We don’t like to brag but we think it’s justified today. Our first Impact Report has been published and it illustrates exactly how First Mile is having a positive impact.
Click here to read our full Impact Report.
How does an organisation measure impact?
We used the B Impact Assessment (BIA) Tool to better understand and quantify the impact we’re having (the tool used by companies obtaining B Corp certification). We became a B Corp in 2023, and that framework is helping guide the future of our company.
The BIA Tool measures positive impact across governance, workers, community, customers and the environment and the scores can be compared with others in the same sector or of similar size.
Whilst the environment is of course of huge importance to us as an organisation, we became a B-Corp company to be the best that we could be across every area. We want to make a positive impact overall and we think having good all-round policies and practices makes us stronger as a company.
Making a positive impact through our work
Our business model has positive impact at the heart of it – the more our customer base grows, the lower our environmental impact.
The virtuous circle of recycling
Our purpose is: We recycle waste from businesses to slow down climate change because making new products from recycled material emits less carbon than making them from new materials. The report shows that through better recycling rates and greener operations, we deliver 45% lower overall emissions per tonne of waste collected than industry average.
Avoiding land use is another positive impact that we can lay claim to. Recycling more reduces the need for land use for forestry, mining, and processing to produce virgin materials. This has positive implications for biodiversity.
Our Zero to Landfill policy reduces carbon emissions created by landfill waste – another tick on the side of positive impact.
The numbers backing up our impact are shown in the full report here.
We’ve included information from three of our clients – Savile Club, Chanel and Grosvenor Estate demonstrating how many tons of emissions they’ve avoided by recycling with us.
Our measurements aren’t limited to First Mile, we work with our partners to look at sustainability across the supply chain. From the sourcing of recycled waste bags through to tracking how much of our downstream recycling stays in the UK.
This is just part of our Three Year Planet Plan, acting on the findings of this report with positive actions to improve our scores.
Some other report highlights:
- Our carbon impact is 45% lower than the industry average
- Our client recycling rates are twice the industry average
- We have a total B Impact score of 88 – as a comparison our sector averages 75
These scores are just a starting point and our plans for the coming year include changes that aim to increase our impact. These include more cargo bike collections, moving to a greener pension provider for our employees and the launch of a new customer reporting tool.
Here is a timeline of our sustainability initiatives
We believe transparency is key when it comes to sustainability - that's why we wanted to share our past achievements and plans for the future with all of our stakeholders, from clients, employees and suppliers to the wider community
It is important to us that First Mile makes a positive social and environmental impact, so we’ll be reporting on Impact every year and aiming to improve each time
