Environmental policy

Environmental and Sustainability Policy

“Here at B Smith Packaging, we have a commitment to our sustainability policy across all areas of our business. In particular our engagement with suppliers, employees and the environment. Sustainability is a key part of our DNA and forms our core tagline.

Chairman statement

Following 2022 we achieved great steps in developing as a sustainable business. B Smith is making significant moves to try and source locally, where possible, to meet the requirements of our clients. This includes maintaining a lower carbon footprint whilst reducing lead times.

We are working closely with our suppliers through long-term partnerships to be able to deliver this. Our commitment to drive this sustainable movement is ongoing for example we get paper from FSC-accredited sources. Additionally, we are going to keep expanding our sustainable understanding and our product range as time goes on. 

Eco-Conscious Accreditations 

Our ongoing work with our external associations such as SEDEX, NFFF, Q Guild, FRA, CBA, and The Queen’s Awards. This reflects how working with external organisations can deliver great results. However, there is a lot to do but we are continuing to move in the right direction.

Obviously, we are working with some of our key suppliers to bring transparency to our network and clients. Our aim is to educate our customers, helping them to understand the origins of their packaging and support their sustainability policy. 

Sourcing responsibly to create sustainable products

B Smith Packaging works with over 100 supplier factories across 12 countries. We pride ourselves on working with suppliers who share our values and seek to meet our high-quality and ethical requirements. As a company, we and our associated manufacturers recognise our duty to limit our negative social and environmental impact.

When evaluating our supply chain, our supplier code of conduct forms the foundation of our relationships. All suppliers and factories are required to sign up to the code and provide an ethical audit when working together.

Our Company policy requires that we have annual ethical audits for all of our factories. These need to be semi-announced or unannounced and conform to the Sedex Members Ethical Trade Audit (SMETA) format. This forms the basis of our engagement with suppliers on issues such as environmental impact and working conditions. We also conduct our own Verification Assessments at supplier sites. We use assessments to check on previous findings and give factories guidance on how to achieve changes in working conditions. This is especially true for follow-up visits, where our local representatives are able to establish working relationships with factory management. They will then lend their expertise to help factories make changes to complex management systems. 

Ethical Purchasing 

Our buying and merchandising teams work closely with our sales team to ensure continuing commitment to ethical sourcing standards and an improved understanding of the impact of our purchasing practices on suppliers. The team will continue to offer introductory training to new starters as well as build on this. This will be with a new phase of purchasing practices and how we can support better working conditions. 

Beyond audits to facilitating improvements

We know that the issues in our supply chain cannot be resolved in isolation, so we seek to collaborate with other companies and stakeholders in order to achieve change at a national or even regional scale. 

Importantly, sourcing materials sustainably is a key focus. B Smith Packaging will continue to put high quality and sustainability at the forefront of our sourcing strategy. We want to make packaging that our customers feel proud of, that is of the highest quality that promotes their brands, and that can add value to their bottom line with our in-house design department. 

Protecting our environment

In addition, our strategy is ensuring that we promote environmental stewardship across our whole product value chain. This includes our own storage facility and buildings. We opened our state-of-the-art storage and distribution centre in 2014, which is a high-performing environmentally friendly building. It has BRC’s A-star accreditation for food and pharmaceutical storage.  This new centre has much greater recycling capabilities increasing our waste of recycled waste by 28%. Even in our office, we take measures with the plumbing and lighting to reduce our consumption. 

In our consultations, we are sharing advice with our clients on how to improve their energy efficiency through packaging. We have used the data from our current smart meters to draw up energy-saving guidance. These recommendations provide advice on how to best reduce energy consumption without compromising store operations.

The company will continue to focus on sustainability and we are continuing to increase the amount that we recycle in our business through our products, our offices and in our home working office environments.

Our people and communities

At B Smith Packaging we believe that our brand heritage, identity and image are shared by our people, at all levels. Contrastingly this helps to distinguish us from competitors and has been part of the success of our business.  We stand by our core values of Customer Focus, Quality, Integrity, Innovation, Sustainability and Responsibility   

Furthermore, in our business practice, we take a positive and proactive approach to the live issues that implicate our people and our culture. Where possible we protect all that is good about our business.  We give back to local and international communities with our buy 1, give 1 scheme.

Employee engagement

B Smith Packaging remain visible and transparent with our plans for now and for the future with a strong emphasis on the part that people can play in our ongoing success. We engage people with the plan in a way that they can relate to and focus on celebrating the successes and learning from our mistakes to make us even stronger. 

Diversity and equality

At B Smith Packaging, we are committed to being an equal opportunities employer. All our policies and practices support this ethos as does our day-to-day decision-making. We have consistent pay rates and proactively monitor any gender gap. We work towards maintaining a stance of equal value regardless of gender and proactively work to stay ahead of the ever-changing environments in which we trade. 

In our company, we provide training and development opportunities to all employees. B Smith Packaging does not discriminate based on age, race, colour, religion, gender, sexual preference, marital status, nationality, ethnic origin or disability, developing all of our staff to reach their optimum potential while abiding by legal requirements of inclusivity and non-discrimination acts. It is Group policy to, wherever possible, retain employees who have become disabled or suffered from ill health during their employment and to arrange appropriate provisions for them. 

The business will continue to ensure all our processes and practices are inclusive. Monitoring our diversity through regular questionnaires and ensure that our recruitment practices are all-encompassing, based on talent and experience and that we give full and fair consideration to applications for employment.

Health and Safety

The health, safety and well-being of our employees and customers are of great importance to us.  There is a comprehensive structure of processes and procedures to mitigate health and safety risks, including risk assessments, accident reporting and nominated health and safety representatives across the business. Policies and procedures are reviewed and audited regularly to make safety management more robust and up-to-date.