Calderdale company recognised as one of Europe’s Climate Leaders

Marshalls is the only UK building materials company to feature on this list, which is available on the Financial Times website.

Chris Harrop OBE, Group Sustainability Director for Marshalls, said: “Being a European Climate Leader is such an achievement. This is a testament to the hard work we’ve been doing for a number of years now; sustainability is a big part of who we are and what we do. This is really significant for Marshalls and I’m proud that we are making big changes to tackle climate change.”

Europe’s Climate Leaders 2021 is a list of companies across Europe that have shown the highest reduction of their emission intensity.

Mr Harrop added: “This achievement comes as we share that we have reduced our total carbon footprint by 50 per cent since 2008.

"Climate change is very real for all of us – for us as a business but also for our customers.

"At Marshalls, we understand the role we have to play and we’ve taken some really big steps to reduce our carbon emissions, including getting approved science-based carbon reduction targets, installing solar panels and switching to green electricity.

"We also know that it’s vital that we help our customers make an active choice to reduce the impact of their purchasing decisions.

"In some of the sectors we operate in, our products have a footprint 50% lower than those of direct and substitute products.”

Marshalls have been working with the Carbon Trust since 2008 using methodology outlined in PAS2050 to calculate full cradle to grave carbon footprints for all manufactured products.

Thomas Clark, Senior Partner, Statista said: “Climate change is clearly the dominant long-term topic for us as world community. Yet it is still very abstract for most people.

"That’s why the Financial Times and Statista decided to tackle it with the intention to make it more approachable.

"Considering the targets in terms of reducing greenhouse gases set in the Paris Agreement on a global level or looking at those set on a European or UK level, every company in our list has reduced GHG emissions at least three times more during the period we looked at.

"That’s commendable and that’s why we call these companies Climate Leaders, meaning: companies which lead our efforts to put a halt on climate warming.”

In 2020, Marshalls had their carbon emissions reduction targets approved by the Science Based Targets initiative –an organisation set up by the UN and WWF to set the standard for carbon reductions.

Working towards these targets, the business has recently installed new 250kw solar panels at their Sittingbourne site in Kent, projected to generate 10-15% of the site’s overall energy needs. Priority areas for carbon reduction include product innovation, fleet replacement and non-essential plastic reduction.