VOYA: Balancing costs and carbon emissions

VOYA has partnerships in place with several environmental organisations to ensure its business practices remain sustainable. Mark Walton discusses this ethos and the challenges it presents

“With expansion, sustainability remains a constant challenge. We are a luxury brand with premium presentation, and we are supporting customers all around the world, so keeping a track of our carbon footprint is a huge task.

“The way I look at it is, whether you like it or not, someone is going to have to ship something to the Maldives, and at least VOYA is carbon-balancing all of its operations.

“I invited someone in from Plastic Bank to look at our entire production and estimate how much has to be reclaimed to meet our goal of reclaiming five bottles from the ocean for each unit we produce.

“The Soil Association verifies all our formulations, manufacturing processes and ingredients. The World Land Trust reviews all of our shipments – air freight (which we try to avoid) and sea freight. They look at all of our vehicles, cars, movements, air travel, personal travel – anything that is VOYA-related is checked and verified by independent bodies.

“We build these efforts into the cost structure of our products. So, while any commercial activity has the potential to be environmentally unfriendly, we are mitigating this more than, I believe, anyone else. Until there is a ‘perfect’ solution, we will continue to simply do our best.

“It can be difficult to get this message out though. Greenwashing is a real phenomenon, but we are a positive brand, and we focus on our message. We have been carbon neutral for more than 12 years and every iteration of the business, every aspect of our growth has had carbon neutrality at its heart.

“We have been using only recycled plastic since 2003 and we are certified organic – I developed organic standards with the European Commission and I was involved with the Soil Association in developing their new standards. We really were at the forefront of all this before it became a popular trend.”