Green is good for business

You can help cut the UK’s environmental impact and grow your business at the same time, according to David Naylor of Tremco Illbruck.

When you’re running a business, it’s hard enough to remember to take the bins out, let alone find time to think about the environment.

But it’s becoming increasingly clear that we’re facing an environmental crisis, and if you want to sell to ever-more eco-conscious end users, going green will soon be an unavoidable requirement.

Earlier this year, Britain became the first country in the world to declare a climate emergency.

A few months earlier, the planet’s leading climate scientists declared we’ve only got 12 years to avoid global temperatures rising above 1.5ºC, at which point droughts, floods, heat waves and other extreme weather events will become much more common.

Construction accounts for 45% of the UK’s total carbon emissions, and 32% of all landfill waste. Furthermore, how energy efficient – or inefficient – homes and workplaces are has a huge impact on the UK’s total carbon footprint.

Fenestration is obviously only a very small part of construction as a whole. But there’s no question that we do have an impact, and we can do something about it.

At Tremco Illbruck, it’s our mission to raise standards in our industry, to help British installers offer quicker, better, more professional service, to improve perceptions of our sector and, most importantly in this instance, to drive sustainability.

And the good news is that going green isn’t just the moral thing to do, there are growing signs that it’s good for business, too.

Last year, the BBC’s Blue Planet 2 had a huge cultural impact.

After 14 million viewers watched distressing footage showing the damage done by plastic in our oceans, Google searches for the term ‘plastic recycling’ jumped by 55% virtually overnight.

It was a powerful demonstration of just how fast and far public attitudes are changing, and today, when they’re choosing between products, brands, and companies, homeowners are paying more attention to their environmental credentials than ever.

56% of consumers now consider sustainability when buying, 21% say they’re more likely to buy products that display their eco-friendliness on the packaging, and 72% of millennials – the homeowners of the future – will pay more for products with a positive social and environmental impact.

And last year, a government consultation on waste management received more responses than any in history, showing strong support for higher tax on hard-to-recycle materials.

How do you take advantage of this as an installer?

Showing them your commitment to reducing waste is one sure-fire way of proving your eco-credentials. You should obviously recycle as much as possible, and make sure your prospects know about it.

But you should also choose products that leave less waste in the first place – like our SP510 low mod construction sealant, that creates up to 18 times less waste than cartridge-based alternatives, for example.

It’s selling the benefits of energy efficiency, though, that’s probably the most powerful technique of the lot.

Energy efficiency is now big business. It offers homeowners a potent mix of lower bills and cut-down carbon footprints, and for guaranteeing great thermal performance, the most important factor isn’t the windows you choose, it’s how you install them.

You can spend £hundreds on an A-rated window, but if it’s not installed properly, it won’t offer anything near A-rated thermal efficiency. And of all the installation products on the market, the ones that offer the best, most reliable performance are impregnated tapes like our TP653 Trio X.

TP653’s polymer film offers exceptional airtightness and smoke-proofing performance, making it a popular choice for helping properties achieve stringent Passivhaus standards in Europe, where it’s already very successful.

With climate change set to become a much bigger part of everyday life and, as homeowners come to demand ever-more robust performance in every aspect of home improvement, Passivhaus is only going to grow in popularity, and TP653 Trio X could be the key to helping your business benefit from it.