Commercial has won a 2018 Queen’s Award for Enterprise, in the Sustainable Development category.
Commercial’s win recognises outstanding achievements in social and environmental sustainability, coupled with significant and responsible business growth. The award focuses on social and economic aspects of sustainability as well as environmental initiatives. Social enterprise Commercial Foundation, which helps disadvantaged young people improve their employment prospects, received a special mention from the judges.
Simone Hindmarch, Co-Founder, said, “this is such an exciting day for Commercial. Responsible business has always been important to us – it stems from our family values. We initially set out to reduce carbon emissions, but the activity gathered momentum and today we have a robust and effective strategy that addresses sustainability in the broadest sense. All our employees and many customers and suppliers have been actively involved in this journey – I’m so proud of them all. Queen’s Awards are awarded annually by Her Majesty The Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister. Winning is the ultimate success, but our work doesn’t stop here. We have lots more ideas in the pipeline to further improve sustainability at Commercial and beyond.”
Judges said Commercial is a ‘sector leader’ in sustainability, highlighting numerous schemes to reduce energy consumption and emissions at its offices in Cheltenham, London and Leeds. These include a delivery fleet with hydrogen-enabled and electric vehicles, reverse logistics recycling and use of photovoltaic panels to provide power for its offices, with any supplementation coming from renewable sources. Additional factors that impressed the judges were process innovations to maximise waste reuse and recycling, employee engagement and Commercial’s CSR Days which seek to embed sustainability in customer and supplier businesses.
On 28 June, Commercial is hosting its 11th CSR Day in Cheltenham. This year’s speakers include Wayne Hemingway and Ed Gillespie. Further information is available at www.csrday.co.uk
