Solar investment

In 2019, we began the process of installing solar panels on the roof of our warehouse in North Leicester. This investment meant that we would be able to create a large amount of the energy we used through solar energy. Within a few months, we had drawn up plans to increase this solar project and the work was completed in late 2021. We now have one of the largest solar installations in north Leicester, and we feed back into the grid the energy we’re not using. To date, we have saved 54,888.04 kg of CO2 emissions, which is the equivalent of planting more than 3,320 trees.

Recycling project

Colourbank has long been involved in the recycling of our own company’s waste products, but also the uplifted flooring or beds from our customers. Over time, this has become more and more viable, as new technologies have become available, allowing us to recycle more and more. As well as this, a growing percentage of the beds and flooring we are collecting are now made with fully recyclable materials or components, thanks to the changes made by manufacturers over the last decade or more.

Since the start of 2024, we have also taken on the responsibility of recycling plastic waste for other retailers in the flooring and bed industry. This has been no small feat, but we now collect, sort, compact and package plastic on behalf of 8 other retailers in the Midlands, totaling more than 28 tonnes per month – so far.

As well as plastics, we also recycle our cardboard, not only with our partner recycling company, but we also re-use the carpet inner tubes multiple times. This improves the efficiencies within the company and greatly reduces the amount of cardboard needed. The same applies to pallets. We receive a huge amount of LVT and hardflooring each week, and it all comes in on pallets. We re-use them wherever possible, but those we cannot use are sent away for recycling.

Responsible partners

It’s not just our own company we expect to be sustainable and environmentally responsible. We expect our suppliers to have the same approach. We carefully check each supplier’s environmental credentials and work with those who are proactively making changes for the better and maintaining key environmental targets.

We now offer numerous products that have sustainability at the core, be it the carpet underlay we collect directly from a manufacturer that makes it from recycled plastic or the mattress bags that are made from a fully compostable starch material. We also offer beds that are zero to landfill and are constructed with only natural materials, no glues and no chemicals.

Electric power

Whilst it is not possible to have our main delivery lorries electric yet, we are building our electric fleet. The lorries required to carry 5m rolls of carpet are only available with diesel engines, but changes are not far away. In the meantime, we have several electric vehicles in the fleet and we offer customers at our Crest Rise store the option to charge their electric cars for free. We also encourage Colourbank staff to travel by bike or public transport wherever possible, 10% of us currently do so.

Paperless processes

We have introduced numerous paperless processes within the company, from deliveries to inputting. The amount of paper that our company now uses has fallen by more than 70% since 2020. We continue to look for ways of removing paper from our business, and the improvements continue to be made, thanks to efficiencies within our processes as well as new technologies becoming available to us, such as contactless deliveries and bar code scanning of our stock.