of material that will end up in the recycling network, as well as ensuring our customers always have the most up-to-date information to hand.
‘We also reviewed some box designs, and stripped them back, so that the minimum amount of packaging was used. The new designs still serve their primary function of housing/protecting the product, but in a very simplified manner, optimising the amount of material used. In this case, less is very much more.’
Packaging a net zero future
We plan to continue our efforts to make Hive even more sustainable in future too. And in doing so we’ll help contribute towards Earth Day’s goal of reducing plastic production by 60% before 2040.
‘We’re exploring every opportunity within our packaging which may support Hive in reaching its net zero targets,’ adds Stuart. ‘This is extremely important as plastics stick around for a long time, most often with a harmful impact on the surrounding environment – in particular it’s wildlife.’
Fantastic packaging that looks great and doesn’t harm the environment? Hive Got This. 👌
¹Calculations are based on the number of Hive Thermostat Mini with Hub packaging purchase orders and the plastic laminate avoided. This does not include how much we have saved across all products.
²Calculations are based on UK Government GHG conversion factors. This assumes that the plastic would have gone to landfill. Electricity consumption is based on 2700kwh per year per household using grid average electricity.
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