For us, and all fellow hunters alike, the outdoors is our life and a defining element of our wellbeing. Passion for the wilderness is at the core of our innovation. We make awesome hunting gear that gets us out to the places we love, but this comes at an environmental cost. That is why it was so important to us at Hunters Element that we began our Sustainability Promise earlier in 2018. Nine moths in, we have some exciting results, which has made the bumps and pains of this process worth every bit of it, and has only heightened our future ambitions.
We’d like to share the preliminary results with all of those who have supported us.
At the beginning of 2018 we announced Project 3T. The mission was to save 3 tonnes of plastic and paper from entering landfill by the end of the year by replacing the plastic bags that wrapped each product with 100% recycled/recyclable card. Other activities that we have continued to pursue are; using PFC Free DWR on all of our water resistant and waterproof products, banning the use of down from live-plucked or force fed birds in our puffer jackets and instead using a synthetic down alternative, and managing our supply chain to ensure our suppliers are operating to the same sustainability standards as us.
To put these plans into action, we have dedicated over 2% of total sales to sustainability actions, making this one of Hunters Element’s largest investments.
We’re delighted to announce that after 9 months, we’ve already surpassed our goal for Project 3T.
We’ve saved over 4 tonnes of paper and plastic from entering landfill by eliminating individually plastic wrapped products and instead wrapping them with recycled and 100% recyclable card. We’ve used biodegradable ink on the minimal writing that is on the card, that means you can chuck it in your compost, if you wish, returning it back into the earth cleanly.
If we took the amount of plastic bags saved and laid them end-to-end, the line of bags would be 59,000 meters long. That would take the average marathon runner over 6 hours to get from one end to the other. Imagining running next to that many bags, each one was destined for landfills, waterways, and our native bushes shows how large an impact a company the size of Hunters Element can make.
This achievement is just as much our customers’ as it is the companies. It simply could not have been possible with the support of everyone who has chosen Hunters Element for their hunting gear in 2018.
While we are immensely proud of our achievements thus far, this by no means has made us satisfied. This is only the beginning, with the encouragement of early success in the rear mirror, we look ahead to many more sustainability activities we can undertake to further minimise our environmental and social footprint.
Thank you to everyone’s continued support and we cannot wait to share with you our future plans and activities that’ll make you proud to don the Hunters Element stag.