Hi, I am Elizabeth Dasso with Bish Creative. At Bish, we are committed to the selection of raw materials we source throughout our global supply chain and in our offices. We will focus our actions on these sustainability principles: environmental impact, labor and human rights, ethics, and sustainable procurement to protect our planet and the future.

Over the past five years, we’ve started making significant sustainable improvements at our corporate offices in an effort to decrease our carbon footprint. We’ve lowered our energy usage 16% with LED lighting throughout our offices, a more efficient warehouse design, reduced and improved packaging materials, monitored waste, recycling, as well as reuse.

During this time, we’ve also joined EcoVadis, a global supplier of business sustainability rankings, which encompasses 21 sustainability criteria. EcoVadis encompasses over 100,000 companies collaborating on sustainability with a common platform, a universal scorecard, benchmarks, and performance improvement tools. EcoVadis includes over 200 industries and over 150 countries.

Through our environmental, labor and human rights, and ethical benchmarks, we were awarded the bronze EcoVadis medal in 2021 and a silver medal in 2022. Through the Sedex platform, we assess the entire ethical and social performance of our suppliers, from FSC certifications to SCS recycled content certification.

This Earth Day, I’m thrilled to report the improvements we’ve made this past year at our Bish headquarters. This includes an increase of over 400% of eco-friendly packaging purchases, static-free organic starch biodegradable peanuts that decompose in water, leaving no toxic waste. We have eliminated polystyrene packaging peanuts, eco-friendly air pillows which are 100% recyclable, lowered single-use plastic in our shipments by over 80%. We’ve also repurposed and reused wood in our offices and in our displays. We continue to make facility improvements for the health and wellness of our employees by offering new workstations, sit/stand desks, and a repurposed Bish garden.

One of the newer initiatives last year was to increase our charitable donations. What a better way than letting our customers select a charity that’s important to them. At Bish Creative, sustainability is not just a mission, it’s a passion to foster a sustainable future for our customers and our planet.