Customer story
Scott Direct
“Our carbon credentials are our competitive advantage.”
Introduction
Scott Direct, part of The Troy Group, is a distributor of industrial supplies including safety supplies, workwear, hand and power tools as well as a wide range of industrial equipment. It has been operating for the last 40 years, and today has four sites in Scotland. Its customers are from multiple sectors including Oil and Gas, Food and Drink and Manufacturing, and are served through its on-site trade counters, online and via its own salesforce.
Based in Scotland, the company joined the Net Zero Nation Accelerator programme which was co-founded by notch in 2021 to help mobilise SMEs towards Net Zero, enabling them to reduce their carbon and become more resilient and successful organisations.
Why did you start Carbon Accounting?
We spoke to Rob Sayles, Managing Director, about his company’s commitment to Net Zero.
“Our values are people and community focused, and that includes the planet. In Scotland, we get behind forces for good.
We were part of the first cohort of the Net Zero Nation Accelerator programme and as part of this, we have been using the notch platform since 2021 to do our annual carbon reports.
It’s also a challenging world and we believe that as well as it being the right thing to do, it gives us a competitive edge.”
What benefits have you seen?
“A big focus has been on recycling. We offer a PPE recycling programme for our customers for which we can issue a receipt that they can input into their own carbon accounts. The packaging we receive our wholesale stock in from suppliers is now used to send out deliveries to our customers.
This avoids the expense of having to crush them and send them back for recycling, plus it demonstrates to our customers our environmental commitment. We now use paper tape instead of plastic and have replaced our shrink wrap to transparent which has a higher recyclable content. Our packaging initiatives have reduced our packing costs by 80% which is approximately £50k per year in savings.
We’ve also been able to repurpose some products. We had surplus hand sanitiser with a short expiry date and converted it to screen wash which is now good stock and can be usefully sold to customers. The value of the hand sanitiser stock was £8k and it would otherwise have been headed for landfill.
We use our carbon credentials as part of our offering to differentiate ourselves.”
What would be your advice to another company?
“Start. Just start and then build from there. Don’t wait until you have all the data you need – get what you can and then build it up. Also, get everyone in the company involved by explaining what you’re trying to achieve.
Don’t hesitate; don’t expect perfection; just start your journey. There are so many benefits to your business by being environmentally focused. Why wouldn’t you want to do the right thing?”
22.1%
reduction in carbon emissions from the benchmark
4.9
reduction in business travel
7.6
reduction in tonnes of carbon
10%
Achieved Platinum level award
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