The Flow Group mailing house has started a new brand with a focus in sustainability. The Greener Mail arm of the business will carry the flag for use of recycled and recyclable materials and to advocate for print rather the digital forms of marketing. It has signed up with the World Land Trust to bank emissions from its activities and to be able to show customers how much carbon has been sequestered through protection of rainforest.
“Rather than simply build in sustainability into what we do, we thought it would be more effective to have a separate brand to highlight what was possible,” says head of sales and marketing Andrew Robinson.
That has included blogs and other information on its website which stress the inherent circularity of paper and the carbon cost of digital channels. It has worked with Two Sides to gather and present this barrage of statistical information.
As a company Flow Group already holds ISO 14001, limits what does to landfill and has replaced all internal lighting for LED. An energy efficiency audit on the premises in Brighouse has been carried put
“We are purchasing carbon balanced paper and trying to use only printers that are also carbon balanced.
“We are finding that clients are starting to want to show that everything we do is carbon balanced. The price is not the whole point: we wanted to make this a no brainer. It goes well beyond ISO 14001 and we didn’t want this to be a tick box exercise, but to show that this is a business that cares about sustainability.”
The content of the website is to deliver education information and statistics both to reassure brands that print is sustainable and that it is also highly effective as a channel. “We wanted to be proactive and offer something new,” he says, “to send the right message to the right people. Environmental, social, and governance is becoming increasingly important for businesses and natural resource conservation and carbon offsetting is just one part of this.
“Greener Mail will empower environmentally conscious brands to make an instant positive impact rather than investing in green measures, such as tree planting, which will offer too little, too late for our planet.”
