Stafford hospice shows customers CO2 savings made for instore purchases
Melanie May | 19 December 2023 | News
Katharine House Hospice in Stafford is showing customers in its shops how much CO2 they are saving by buying secondhand.
Katharine House Hospice believes it is the first to do this, and has been trialling this project in 14 of its charity shops since August through till displays provided by Eproductive Ltd. These calculate the average CO2 required to make items brand new and then show the total CO2 saving made for the whole purchase by buying secondhand.
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One customer who saved 1.8kg is quoted by the charity as saying:
“Ethics and sustainability-wise, fashion is not great. I try to avoid fast fashion shopping if I can and buy at charity shops as it’s sustainable and cheaper. I think the till displays at Katharine House Hospice are good and that they will probably encourage more people to buy from charity shops if they notice it.”
Another customer was told that their 40.2kg CO2 saving would almost cover an average flight from Manchester to London for one passenger in economy, which is between 60-100kgs of CO2.
They said:
“Wow, that puts things into perspective. It’s really interesting to see that you can save so much CO2 by shopping second-hand. It’s a good deal and it also helps the environment. More charities should definitely be doing this, if you know how much CO2 you are saving each time then why not share it.”
Katharine House Hospice Retail General Manager, Simon Dodd, added:
“We want to get the sustainability message across to every customer as second-hand shopping is great for the environment, so the fact that the CO2 savings flash up on the screen is a good way of doing this. It’s great that we can tell customers real figures of how much good each sale is doing and the difference that shopping with us is making, and to be the first in the UK to do it is amazing. We want to encourage more people to shop sustainably in charity stores this Christmas and help keep more items out of landfill while supporting worthwhile causes.”
Dodd is also hoping that the charity sector can work together to expand the data for standard CO2 savings across all departments such as furniture and electricals, as currently textiles has the most research available.
Nick Cowls, Director at Eproductive, said that other charities have since gone live with the function, commenting:
“We’re very grateful to Katharine House Hospice for being the first charity to show CO2 on our customer facing displays. Several other charity retailers have recently gone live with this till function and I hope it will soon become commonplace for all charity shops to show the environmental savings of buying more sustainably.”
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About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.