To achieve our goal of carbon neutrality, we teamed up with Greenfleet™ – a leading not-for-profit environmental organisation and Australasia’s most established carbon offset provider.

With their help, and some extra support from Ekos in New Zealand, we carried out a comprehensive self-assessment of our carbon footprint.

Areas we assessed:

• All components used in manufacturing
• Our total manufacturing process
• All international freight
• Each retail showroom and warehouse
• Every domestic delivery
• Head office operations – including waste, electricity and vehicle use, flights and accommodation.

Once we'd calculated the total emissions from almost all aspects of our business, we looked at the range of options available for offsetting those emissions – from tree planting to forest protection and more.

We settled on tree planting as our method of offsetting the carbon generated by our business.

With Greenfleet’s help, we'll be removing 2000 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year!

Greenfleet™ plants native biodiverse forests to offset carbon emissions on behalf of individuals and businesses and help fight the impacts of climate change.

We researched a number of carbon offset providers before deciding on Greenfleet.

We chose Greenfleet because:

• They are not-for-profit
• They are local (Australia/New Zealand)
• They have been operating for 20 years and have an impressive track record – planting over 9 million native trees across Australia and New Zealand, and removing over 3 million tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere!

Almost everything we do consumes energy and produces carbon emissions – like driving, heating homes and offices, and online shopping.

A carbon offset is a project or activity that reduces greenhouse gas emissions or sequesters (captures) carbon from the atmosphere to compensate for the emissions created by your own activities.

Carbon offsetting projects include investment in clean energy technologies, purchasing carbon credits from emissions trading schemes or planting of trees to soak up CO2 directly from the air.

Aiming for zero-emissions wasn't a realistic goal for a manufacturing company like ours.

However, offsetting our emissions by buying carbon credits was something we could achieve in a relatively short time frame while making a difference to the planet.

Whilst we are making every effort to offset our carbon output, there are some areas that we haven't taken into account yet, which other companies might.

These include:

• Rubbish disposal - but we do attempt to limit it
• Staff travel to and from their place of work
• Personal spa use by our customers

Here’s what else we’re doing to reduce our environmental impact:

Reduced air travel. We've moved to video conferencing and cut corporate air travel by over 30k air miles per year.

Offsetting every flight. We purchase carbon offsets for every flight that we book.

Switching to solar. We are progressively switching our manufacturing plant in China to rooftop solar.

Going paperless. We're striving to become a paperless business across our administration and sales functions including the reduction of paper brochures

Increasing use of recycled materials. We're specifying recycled plastics in the production of frames and cabinets for all Fisher^® and Vortex^® spa brands which will see all timber eliminated from the production of these brands by mid-2021.