INDUSTRY INSIGHT


sustainable and totally ethical way,” Paul concludes. Winner of the sustainability award the DIY Week Awards 2019,


at


Kingfisher plc believes “our homes should be functional and comfortable, fitting in with family needs, green outside and in, resource and energy smart, with lasting quality and style. And, of course, they must be safe and healthy,” says Kingfisher’s head of sustainability, Caroline Laury. “That is why sustainability is core to our mission of making home improvement accessible for everyone. This is being realised through our new international home improvement brand, GoodHome, which has sustainability at the heart of its brand principles,” she says. Kingfisher launched GoodHome in May of this year, it is a new international brand that the company hopes will provide a simpler way of helping home improvers, their helpers and professionals, with projects, big or small. The business is also trialling new GoodHome store concepts, including an express format. This convenience store will provide a new way to shop for the most frequent home improvement projects, as well as an effortless digital shopping experience, and inspiration and advice from a team of skilled colleagues. The Wallington store is the first express store of its kind, and Kingfisher has said more express store trials to open in the


UK and France later this year. So, is there a focus on sustainability with the launch of this new brand we ask? “Very much so,” Caroline says. “We want to make sustainability the easy choice for customers. All GoodHome products therefore have sustainability designed in from the start because this has been stipulated as one of our five design principles – alongside price, quality, form and function – that shape every range we create to help our home improvers realise their projects.” Caroline says that while consumers are passionate about being sustainable and implementing that


she explains. The way to do this is by not only looking at how stores are run and which materials are used in products, but by “embedding sustainability into our operations and supply chain too” however Caroline says “change on this scale is challenging and we still have much more to do, but it is important that we and the wider industry don’t just help people improve their homes, but also make sure we take care of our planet as our shared home.”


across home improvement tasks, they can find it complicated or time consuming, and expect the retailer to have already chosen sustainable products to begin with. “We’ve certainly been learning a lot ourselves in recent years,” says Caroline.


“Our Sustainable


Growth Plan, launched in 2018, was informed by extensive customer research across Europe. The findings showed that while few customers use the term ‘sustainability’, there are many sustainability issues that connect with what customers really care about. However, most people find it difficult to make sustainable choices. Customers expect us to make it easy for them. Ideally, they’d like to be able to buy sustainably without having to think about it. Our ambition is to make this possible,”


Big and small differences Another winner of the sustainability accolade at the DIY Week Awards 2019, Gordale garden centre showed that even smaller businesses can make a huge difference to increasing awareness of an eco-friendly lifestyle and management. “[Sustainability] is very important to Gordale, we realise that as a garden centre we are already a long way on the road to encouraging people to think about the environment so by encouraging more tree planting, buying sustainable products, recycling, having solar panels,


much as we can, being careful with our electric use with light sensors, low voltage lights etc we can encourage our customers to do the same,” says owner of Gordale, Jill Nicholson, alongside husband Peter. “We also have school groups in to encourage them to appreciate our


planet and the creatures we share it with - bees, hedgehogs, etc.” Jill says that in a garden centre


environment sometimes the sustainable option isn’t viable for consumers, “customers still want peat,” she says, “many of the alternatives perform well in the perfect conditions of the nursery but not in consumers’ gardens when watering is infrequent and perfunctory. In other goods, cost is also an issue and customers want sustainability at cheap prices.” Looking ahead, Gordale is looking at waterless urinals, using more recyclable pots and making sure they are accepted by local waste collection. Jill wants to “show our customers the benefits


of


composting, water collection and try to cut down on the amount of plastic we and our customers throw away by encouraging suppliers to rethink their packaging.”


recycling as


Although the term sustainability may seem like a confusing umbrella term for a plethora of environmental changes, businesses big and small from home improvement, DIY and garden centres – retailers and suppliers, can all do their part to develop the business as these have to work towards a better planet for our future generations. Caroline Laury sums it up: “We know that climate change is a big concern for our customers and it’s crucial we play our part to address it.”


ECO-FRIENDLY DEVICES FOR FUTURE HOMES


With this issue focusing on housewares, Aldous Hicks, CEO and Co-founder of ReCircle Recycling Ltd looks at what kind of eco-friendly devices consumers will be installing in their homes soon.


Solar Tiles


Solar panels are constantly improving in efficiency and a number of companies are now developing solar tiles, such as Resilience Energy, and most notably, Tesla who are also producing the batteries capable of storing renewable energy. Rather than ugly black panels, the tiles will form the roof of your house, collecting energy from the sun while looking attractive. The benefit of solar tiles is that they can be retrofitted onto any property with a roof.


New Wind Turbine Design Wind turbines have proven contentious, with many arguing that they spoil the natural habitat, create disruptive noise, and can be dangerous. New designs, however,


www.diyweek.net


could change all that. I expect new, high-efficiency wind turbines will play an important role in energy generation, even if they need to be supplemented with other energy generation devices.


Bio-fuel Synthesiser Microorganisms can break down organic material and CO2, passing the energy straight into a battery. Food waste and human excrement will feed the machine, providing energy-free sewage treatment and no need for composting. What’s more, the gases released by food and human waste can be captured before it’s released into the atmosphere.


Recycling Appliances


If we can bring the guaranteed correct used-material separation


put together. The pure close-loop recyclable products will then be collected on-demand from homes, when the storage containers are full. The products will be delivered straight to manufacturers to make back into products.


3D Printing


and processing of products and packaging into the home, or place where the use-material is last used, then we can produce close to 100% pure materials ready to sell back to manufacturers. ReCircle is currently working on a home and business appliance which will do just that. It will use a sensor to ensure different materials are never


While still in their infancy, 3D printers promise all kinds of efficiency savings as well as the construction of new energy-efficient products. Imagine being able to download a product blueprint and simply print it out. Such a system would reduce the energy needed to transport products to shops and homes, and reduce the industrial production of plastics to almost zero, and bring the responsibility of managing a product lifecycle into the hands of individuals.


28 JUNE 2019 DIY WEEK 25


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