The team at the ScanCom’s premium outdoor furniture brand, LifestyleGarden has reason to celebrate as the company has scooped the highly coveted Sedex Award for the Best Environmental Sustainability Programme.
The prestigious Sedex Responsible Business Awards, launched in 2017, were set up to shine a spotlight on responsible sourcing programmes and broader sustainability initiatives, recognising those organisations going above and beyond.
Shortlisted in 2019, the 2020 awards saw the UK team finally get to lift the highly deserved trophy thanks to the success of its groundbreaking DuraOcean offering, which has set a new standard for sustainable material innovation since its launch two years ago.
Utilising disused ropes and trawls from the maritime industry, and preventing them from polluting the oceans, DuraOcean has demonstrated the importance of recycled material, and also how incorporating such materials can enhance a brand’s offering, extend its consumer reach and help to start a very important conversation with the wider industry.
Judges of the Best Environmental Sustainability Programme described the award-winning DuraOcean as a “great example of closed loop innovation turning ocean plastic into a valuable product.”
Talking about the award win, Stig Maasboel, Group CEO of ScanCom, LifestyleGarden’s parent company, said: “We are extremely pleased with the recognition this award symbolises and the fact that we are able to deliver on our strategic project for sustainably sourced and recycled plastic. As a global leader in outdoor furniture design and manufacturing it is very important for us to constantly push the bar on how to conduct our business in accordance with our group principle of ‘Doing Business the Right Way’ and successes such as this only further shows that this is the only way for us to do business.”
Stig’s sentiment was echoed by Paul Cohen, Sales Director of LifestyleGarden. He said: “The development of DuraOcean remains an incredibly proud and pivotal moment for us, and the positive response we have had from key stakeholders, retailers and end users has shown that this kind of closed loop thinking has the ability to help protect the longevity of the world in which we live. To receive this recognition from Sedex is a truly humbling experience, and we’d like to thank them for this recognition.
“We promise to continue to keep looking at ways to reuse post-consumer waste, to create eco-friendly designs, and to encourage the furniture industry to work for a more sustainable future. In fact, we have some very exciting developments in the pipeline which we hope to share with the industry in early summer. We have been busy working on ways to build on the success of DuraOcean and hope to bring even more recycled material innovations to UK homes in the near future.
“Finally, we’re pleased to confirm that we’ll be continuing to work alongside the team at leading education charity, the Eden Project. There is no question that the Eden Project shares our ethos for sustainable design, and together this partnership has helped to build a national profile for DuraOcean and the need to protect our oceans and marine life. Our plans for the future are more exciting than ever and we can’t wait to reveal more details in due course.”
The Sedex Responsible Business Awards shine a spotlight on responsible sourcing programmes and broader sustainability initiatives, recognising those organisations going above and beyond. For the official award announcement of ScanCom and the winners from other categories, follow this link: https://www.sedex.com/winners-of-the-sedex-responsible-business-awards-announced/