James scoops up floating plastic where he can and has a permanent recycling bag on board Mathias, but it’s at work where he’s making the biggest gains. He leads Deane’s plastic reduction programme, an initiative that was informed by a 2019 audit with the Sustainable Business Network and formalised as a strategic plan later that year. The goal, he says, is to get rid of as much plastic as possible and there’s no shortage of opportunities.
“Shirt packaging clips were an early target,” he explains. “We could stop most of those straight away. We got rid of personal rubbish bins in the office and replaced them with recycling bins. Our business cards used to be laminated but we stopped those a while ago. And if you join us for morning tea in our Auckland office, your plate will be cardboard, not plastic, and there’s definitely no plastic cutlery.”
Most recently, James homed in on the plastic bags that Deane’s polo shirts used to come in. They’ve been replaced with biodegradable band roll. Next up: transitioning Deane’s offshore suppliers to compostable courier and garment bags, and carton liners. These have all been written into our specifications and there are early signs that our suppliers are coming on board.
Where is Deane on the journey? “It’s hard to say,” James reckons. “We keep on discovering new things we can do. Based on our initial targets we’re over halfway, but then I come into the office and spot more plastic ... it seems to come out of the woodwork as our team becomes more aware. There’s plenty to either replace with compostable plastic or cardboard, or to remove altogether. At the end of the day, we've got a rare opportunity to take plastics out of the supply chain at commercial scale. We take a step, see it implemented and move on to the next step. When we get it all to work, it's deeply satisfying."