Corporate social responsibility (CSR)
Lyreco is dedicated to supporting the community, reducing carbon emissions and enhancing employee wellbeing. It’s all part of Lyreco Goodness – always doing the right thing. This dedication is the foundation of Lyreco’s culture.
Discover some of the key points from our CSR strategy, learn about our goals and explore a selection of our past activities.
Pillars and commitments
Lyreco joined the UN Global Compact in 2004 and officially made CSR a pillar of its business in 2012 through its first CSR strategy, Eco-Future 2012-2018. As a key part of Lyreco Goodness, our 2022 strategy extends our commitments and now includes the following pillars. Read more about each of the pillars, and the commitments we’ve made to realise them, lower down this page.
Circular economy
From 2020 to 2025, we commit to making Circular Economy a priority lever to accelerate the development of integrated sustainable business solutions for our customers. The integration of Circular Economy in our business is a strong enabler to achieve Lyreco sustainable goals as well as a strong response to the increasing customer demand for integrated sustainable business products, solutions and practices.
The following commitments are to help our customers make faster progress towards a drastic reduction of non-recyclable waste in the workplace, and ultimately reduce their impact on the environment.
- 100% of our product families will have at least one ‘recycle-ready’ item by 2025 or they will consist of products made from materials that can be re-inserted into the end-to-end value chain criteria for recyclability. Recycled content claims will be assessed according to the ISO 14021 guiding principles.
- 100% of total packaging weight that is used for shipping will be recyclable or reusable by 2025.
- Provide end-of-life collection and process used materials back into the manufacturing chain.
- Collect 15% of sold recyclable products to go through their recycling process.
- Remove all non-circular packaging from the products we sell.
- 30% or more of our plastic packaging will come from recycled plastic content by 2025.
- Zero Waste to Landfill by 2025.
- A 5% reduction in total waste (tonne per £ turnover) year on year.
- Lyreco currently offers several recycling collection initiatives including: batteries, ink and toner, 15-litre water bottles, paper shredding and Nespresso capsules. We are continuously looking to introduce new recycling services for our customers.
Inclusive Lyreco
Driven by our value of respect, we strongly believe that equality and diversity enriches our working environment and supports our performance. Our employment decisions, promotions and training programmes are exclusively based on qualifications and performance. Under no circumstances will such decisions be made on the grounds of protected characteristics.
Lyreco considers the respect and fair treatment of all employees as key priorities to achieve employee and customer excellence. Valuing employees’ opinions and ensuring constructive dialogue is essential to support this purpose.
The following commitments – led by our People and Culture team – focus on integrating equality and diversity throughout both Lyreco and our supply chain.
- Providing equal employment opportunities.
- Ensuring that all people are treated with dignity and respect and that everyone’s value is recognised.
- Providing a working environment free from unlawful discrimination, victimisation, or harassment.
- Securing genuine equality of opportunity to enable individuals to develop their skills and abilities, ensuring that attitudes and practices do not unjustifiably inhibit or restrict them.
- Paying the real living wage and being Living Wage accredited.
- Reducing our gender pay gap.
- Providing support to employees around mental health and wellbeing.
- Making sure our suppliers are signed up to eliminating modern slavery throughout their supply chain.
SUSTAINABLE SELECTION BY LYRECO
- We have over 8,500 products that meet our Sustainable Selection by Lyreco criteria, either through their packaging, product manufacturing, use of product or sustainable accreditation.
- 45% of all new products launched in 2023 are classes as sustainable.
- When shopping online, we’ve made it even easier to find green alternatives. Select the “Go-Green” button to convert your order to eco-friendly alternatives in an instant!
- By 2025, we commit to ensuring 90% of our product range meets our definition of sustainability, benefitting both people and the planet.
- By 2022, we aim to increase our current sustainable product range by 50%.
- Implement the 5-Star Supplier Rating scheme which will indicate whether a supplier has successfully integrated CSR within their organisation. This will also support suppliers by providing an action plan on delivering upon sustainability and social value commitments.
Reducing our global impact
In 2020, Lyreco set new CO2 reduction targets based on the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) methodology.
Working with SBTi will help Lyreco set greenhouse gas emission reduction targets to less than 1.5ºC / 2°C, in line with the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Furthermore, using science-based targets will help Lyreco accelerate its transition to a low-carbon economy and avoid the worst effects of climate change.
Lyreco is committed to reducing our consumption of other natural resources such as water as well as our impact on biodiversity around all our sites and neighbouring areas. All of this helps to Continually improve on our ISO 14001 (Environmental Management System).
- Map our Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions throughout our operations and processes. This will produce a roadmap to reduce our emissions in accordance with SBTi methodology.
- Eliminate fossil fuels to reduce Scope 1 emission for all our UK and Ireland owned facilities. Lyreco will seek to replace fossil fuel systems with low-carbon alternatives.
- Purchase our remaining grid electricity from 100% REGO-certified suppliers.
- Reduce our fleet emissions to zero by 2028.
- Review our business travel, implementing sustainable travel hierarchy and choosing sustainable travel methods where possible. For those journeys that are difficult to make without the use of a car and where Lyreco provides employees with a car, Lyreco will move to only offering zero-carbon vehicles.
- Review our Scope 3 emissions including reviewing procurement options.
- Continually review offsetting options to ensure offsetting schemes are fully certified and benefit communities.
- Increase water management efficiency to reduce our water usage.
- Enhance biodiversity around our company-owned property and neighbouring communities.
Sustainable communities
Wherever we operate, we strive to leave a positive legacy. We actively engage and involve the public within Lyreco initiatives, creating benefits for Lyreco employees and the wider society.
Lyreco invests within its community through activities such as volunteering, mentoring and charitable fundraising. This offers our people opportunities to learn and develop, as well as give something back.
One example of Lyreco supporting charities and the community is the Lyreco For Education programme. Through this programme, Lyreco employees raise funds to give children living in poor conditions better access to education. Read more…
- Each of our four Lyreco categories will adopt a charity partner in 2022 that they not only raise funds for, but look to build a partnership with through employee volunteering and donation support.
- Strengthen our employee volunteering and charity support policy, allowing employees to have a day away from their typical work day to support a charity or good cause of their choice.
- Calculate its social value annually using the TOMs Social Value Portal.
- Support the Social Value Taskforce as an active member. Some of the key support initiatives that we will be striving to implement in 2022 include:
- Providing donations, either products or monetary, to charities
- Supporting young people and the unemployed by providing career support
- Providing staff with time to volunteer for a charity of their choice
- Supporting older and vulnerable people to build stronger community networks.
Supplier support programme
Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are estimated to make up 99.9% of the nation’s business population and 44% of the country’s labour force (UK Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, gov.uk). However, the failure rate of such businesses is high due to the lack of support and high initial costs in the first few years of a business starting. Furthermore, the negative impact of the COVID-19 crisis on SME performance across the UK is immense.
To play a small part in supporting microbusinesses & social enterprises, Lyreco has launched the Lyreco Goodness Supplier Support Programme. Read more…
key performance indicators
It’s easy to talk a good talk, but Lyreco Goodness promises to implement
and measure as well as commit. For example:
products were defined as compostable/degradable in 2021
products were classed as sustainable in 2021
of managers have completed equality, diversity and inclusion training since 2020
of green energy generated by our 13,860 solar panels in 2021
reduction in fleet CO2 emissions between 2013 and 2021
given to a local social enterprise that supports mentally and physically disabled people get back into work
