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Sustainability in E-Commerce?

Director of Content, Dom Scott gives us his insight in to what IFG are undertaking for the love of sustainability.

Having been at Internet Fusion from the very start, and having a passion for environmental causes since being a youngster, I always felt there was a conflict between what we did as an eCommerce retailer and my own personal viewpoint. I am now proud to say that through recent changes at Internet Fusion we've been able to really focus on improving the sustainability of our business activity and will continue to improve in the coming months and years.

This change has been brought about mainly by inheriting the tireless work of our Head of Sustainability, Adam Hall, and since then a real focus and investment on improving our operations across the entire Internet Fusion group.

The most significant investment has been in our warehousing operation which is a newly built facility that is truly groundbreaking and is already being used as an example to others.



Some of the features of the facility include:

• ZERO waste to landfill operation
• Large roof mounted array of Solar PV panels generating electricity
• 100% frack-free
• Biogas energy supply
• 124 acres of rainforest safeguarded to offset carbon emissions of construction
• Highly efficient lighting with sensor controls throughout
• Solar thermal panels generating heat100% renewable electricity supply
• Highly efficient heat recovery system
• Grey water system making use of rain water
• Full facilities to encourage green travel

This is just the start for us and, amongst many other things, we are now taking steps to to try to change the companies that supply us with the goods we sell:

We aim to encourage our supplier network of over 500 companies to follow our lead and make a commitment to becoming more sustainable. As an eCommerce retailer with over 250,000 items in stock, the most obvious improvement for our suppliers to make is to reduce the amount of plastic packaging, which in some cases is truly outrageous and wasteful. If you work for one of our suppliers please share this article with the people who can make things change and start the discussion. If we can help make our suppliers change their own practices at source we can help improve the whole global supply chain for these companies and everybody benefits.

Any comments, or points for discussion, are welcome and thank you for reading if you got this far! We aren't perfect (yet) and still have a long way to go, but i feel we are making huge strides and i'm proud of what we've achieved so far.

I've also added in a video edit that our retailer Surfdome completed, so you can see our warehouse facility in all it's glory: