Abel & Cole

Abel & Cole is a sustainable online grocer, delivering excellent quality, fresh food to households since 1988. Over the years, Abel & Cole has developed close, trusting relationships with farmers and makers, whilst helping customers enjoy and understand sustainable, seasonal eating. They minimise food waste and unnecessary packaging, and promote biodiversity and animal welfare alongside innovative, fair trade, and organic farming. From the outset, Abel & Cole have prioritised sustainability and have been committed to exploring all avenues to reduce their environmental impact.  

CLIENT OBJECTIVES

In 2019, Abel & Cole formally declared a Climate Emergency as an organisation. In response, they were looking to develop a Climate Emergency Plan with the help of Green Element. The project committed Abel & Cole to:  

1. Understand and measure their full carbon footprint across Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions. 
2. Identify key carbon hotspots in their operations and supply chain. 
3. Calculate and set ambitious science-based carbon reduction targets aligned with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C cap on global heating. 
4. Develop a Climate Emergency Plan to achieve these targets and align their overall business strategy to consider all climate-related risks.  
5. Implement the Climate Emergency Action Plan to achieve significant reductions across their business.  

Since then, Green Element has worked with Abel & Cole to ensure they meet all the goals outlined in the Climate Emergency Project. 

HOW GREEN ELEMENT HELPED

Abel & Cole’s partnership with Green Element is led by Strategy Director and Co-Founder Emma Littlewood, and supported by Analysis Lead Ellie Monks. Our team has helped Abel & Cole to drastically reduce their environmental impact and implement several sustainable initiatives.

CARBON FOOTPRINT REPORTING:

The first step in achieving the goals outlined in their environmental strategy was to conduct a full carbon footprint of their business. In 2019, the Green Element team measured Abel & Cole’s Scopes 1, 2, and 3 emissions as well as identifying their carbon hotspots. The team conducted a training session with Abel & Cole to help them understand what their main environmental impacts are. This information allowed our team to develop a robust Climate Emergency Strategy for Abel & Cole, which set them on a roadmap to achieving reduced environmental impact.  

As the Abel & Cole team became more informed about their carbon footprint, they opted to transition to the Compare Your Footprint software to take ownership of their company’s footprint and data. Abel & Cole now use the Compare Your Footprint software to upload and analyse their own data relating to site-consumption, e.g., electricity, business travel, water, and waste. The team was also able to back-date and upload their historical data to the platform to achieve a much clearer understanding of their historical impact and progress.  

Our team provides Abel & Cole with additional help with their more complex data such as Food and Drink, their largest carbon hotspot, which involves gathering the data, ensuring it is in the correct format to be uploaded to the software, and uploading it directly to Compare Your Footprint on behalf of Abel & Cole.  Our team mapped Abel & Cole’s food and drink data to specific food and drink carbon factors.  

DEVELOPING A CLIMATE EMERGENCY PLAN:

Once Abel & Cole’s full carbon footprint was completed, and carbon hotspots were identified, our team created a tailored Climate Action Plan filled with reduction recommendations. The Climate Emergency Strategy looked at several aspects of Abel & Cole’s operations, analysis of how reductions can be made, and carbon reduction projections for each recommendation. The action plan included: 

• Measuring carbon reduction and other important environmental factors relating to their business such as eutrophication, acidification, land use and land use change, carbon sequestration, soil health, and biodiversity. 
• Recommendations for reductions in food and drink, the majority of Abel & Cole’s greenhouse gas emissions, including projections of reductions achieved through increased proportion of non-dairy alternative spreads, and promotion of non-animal proteins.   
• Increased engagement with Abel & Cole’s growers and suppliers to help manage their environmental impact, including Abel & Cole’s partnership with Mondra.  
• Guidance on reducing environmental impact through their transportation and distribution, including the roll-out of electric vehicle fleets and introducing a driver app to reduce paper usage.  
• Guidance on increased sustainable packaging, including sourcing paper and plastic for packaging with 100% recycled content and re-use of packaging with their Club Zero refillables range. 
• Improved messaging to help consumers make more informed and sustainable choices. This included food labelling of emissions, and other environmental Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), to educate consumers and expand and promote non-animal protein ranges. 

