The Wall

  • Richard Llewellyn posted an update in the group Group logo of The WallThe Wall 4 years ago

    We have just been issued our recertification for FSC. Audits were held at our London Hub, Kidderminster, Northern Europe as well as for the first time a full physical audit Piscataway.

    Ajita Chamberlin has worked extremely hard on this and my thanks go firstly to her but also to all the teams involved who contributed and supported her.

    This was the 5-year certification audit which is the toughest, I am extremely pleased that we had no non-conformities which is an amazing result, and a first!

    FSC gives us transparency with our paper and wood supply, it verifies that we are sourcing responsibly. There is only a small percentage of these raw materials that are not certified, and we hope to close this gap by next year.

    Please share with your teams, and if you have any questions, do not hesitate to reach out.

     

    …

  • Nolwenn Nguyen posted an update in the group Group logo of The WallThe Wall 4 years ago

    When the magic happens between the factory and the artist…
    Yesterday we had the chance to welcome in Le Mans, Blanche Tristant aka @Leaubleue_, watercolorist and illustrator, one of our W&N super user. From the factory tour to the Instagram Live on Rougier & Plé account, one of our biggest retailer, we had a very busy but wonderful day.
    The replay is available on Rougier & Plé\’s Instagram account for those who might be interesting in watching it, here. More than 200 people were connected during the live and the replay is already having more than 1,700 views. Those very first results are encouraging while we are moving forward to the next level in our retail digital democratization journey.
    Thank you to Gregory for his availability, his kindness and his passion during the factory tour making the magic happened between the factory and the artist.
    This activation would not happened without the local marketing team : Walid, Amandine, Elise and Laurent, nor without the trust of Guénaël, Fine Art Channel Director, and without Antoine (our National Sales Manager) who introduced us this wonderful artist some years ago now.
    …

  • Claire van Blerck posted an update in the group Group logo of The WallThe Wall 4 years ago

    For Sustainability Wednesday I want to post about Organic Basics\’ low impact website – which is quite a new experience when it comes to online shopping!

    Organic Basics: https://lowimpact.organicbasics.com/gbp

    On this site, you won\’t see images of the clothing they want you to buy – because they\’ve removed them (temporarily at least). You won\’t see videos or anything that you\’d expect from your average online clothing store. What you will see are illustrations of the items, a muted palette, and an update on each page on how much energy you\’ve saved by browsing their low impact site (which makes me feel pretty good):

    \”You\’ve saved ~123.42g of CO2 so far this session
    (compared to browsing our regular website)\”.

     

    The websites we build and use daily need energy to run. It\’s a fact we tend to overlook all too often. There\’s a growing number of online carbon calculators to measure websites, such as https://www.websitecarbon.com/. Companies that extend their sustainability journey to their digital presence like Organic Basics are still a rarity but might become more common as we understand and adopt sustainable web design.

    One of the brilliant projects I\’m involved in at Colart is \’Digital Accessibility\’, which won\’t see our beautiful brand sites rendered in greyscale, but will see us looking at how to make our sites easier to use for everyone. If a site is easy to use, we spend less time searching for the products we want to buy, we have a happier customer experience, and we use less energy in the process. What\’s not to love?…

    • Profile picture of Karen Spinner
      Karen Spinner replied 4 years ago

      Oh Claire, this is brilliant! Thank you for sharing. What a fantastic idea. I’ve never heard of this brand, but I would definitely buy from them, it’s a great experience. I’m looking forward to learning how the Digital Accessibility project can benefit Elephant as a digital-first brand.…

    • Profile picture of Ajita Chamberlin
      Ajita Chamberlin replied 4 years ago

      Great insight in to websites, I agree it’s almost hidden that you don’t think you’re impacting the environment in any way. The accessibility project will mean that everyone will have a chance to buy our products where they currently can’t, fully inclusive for all our consumers. …

    • Toby Russell replied 4 years ago

      Digital sustainability is going to become an increasingly hot topic for us as the impact of data centres around the globe is significant and some activities are extremely wasteful in terms of energy usage (I’m looking at you bitcoin!).

      The bigger cloud computing providers, such as Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure, are rapidly improving their credentials by investing in achieving net-zero, however this only partially ‘solves’ the problem as growth in demand for cloud services may well pull ahead of the cloud providers abilities to cancel out the impact.

      The real solution is for us to become more efficient in how we use computers. As I showed in my recent townhall, Moores Law has effectively doubled computer power ever 2 years, however this is a double edged sword. As the power of computers increases, our ability and incentive to create efficient and lean software has fallen off. We have become addicted to the drug of ever increasing computing power and forgotten about the need to be efficient.

      As an example, I started using Microsoft Office in 1995. Fast forward to 2022 and it doesn’t feel signfiicantly different to back then, prettier, a few more bells and whistles, but not earth shatteringly different. However, Microsoft Office of 2022 is running on computers tens of thousands of times faster and has bloated by several orders of magnitude in terms of size. Lack of incentive to be efficient has driven this because its expensive to be efficient and software companies are driven by the need for a constant upgrade cycle in order to generate more revenue.

