SUSTAINABILITY
MERCHANTS CAN DRIVE DECARBONISATION
Builders merchant Bradfords Building Supplies is pushing the boundaries of decarbonisation. As merchants, they are in the perfect place to do so, as head of sustainability Giles Bradford explains.
A
s merchants, we have an outsized influence on the decarbonisation of our supply chain. By providing our clients with the right products and
solutions, we can support construction projects of all types and scales on the path to net zero.
But it’s about much more than just the products we sell. That’s why our environmental sustainability strategy has four key pillars: representation, education, operations and proposition. Running through all of these is a commitment to walking the walk, and sharing our own story with customers, suppliers and the sector at large. Representation is about ensuring that we hear from the whole building materials sector, and are heard by government and policy-makers. Bradfords leads at the BMF Sustainability Working Group, represents the BMF on the Green Construction Board, and participates actively in conversations on issues including sustainability data standardisation, low-carbon heating solutions and net zero at a local level through the likes of Constructing Excellence South West and the South West Green Construction Advisory Panel. Education, like representation, is not a one-way process. We need to understand the challenges our customers are facing in adopting new approaches and materials, and ensure our teams are equipped to provide answers. As well as our Building Sustainable Communities events, and our sustainability champions group, both in place since 2021-2, we ran a scheme to provide domestic retrofit assessments to 48 employees in 2023. This has helped us to shape our offering around retrofit, which is so crucial to improving home energy efficiency and reducing bills, as well as forming an increasing part of the RMI sector we serve in the coming years.
We are also addressing our own processes, with decarbonisation sitting alongside waste, responsible sourcing, employee experience and
4 Giles Bradford
community support as part of our strategy. These are supported by robust governance structures which ensure we are held to account on our progress. Through renewable energy supply, including solar panels on 10 branches, electrification and a focus on efficiency, we are making progress on reducing our emissions in scopes 1 and 2 (with scope 3 being all the rest – those products we buy and sell!). We are looking at ways to improve the efficiency of our fleet through reducing miles per delivery, which requires working closely with contractors, developers and builders to ensure we route effectively and aggregate orders wherever possible. This is an area where our carbon reductions are also their reductions, so there is plenty of incentive for all of us to collaborate in this effort. There is much to be excited about in terms of our proposition. Traditional products are evolving to use less water, less carbon, less energy and address historic supply chain problems and eliminate slave labour. Cement is a classic example, where we see many of the major manufacturers looking to adjust the formula to reduce the most carbon intensive elements, and investigating alternative low carbon solutions to provide the energy and heat required for manufacture. At the same time, disruptors are entering the market to offer alternatives which will surely be standard in the future. Renewables and low-carbon heating sources are of course a key part of this, and we are supporting our customers
to not only purchase these solutions, but also upskill our teams and theirs to help break down any barriers and misconceptions about what the transition away from fossil fuels means. Our Honiton Sustainable Homes Centre, in partnership with Daikin, opened this Spring and we are excited to be supporting the South West installer community here and across our branches. The work on our proposition is also about manufacturing, packaging and eventual use, and we’re proud of the work we’ve done to pilot schemes such as the Pallet LOOP circular economy model, aimed at driving down waste and carbon associated with pallets. At Bradfords, these four pillars help keep us focused, and ensure we are matching the demands of the rapidly evolving environment. As we work on the above and much more, we are not only responding to an evolving regulatory outlook, but also contributing towards the sustainability progress of the construction sector, and UK PLC more widely. Collaboration between merchants, suppliers and customers is key to ensuring we can continue and progress on this path. n
A supplement to builders merchants journal June 2024
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