We acknowledge that as a retailer, our activities no matter how small, have an impact. Our mission is therefore to mitigate and to surpass our own environmental footprint and be a nett positive contributor in the fight against global warming and climate change.
PRESERVATION
Bio-Bridge Project
We have been partnering with Wildlife Conservation Society (“WCS”) on a Bio-Bridge project for the period from 2016 to 2020 to build natural wildlife corridors that can re-connect damaged habitats in the forests of Peninsular Malaysia and allow our wildlife to roam freely in a larger area. We have been funding WCS and Malaysian Conservation Alliance for Tigers to conduct patrolling to protect the Malayan Tigers' habitat. We committed a total of RM1,200,000 throughout the period of this Bio-Bridge project.
#Only200tigersleft
On 8 April 2019, together with Wildlife Conservation Society and Malaysian Conservation Alliance for Tigers, we started a “#only200tigersleft” petition in our TBS stores and online calling upon the Government to send 2,000 army personnel to patrol Peninsular Malaysia forests. We collected a total of 121,058 signatures and handed this over at the Parliament of Malaysia on 16 July 2019 to the Minister of Water, Land and Natural Resources. Our voices were heard and the police are currently assisting to patrol our forests to protect the Malayan tigers. An early success ensued in October 2019 where10 poachers were detained following an operation by this joint police patrols.
International Coastal Clean-up
For more than 30 years, we have been organising annual beach clean-ups in Malaysia as the official partner of the Ocean Conservancy, raising awareness on the need to keep waterways and marine life safe from pollution. Due to the pandemic in 2020, we were not able to organize large-scale beach clean-ups with our customers and the public. Instead, we organized smaller beach clean-ups within our Group with strict compliance with the relevant standard operating procedures. Our efforts in 2020 collected 1,320kg of rubbish across six different locations in Malaysia, and one in Vietnam. These locations included Teluk Bahang in Penang, and Sekinchan and Morib in Selangor.
To further champion and raise more awareness on beach clean-ups, we shared and posted the beach clean-up guidance on our social media to provide the public useful tips on organising their very own beach clean-up. For our Vietnam team, instead of bio-degradable plastic bags, they reused rice sacks to collect rubbish.
CONSERVATION
To InNature, conservation is a marathon, not a sprint. This is evidenced by the long term nature of all such projects undertaken by us.
Kick The Bag Habit Campaign
We eliminated the use of plastic bags from all our stores since 2017. We pioneered the movement in Malaysia to encourage customers to use their own bags or to make a “donation” out of what they paid for our recycled paper bag. The funds collected go towards supporting various environmental and community projects, such as the “Endau Rompin Bio-Bridge” project and “The Body Shop Lends A Hand” campaign. Over the years, we have donated more than RM3 million to various NGOs.
All The Body Shop paper bags are made from kraft paper which is compostable and biodegradable thus reducing waste that ends up in landfills.
Earth day
We have been partnering with Free Tree Society in giving away free plants every Earth Day since 2015 to encourage Malaysians to adopt and plant trees for a greener environment even in urban townships.
To celebrate Earth Day in 2019, we gave out 1000 indigenious plants and trees to the community at Pavilion KL.
Bring Back Our Bottles Campaign
To encourage our customers to recycle, we incentivize our customers to bring back our empty plastic bottles through our “Bring Back Our Bottles” campaign. In August 2020, we also included an additional platform for our customers to gain from recycling their bottles with us via our The Body Shop mobile application (“App”). Customers who brought back our bottles would be able to get RM1 off their next purchase. Customers would also be able to receive a stamp on our App, and upon collecting 10 stamps, customers can redeem a recycled Keychain-fragrancer for free. More than 3,000 empty plastic bottles were returned in 2020. We look forward to the day when incentives are no longer needed to do the right thing!
More Beauty Less Waste Campaign
Similarly, Natura has kick-started the “More Beauty, Less Waste” campaign in June 2020 where customers who bring back five Natura empty bottles get one free recycled-plastic soap dish. More than 100 empty bottles were returned by customers in 2020.
Closing The Loop Project – The Body Shop & Natura
We made significant progress during 2020 in our aim to take responsibility for our bottles at their end of use. As a continuation of our “Bring Back Our Bottes” campaign, we managed to recycle the plastic brought back by our customers into Keychain-fragrancers. These items are made by our local community and hence had also helped provide income.
In addition, the ties attached to the Keychain-fragrancers is from fishing lines recovered from the beaches of Malaysia. They are currently retailed at our The Body Shop stores and with every Keychain-fragrancer purchased, our customers will be protecting our environment and supporting our local community. Empty bottles collected from Natura customers are recycled into colourful soap dishes by the same local community.
Green Workplace Initiatives
A major source of our carbon footprint comes from energy use in our office and stores. Recognising the need to improve our energy consumption, we have since 2012 changed incandescent and fluorescent light bulbs in our stores and 2014 in our office to light-emitting diodes (“LED”). LEDs consume lesser energy, releases less CO2 emission and have a longer life span.
In October 2019, we installed a solar photovoltaic (PV) system in our office to offset the consumption of electricity. Since the installation of this PV system, our energy electricity consumption is down by 35.37 megawatt hour, or a decrease in CO2 emission by 54,804 pounds.
In our office building, our employees are reminded to turn off office lights, their computers and laptops when not in use. Our air-conditioning is maintained at 24 degrees and switched off whenever possible. Regular maintenance is conducted on all office equipment to keep them running efficiently. On top of that, paper wastage is reduced by printing only when necessary which also helped to cut energy required to run the printers.
To encourage minimal waste, each employee does not have their own waste bin in the office. Instead, common bins segregated by the various types of wastes are provided.
Aside from waste management, we also have water dispensers to encourage staff to refill their water bottles instead of purchasing bottled plastic drinks.