The launch of the 2010 Spring/Summer range of irons, packaging will feature the Carbon Reduction Label, as well as supporting information on how the carbon footprint can be reduced.

Morphy Richards is a market-leading brand of small domestic appliances, providing products that range from coffee makers to vacuum cleaners.With a long-term commitment to sustainability the company approached the Carbon Trust to carry out an energy assessment in early 2007 and successfully reduced its CO2 emissions by almost 20%.

Although impressive, these savings were only derived from the company’s UK headquarters and operations centre. Morphy Richards wanted to build on this work by measuring the carbon footprint of its product range – starting with its irons, for which it has the largest UK market share.
“We were able to investigate the carbon impact of nine of our irons. This helped further reinforce Morphy Richards’ position as a leading brand that is playing its part to advance sustainability, minimise waste, reduce excessive consumption and provide its consumers with energy efficient appliances.”
Rod Burrows, Head of Marketing , Morphy Richards

Morphy Richards chose to work with the Carbon Trust Footprinting Company to footprint its products, using the newly created Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 2050.
The Carbon Trust Footprinting Company was set up by the Carbon Trust to help businesses to measure, certify, reduce and communicate the life cycle GHG emissions of their products and services.
Morphy Richards selected nine of its irons to be put through the carbon footprinting process. A process map was created for each iron to understand the full life cycle of the product right through the supply chain – from the extraction of raw materials through to their eventual disposal. This activity identified exactly what data would need to be collected, and what would need to be modelled, in order to create the complete footprint. In turn, this could be used to identify opportunities to reduce the footprint through design changes, waste reduction and efficiency improvements across an entire product lifecycle.

A major finding was that the in-use phase – the period when consumers are using the irons – accounted for over 80% of the footprint. The company immediately responded by launching a range of energy efficient products called Ecolectric – which, as well as an iron, includes a toaster, kettle, slow cooker and vacuum cleaner.

As well as changes to the irons themselves, Morphy Richards has replaced much of the polystyrene elements of its packaging with cardboard. What’s more, about 80% of all the company’s gift boxes are now made from recycled cardboard, and the majority of its transit cartons are biodegradable.
From January 2010 the new 2010 Spring/Summer range of irons will feature information about each one’s carbon footprint on the packaging, and also what the company is doing to reduce it. This will be accompanied by a marketing campaign that will explain to consumers what the carbon footprint is all about, and how they can make changes to how they iron to help reduce it.

Article Source: Accreditation for Achievements in Energy Efficiency & The Carbon Trust UK