BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news
Cycling is often at the centre of sustainable travel initiatives, with the effects of rising carbon emissions and climate change becoming increasingly worrying every day. But how green is the trade itself? BikeBiz speaks to six brands to find out what they’re doing to be more environmentally friendly. Today, we hear from James Cramp, Muc-Off
Project Green
We wanted to bring together all our environmental and sustainability actions and services we create here at Muc-Off, so in 2019 we introduced Project Green. For many years we’ve been doing activations to help drive change to our consumers. For example, we launched our 25L refill station back in 2012, but consumers and retailers were not quite ready for the behaviour change of bringing back empty bottles to refill them in store. Since our relaunch of this last year, it’s been a huge success and helped us save over 91 tonnes of plastic in less than two years!
Having a trackable, yet challenging target for Project Green is key to making sure we’re doing more than ‘just enough’ – there are no half measures at Muc-Off! This not only works on services like our refill programme, but also in the product development and review process of the entire portfolio. We now have set the bar to save 200 tonnes of plastic by 2023! Being green is well and truly part of our DNA.
A sustainable industry?
It’s a sustainable industry compared to many. However, it does come with challenges. From where we sit we’re fortunate to work in an industry that has a lot of inspiring companies and like-minded riders looking to minimise their environmental impact. I think this is where the cycle industry stands out, many working within it are enthusiasts and keen to protect the playground we ride.
But there is lots to do for all companies in terms of manufacturing, their supply chains and recycling. In our segment, it’s key to ensure we help riders keep their kit in great condition to last and perform as long as possible.
Advice for stores
Look for the brands which advocate change and simply make a retailer’s journey as easy as possible to join in. Consumers quickly relate to this and adopt brands who support these goals.
Customer concern
It’s a very high consideration for consumers now. With everything we see regarding global warming, brands must be in a position to advocate improvement. We’ve always pushed to make products as environmentally friendly as possible, but it’s now more critical than ever. We’ve been working on some exciting projects, including one to update our oldest hero product to make it even greener. For us it’s all about being creative!
