Cribbs Causeway is our first SKA Gold accredited shop!
An accreditation covering our refit and environmental impact of Cribbs Causeway
We have achieved our SKA gold accreditation!
Ska is an award-winning standard assessment method that allows retailers and restaurant operators to measure the environmental impact of their fit-outs and refurbishments, and set benchmarks for improvements.
Ruth Andrade from our Lush Wellbeing Team has worked on the project, here are her comments;
“As a business we actively promote ethical products so it was important for us to transfer these values to our property portfolio. The Ska Rating is perfect for companies which share these values.
The Ska Rating set a framework for achieving a sustainable fit-out that everyone involved in the project - the contractor, designer and project manager - could work with.
The framework offered structured guidance on how to implement a green fit-out and since some of the measures are not site specific it can be used for future fit-outs at our other stores."
Freely available online with voluntary certification via a network of accredited assessors, the Ska tool rates the environmental impact of the fit-out regardless of the base building, assessing areas such as energy consumption, CO2 emissions, waste, water and material use to award a gold, silver or bronze rating.
The tool can be applied to projects of any size, in both existing and new buildings, for one-off projects or volume roll-outs.
What did we do at Cribbs?
Let’s get to the practicalities, shall we? In the back of house, all the furniture is upcycled: the table is from ebay, the racking from a second-hand shop, the chairs have been stolen from our Mafia meeting room, and the flooring is non-PVC from Ovation Flooring. In the washroom, they have organic cotton hand towels, instead of paper towels.
Shop floor
On the shop floor, we have used this uber-cool new tiles called Versaflex. Basically the ceramic tiles are on a floating floor. No grout or adhesive is needed. The tiles are laid on a grid, with rubber in between them. If a tile is broken, they are easily lifted to be replaced without having to take up the whole floor. If we have to move shop, we can just lift the tiles and use them elsewhere.
Our walls
For the walls, we used a combination of laminated strawboard from Envirowall and paperboard. The strawboard is made from highly compressed straw with a small amount of a plant-based adhesive. The paperboard is made from 90% recycled newsprint and 10% recycled gypsum and we used it as our big graffiti wall. We also had to still use a little MDF, but it’s FSC and formaldehyde-free.
The paint
Our black paint is also green ! It is zero VOC (volatile organic compound), meaning it has no solvents and doesn’t gas off any unwanted chemicals. There’s none of that paint smell. For Cribbs Causeway, we used ECOS paint.
When it comes to lighting, we favoured an LED lighting design. We use Philips Stylid and LuxSpaces. They are more efficient than fluorescents and last a dog’s lifetime!
Lighting
In the back of house, we also install light controls in the stock areas, washrooms, staff rooms, etc, so the lights are only on when they need to.
In our stores we use a good amount of water to do our demos, so for this shop, we put flow controls on the taps, push taps where possible, low flush toilets and also we’re installing a smart water meter to drive our water savings even further.
The project has been great and has given us lots of knowledge of available products and the opportunity to create a framework that we can replicate in the future. Of course, we’ve always done green bits in our stores, but this is a new model not only for our other stores, but for all retail shops out there. Let’s see in the next few weeks what
For more information:
Visit: https://consultations.rics.org/consult.ti/skaretail/consultationHome
email: savetheplanet@lush.co.uk
It has been a great amount of work and effort to achieve, but we all feel it was worth it and we now have a fantastic store which For more information visit Ska Rating online or email ska@rics.org
Information from http://www.rics.org/site/scripts/press_article.aspx?pressreleaseID=745
