Environment | Wickes

Our Environmental pillar sets out our ambition to decarbonise our stores, transport, and operations, to fight climate change and protect the natural environment. But protecting the environment isn’t just about reducing our carbon emissions. It’s about how we use our resources like water efficiently, limit the waste we produce and how it is managed, and protect natural environments and biodiversity.

We are focused on three main goals:

Be a Net Zero Business by 2040 across all three emissions scopes
Delivering our near-term Science Based Targets
Increasing our operational recycling rates and removing operational waste from our business

Wickes is a signatory of the British Retail consortium Climate Action Roadmap, which is a commitment to Net Zero across Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions by 2040.

Wickes near-term science-based emissions reduction targets

Target 1 - Operations (Scope 1 and 2)

Wickes commits to reduce absolute scope 1 and 2 emissions 42% by 2030 from a 2021 base year.

Target 2 - Goods and Services (Scope 3.1 Goods and Services)

Wickes commits that 45% of its suppliers by emissions will have science-based targets by 2027.

Target 3 - Use of sold products (Scope 3.11 Used of Sold Products)

Wickes Group plc to reduce scope 3 GHG emissions from the use of sold products 42% by 2030 from a 2021 base year.

Carbon

In 2022 we undertook our first Carbon Disclosure Project and we were pleased to achieve a rating of B- placing us in the ‘Management’ category.

Operationally, our emissions are fairly evening split between the electricity we use to keep the lights on, the gas we use to heat our stores, and the vehicles we use to transport our goods. Decarbonising our estate over the coming years will be a priority. Read more about our plans to achieve this goal.

Over 50% of our stores have already been fitted with low energy lighting but electricity remains our largest source of emissions and is a focus of our reduction efforts as we continue to refit stores.

Our energy contract is 100% renewable energy ensuring all of our stores, distribution centres and support centres are powered by renewable electricity.

We aim to reduce our absolute gas emissions through improved heating controls and management, and we will be trialling new electric heating systems in our stores, as a potential alternative to gas heating systems.

We sell a wide range of products which help with energy efficiency, including insulation, double glazing, lighting and smart heating systems, all supported by a network of local tradesmen. This not only saves households money, but with around a quarter of UK carbon emissions from housing, it helps the environment too.

We transport and deliver a lot of products, not only to restock our stores, but also to deliver directly to customers. This means we cover a lot of miles in the process. Most of our distribution network relies on HGVs (heavy goods vehicles), as electric and hybrid technology currently doesn't have the range to support our needs, and the charging infrastructure for these vehicles is still in development.

Alternative fuels such as hydrogenated vegetable oil (HVO) and compressed natural gas (CNG) are interesting propositions that will take us forward until an electric vehicle (EV) solution is readily available in the HGV sector, however both have cost challenges and audit concerns associated with them.

We have made significant progress with our company car fleet over the last 12 months and by the end of 2023, approximately 70% of our company car fleet will be either BEV or PHEV. To support this we have increased the number of on site vehicle charges at our head office office and have plans to increase the provision at our distribution sites in 2023. We are also working with our landlords to install charger points at our stores and EV charge points are now a requirement of all new build stores.

Timber makes up around 45% of our business. We have strict requirements to ensure we only source products that are safe, fit for purpose and which meet or exceed our customers’ expectations. We require each timber product that enters our supply chain to comply with all applicable legislation including FSC and PEFC, and require full chain of custody on all timber and joinery products. We carry out regular inspections of our suppliers, conduct a supplier risk assessment every two years, and conduct SEDEX ethical audits to complement our process. This strategy means that all of our timber is responsibly sourced, with 99.8% being certified under FSC and PEFC.

We recognise that peat is an essential habitat for the natural environment, valuable to not only wildlife, but also providing flooding protection, and acting as a carbon sink to fight climate change. We are committed to moving away from peat in our products and are working closely with our suppliers to develop sustainable alternatives that will perform satisfactorily at a value our customers have come to expect. We have developed a peat free alternative for our own brand compost and our current target is to remove peat from our products by the end of 2023.

Waste

We produce a lot of waste through our operations and managing this is a huge area of focus for us. Currently 92.8% of our waste is recycled and 4.6% of our waste goes to energy recovery. 2.6% of our waste is not suitable for recycling or energy recovery and goes to landfill. We have set a zero waste to landfill target by 2025.

We recycle 97% of all the waste created during the installation of a ‘Do-it-for-me’ kitchen or bathroom project.

Water

We do not use much water in our business operations. Most of the water consumption sits within our supply chain. We have used our Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) report to investigate the impact of water scarcity on our supply chain. This will help us to understand water sensitivities in our supply chain and help suppliers to manage their risk.

Although we do not expect our water consumption to be high, we know that water stresses will become more prevalent in the UK as temperatures rise, and will make sure we do our part to relieve these pressures.

Engaging with colleagues

We want to ensure that all our colleagues understand what being a responsible business means and how they can get involved. To do this, we have been holding sustainability sessions at departmental monthly meetings, as well as including a section to our online learning and development site, Wickes Campus, that introduces the fundamentals of climate change, the UK’s carbon reduction commitments and Wickes own ambitions.