Top Shop Award 2010
Sustainable Retailing Category - Sponsored by Meridian
Winner - The Herbal Dispensary
"Our business has low impact on the environment, because of our dedicated recycling program combined with a building design that provides passive heating and sunlight, thus reducing our carbon footprint." - Bronwyn Lowe
"It's evident that the Herbal Dispensary have devoted time and attention to the sustainability of their products and the impacts of their store."Judges Comments
We were very pleased to be recognised at the 2010 Top shop awards for our efforts in building our new store in a sustainable way. We are the first time winners of this award, and encourage other businesses to take up the challenge. We were also finalists in the retail excellence awards 2010.
Some of our initiatives so far, we recycle all our paper, glass, cardboard and wrap. We pass on our bubble wrap to a business that uses it for packaging, and reuse a lot in the shop ourselves. We have always used paper bags for our customer purchases and also provide recyclable bags, depending on their preference. A lot of our customers have their own bags, which is great.
A compost bin in our herb garden takes care of our food scraps, we have a productive herb garden in our backyard, including herbs that we grow for our herbal teas and also herbs that we pick fresh for our customers. This area would otherwise be a car park!, we had to persuade our local council planners that this land was better utilised as a garden, and it is a very attractive part of our shop. We constantly get comments about how great our garden is.
We also took advantage of our natural light, having lots of windows and doors in our building plan, this allows for both natural light and natural air flow eliminating the need for air conditioning, and we don't need much extra lighting. Our concrete pad stores the heat which provides a passive heat source which helps keep us warm in the winter.
Future plans are to have a worm farm, a water collection tank and also a bee hive in our garden. If you have any other great environmental, recycling ideas to pass on please contact us