SCIENCE-BASED TARGETS:

As part of their Climate Action Strategy, Abel & Cole needed to set science-based targets. Sustainability targets are considered ‘science-based’ if they are in line with what the latest climate science says is necessary to limit global warming to 1.5°C, as outlined in the Paris Agreement. By setting science-based targets, Abel & Cole have a clearly defined pathway specifying how much and how quickly they needed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Our team calculated Abel & Cole’s near-term 2030 science-based targets for Scopes 1, 2, and 3 against a 2020 baseline. Our team then guided Abel & Cole through the entire process of having these science-based targets validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi).  Find out more about science-based targets in our comprehensive guide.

TRAINING AND SUPPORT:

Our team has worked closely with Abel & Cole since 2019, equipping them with the most accurate and up-to-date environmental knowledge needed to excel in their sustainability journey and make meaningful change. Understanding your organisation’s impact is the key to environmental success, so we aim to empower clients to be sustainability champions. Our team provided training to the Abel & Cole team on data gathering, aiming to equip and empower Abel & Cole to manage their own data uploads using Compare Your Footprint’s carbon footprint calculation software in the future.  

CLIENT OUTCOMES

Abel & Cole has achieved their goal of understanding and measuring their entire carbon footprint, gaining a wider and much clearer view of their environmental impact. By using the Compare Your Footprint platform and receiving expert guidance from our team, Abel & Cole has measured its entire carbon footprint across Scopes 1, 2, and 3, identified carbon hotspots, and put in place measures to directly reduce their emissions. They have also taken increased ownership of their data within Compare Your Footprint, intending to take full ownership in the future through guidance from our team.  

In 2022, Abel & Cole reduced its carbon emissions by 7,939 tonnes: 343 tonnes across Scope 1, 52 tonnes across Scope 2, and 7,544 tonnes across Scope 2. In their 2022 Impact Report, they disclosed how they achieved these reductions:

1. Introduced new technology to help drivers plan more efficient delivery routes.  
2. Switched to Air Source Heat Pumps to warm offices more sustainably.  
3. Introduced insulated roller doors to keep warehouse fridges cold.  
4. Switched to hydrotreated vegetable oil to fuel inter-site transportation; a renewable biofuel* that emits up to 90% less CO2 than diesel from fossil fuels.  

* this does not include the full impact of biofuels such as biogenic carbon dioxide emissions released during burning (production by living organisms), which are measured and recorded as Outside of Scope emissions in accordance with the GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard.  

In 2022, Abel & Cole also had their near-term science-based targets validated by the Science Based Targets initiative. Abel & Cole committed to reduce absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 42% by 2023 from the baseline year of 2020 and reduce Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions by 53.5% (37,426 tonnes CO2e) per tonne of sold product within the same timeframe.  

In addition, Abel & Cole is making strides to reduce their environmental impact through sustainable packaging improvements. They use the least packaging possible but have made a further commitment with their Packing Promise.  For their ‘Refuse. Reuse. Recycle.’ strategy, they consider whether packaging is necessary at all. Where quality or safety is not impacted, they’ll remove packaging altogether! Additionally, they reported using 77% less plastic in their Fruit & Veg boxes in 2022, as well as rolling out Plastic Pick-Up, their UK doorstop recycling scheme. Abel & Cole have also made the decision to move away from compostable plastics and instead grown their zero-waste ‘Club Zero’ refillable range.  

Read more and discover other ambitious sustainability initiatives in place in Abel & Cole’s 2022 Impact Report.

NEXT STEPS

Abel & Cole continue to partner with Green Element Group to accurately manage and report on its carbon footprint. To further reduce their Scope 1 and 2 emissions, Abel & Cole has pledged to: 

1. Decarbonise its fleet. They have implemented a Green Fleet Strategy, a roadmap to replace all vans with 100% electric vehicles.  
2. Switch to green technology. Generating power on-site through the likes of solar panels is a long-term goal for Abel & Cole. In the short-term, they are dedicated to replacing old and inefficient equipment with cleaner alternatives.  

To further reduce their Scope 3 emissions, Abel & Cole will:  

1. Help their growers and suppliers to reduce their environmental impact and implement green solutions.
2. Increase their Club Zero collection, offering more products with a lower environmental impact.  
3. Directly fund decarbonisation on our farms through our Future Farming Fund.