Serious about sustainability

Glass Times takes a closer look at timber window and door specialist, Mumford and Wood, which has raised the bar for sustainable manufacturing by achieving Carbon Neutral Organisation Status.

A lot of companies are talking a good game when it comes to operating more sustainably, but there will be very few in the glass and glazing industry that can claim to be as ‘green’ as Essex based timber window and door manufacturer, Mumford and Wood.

The management team at Mumford and Wood decided to get serious on sustainability around three years ago, setting the ambitious goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2030. However, the company has now successfully hit its target a full eight years ahead of schedule and has recently been officially recognised by Carbon Footprint for achieving Carbon Neutral Organisation Status.

That makes it one of the first – if not, the first – business in the industry to do so.

Businesses can achieve carbon neutrality by calculating their carbon footprint and reducing it to zero through a combination of in-house efficiency measures and by supporting external emission reduction projects.

In 2021, Mumford and Wood commissioned Carbon Footprint, a leading UK-based, independent organisation committed to helping companies reduce carbon emissions at source and to compensate for unavoidable emissions – via carbon offsetting – to conduct a full audit of the firm.

This included looking at data from across the business, including manufacturing, waste and recycling and vehicle emissions.

“Sustainability is a huge part of our offer, simply because of the nature of the product. It’s, quite literally, a natural selling point,” said Scott Martin, national sales manager at Mumford and Wood.

“We supply timber windows and doors to high end residential and commercial projects and it’s become increasingly important for us to be able to demonstrate our sustainable practices, especially with main contractors.

“All our timber is Forest Stewardship Council approved, which means it’s proven to be from a sustainable source,” he continued. “We’ve also invested in new, more efficient machinery, we’ve upgraded all our lighting to low energy LED, we employ as many people as we can from the local area and we have also swapped all our diesel powered fleet cars for hybrid vehicles.”

Mumford and Wood also pledge a UK native tree for every project completed and clients can even select where they are planted.

Although UK based, Mumford and Wood source the majority of its wood from overseas and so to help offset any transportation emissions has also started work with the Rimba Raya Biodiversity Reserve Project to aid deforestation issues in Indonesia in addition to a verified carbon standard reduction project in the Amazon, Brazil, offsetting around 350 tonnes of CO2 in 2021 alone.

While Mumford and Wood has been keenly focused on improving its green credentials, it has also been well placed to take advantage of the surge in demand during the pandemic. And in contrast to most of the industry, it has remained largely unaffected by supply chain issues, thanks to a healthy stock of raw material and also the fact that customers are more accustomed to the longer lead times associated with timber products.

“The last seven or eight months have been incredibly busy, which has resulted in a very healthy forward order book” continued Scott.

“During the pandemic we had some minor issues with hardware, but our lead times are typically four to five months so we managed to stay ahead of delays from glass suppliers and we always retain three to six months of timber in stock, so we managed to avoid any unexpected delays to production.”

“For the future, we are looking to build on our capacity to supply and install, to respond to growing demand at the premium end of the residential market, but we are also planning to further improve our processes, so that we can operate even more sustainably than we are currently,” he continued.

“That could include looking at ways in which we can manage our energy usage more efficiently but the overall aim is achieve Carbon Neutral Plus status – that will mean introducing more in-house initiatives and further offsetting so that, as an organisation, we are effectively taking out more carbon from the atmosphere than we are putting in.”