Neon Street started in 2011 with the aim of helping to deliver the best events with brilliant people. Part of that delivery is to share our values with the project.

As part of this we want to keep our environmental impact as low as possible. We wanted to share information with our customers about what we are doing as we are asked about it from time to time.

We are striving towards improvement all the time. Working out what we can do now, next year and longer term as change can’t be as immediate as we would like.

Our warehouse:

Based in Suffolk, this is where we develop our ideas, event, content, products, prepare for events and ship out our online sales. We are working to reduce our supply chain miles by sourcing from regional suppliers and manufacturers where possible. This is an ongoing journey as new businesses develop and we see a change in manufacturing as a result of attitudes to globalisation and the impact of Brexit.

We use electricity provided by a renewable energy supplier and no gas is used on site. We are working to reduce out energy usage by replacing lighting to LED and improving insulation as time goes on. We would like to generate our own power in the future but there are a lot of hurdles to overcome first.

We feel we can offer best value by reducing our energy usage and share our values by trying new ideas to achieve this.

Our business has a number of vans to allow us to deliver our work. Our longer term aim is to run a fleet of electric or hydrogen vehicles but as our work requires travelling long distances we need the vehicle range and infrastructure in place this is still a long term goal. All of our current vans have Euro6 and Euro6d engines which are the least polluting combustion engines on the market.

Our Products:

We develop our products to meet the expectations of us and our customers. We ask ourselves:

  • How long will it last?
  • What is the production process?
    •  What chemicals/waste is produced, who makes it?
  • Where has it come from?
    •  Location, raw materials, credentials of suppliers and supply chain
  • How could it be recycled in the future?
    • If it is damaged or comes to the end of its life can it be re-used or added to a full cycle chain?
  • Can we find better?
    • What alternatives do we currently have or what is there in the future to develop this?
  • Does it meet the expectations of the customer?
    • A conscious customer who expects quality at a fair price from an ethical source.

Online orders:

All our online orders are shipped from Suffolk across the world. We use 100% recycled and/or recyclable packaging to ship them out. We are working to making all our packaging polymer free and replace with paper/card or a food waste solution (such as bamboo packaging or rice husk). Our future packaging solutions will be determined by how easy it is for the recipient to recycle or reuse (i.e. It doesn’t need industrial composting or a special type of recycling). Large orders are shipped in used boxes which have life in but were previously used to ship stock to us. We aim to give boxes more lives than a cat.

Our pop-up event shops:

Our 40sq metre branded pop-up stores are the staple for our event sales. The store is run on solar power with a battery for those cloudy wet days. We do not use any mains power or petrol generator. We use LED lighting to keep power consumption down. All our price tags are re-used at events through the year as the boxes we bring the stock to events in. Any rubbish that is produced we take back to Suffolk for­­ recycling.

Very old stock:

After a couple of years, we sometimes end up with odd sizes that may never find their way to the home of a customer. These do not get thrown away. We find them a home which will benefit someone. These items, along with products from other shops that we run we check, box up and deliver to the charity Emmaus Suffolk.

Emmaus are a national organisation with local autonomy to support those living in homeless situations and provide the assistance to help them work their way out of homelessness. With the permission of the brand partner, we offer Emmaus all our very old stock for them to provide to their clients. The offer of brand-new quality clothing is a real boost to those in a very tough situation. Emmaus Suffolk also partner with other organisations across Suffolk including Women’s refuges and Asylum seeker charities to help distribute the products to where they are most needed. Nothing goes to waste and finds a good home.

Feedback:

Yes please! Positive, negative and progressive please. Either verbally at events or over e-mail would be great: [email protected]

All photos by Jakob Ebrey Photography