ASL's CSR Director, Emma Pomeroy, offers an update on the progress made with ASL's sustainability initiative, One World, which was launched in an extraordinary and challenging year:
It's been quite a year. This time 12 months ago, ASL's leadership team committed to a new CSR strategy with one simple goal - to transform ASL Global into a more sustainable business, and to help our suppliers & customers to do the same. We were, and remain, determined that the One World initiative would make a real difference to ourselves, our customers and the communities in which we operate - walking the walk, you might say.
Since launching the initiative in January 2020, the world has been turned upside down with the Covid pandemic. Even so, we are proud of what we have managed to achieve in just twelve short months. Much of this progress has not been driven from the centre, rather through initiatives created & driven by ASL's local teams, often in close collaboration with our suppliers & customers.
For example, our exciting new partnership with Waste2Wear, offering a unique circular economy textiles solution for ASL customers, or the great work done by our sales teams helping to drive sustainability into the marketing activity of big clients such as Heineken, Mars & L'Oréal.
Progressive ASL initiatives like compostable polybags, eco-calculators and shipping carbon trackers are delivering sustainable marketing activations for global brands all over the world. These initiatives are helping our customers to build more sustainable, transparent supply chains relating to their indirect spend – with often incredibly complex global supply networks, this is no easy task, so congratulations to everyone who has contributed to these great initiatives during 2020!
We’ve also made good progress on central projects, such as voluntarily reporting to the Carbon Disclosure Protocol (CDP), capturing the energy consumption & waste emissions from ASL’s 40+ offices worldwide, and the establishment of granular carbon footprint reporting for all our Far East shipments.
All this different activity should not be seen in isolation. The power of ASL’s One World initiative is to bring all this great work together, under a single, coherent & cohesive CSR strategy, aligned to three simple goals:
One World helps us to stay focused on what is important and identify how we can make a practical impact through our day-to-day operations. Ultimately, it is driving us to make real progress towards becoming a more sustainable business. For 2021, we're setting ourselves new goals, including making further progress towards plastic free packaging, growing our sustainable supply chain and introducing firm carbon reduction targets for ourselves & our customers.
We know these are ambitious goals, but we have already started to create a powerful roadmap for ourselves, through the One World initiative. 2020 was about establishing a baseline; 2021 and beyond will be about making real progress towards these targets.
So, as the first year of ASL’s One World initiative closes, we’re very proud of what has already been achieved and excited about the opportunities that lay ahead. Given the progress made in this most difficult of years, I’m confident that, together, we are on a good path towards making ASL Global a genuinely sustainable business that we can all be proud of.
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