      It is possible to be a lot better though. In my whacky world of home invention, I’ve built my own website hosting setup that is 100% solar powered, requires no special cooling and consumes a tiny fraction of the energy used by most modern websites. It was also built entirely of second hand bits I purchased from ebay so net-zero in terms of its creation. The key to achieving this was to tune the software so that it is as efficient as possible and think hard about the capabilities you provide on your website so that they are as energy efficient as possible.

      The key is going to be to change the mindset of how we build our world from one of perceiving infinite resource (which we clearly don’t have) and incentivising efficiency, longivity, simplicity and sustainability.…

    • Profile picture of Giuliano Riosa
      Giuliano Riosa replied 4 years ago

      There’s definitely opportunity to downsize the footprint of our websites. For example Liquitex home page loads 22mb of resources, while Winsor & Newton home page only has 6mb. We can take our learnings from our latest redeveloped sites and retroactively apply these to our existing websites to reduce our total web footprint.…

    • Claire van Blerck replied 4 years ago

      I also want to give a shoutout to Sam who helped build and conceptualise https://www.websitecarbon.com/ when he was working at Wholegrain! We certainly have the right people at Colart to take on this challenge!…

    • Profile picture of Harsa Beagley
      Harsa Beagley replied 4 years ago

      Really interesting Claire and our DEI council is very much interested in the Digital Accessibility project – as you say websites should be easy for everyone to access…

  • CAROLE BRIQUET posted an update in the group Group logo of The WallThe Wall 4 years ago

    Well-being in the very heart of the factory !

     

    As it is very important to value each work space , our Wellbeing group in Le Mans provide an artistic and natural touch in the heart of the factory.

    Viviane PETRELLE convinced us with her proposal to create a very original triptych green wall.

    Th vegetal wall is completly set up and the result is amasing !!

    This work will now be able to bloom under everyone’s gaze.

     

     

    Le bien-être au cœur de l’usine !

     

    Parce qu’il est important que chaque espace de travail soit valorisé, notre groupe Wellbeing du Mans a voulu apporter une touche artistique de couleur et de nature au sein même des ateliers.

    Viviane PETRELLE nous a séduit avec sa proposition de créer un mur végétal très original composé sous forme d’un tryptique.

    L’installation est aujourd’hui terminée et le résultat est véritablement magnifique !!

    Cette œuvre va pouvoir maintenant s’épanouir et prendre toute sa place sous le regard de chacun.

    …

  • Profile picture of Ajita Chamberlin

    Ajita Chamberlin posted an update in the group Group logo of The WallThe Wall 4 years ago

    Really enjoying Tobys blog

    Becoming net-zero the (far too) easy way

    A really good read, and ideas for changing your own personal footprint…

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THM: hosted by Romain to Introduce Helen Losq
When: 09 December at 1:30 pm GMT
Details: Join us for the next Town Hall meeting hosted by Romain to welcome Helen Losq, the new London Hub Chief People Officer.
Why Take Part? Please join us to give Helen a warm welcome!

THM - Technology quarterly update
When: 18 December at 1:30 pm GMT
Details: Join us for the Town Hall, where we’ll share our quarterly update and provide key insights into our ongoing initiatives, upcoming projects, and strategic priorities.
Why Take Part? This session is designed to keep you informed about the latest technology developments and how they impact our teams and business.

THM - Creating Impact - Sustainable Product Index Introduction
When: 13 January at 1:30 pm GMT
Details: We are pleased to invite you to join Sara, Cris and Ajita to unveil the Sustainable Product Index, part of the ongoing Product Platform work.
Why Take Part? We look forward to your engagement as we take this important step toward shaping a more responsible and innovative future—together.

New York winner of the International Art Prize – W&N

Cecilia is the New York winner of the International Art Prize 2025, presented by Winsor & Newton and Paul Smith’s Foundation.
Click here to read more.

Creating Impact Tip
Millions of tonnes of clothing, shoes and other textiles end up in landfill every year because very little is sent for recycling .

“The current fashion system uses high volumes of non-renewable resources, including petroleum, extracted to produce clothes that are often used only for a short period of time, after which the materials are largely lost to landfill or incineration. “This system puts pressure on valuable resources such as water, pollutes the environment and degrades ecosystems in addition to creating societal impacts on a global scale.” There are good reasons to seek out alternatives to chucking clothes in the bin – globally the fashion industry is responsible for 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions, with textile production alone is estimated to release 1.2 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every year. Vast amounts of water are also needed to produce the clothes we wear too and the fashion industry is responsible for 20% of global waste water.  At the same time we are buying more clothes than ever – the average consumer now buys 60% more clothing than they did 15 years ago. More than two tonnes of clothing are bought each minute in the UK, more than any other country in Europe. Globally, around 56 million tonnes of clothing are bought each year, and this is expected to rise to 93 million tonnes by 2030 and 160 million tonnes by 2050.

"Reuse. Recycle. Rethink — your clothes deserve a second life, not a landfill."

Learning Lab
Businessman holding lightbulb. Business start-up goals to success, development and ideas motivation

Unleash Your Innovative Spirit!!

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