RAJA UK's CSR initative: 17 goals and 200 trees

In 2023, Corporate Social Responsibility is becoming a bit of a buzzword. Plenty of companies are making great effort to come across as environmentally friendly without doing adequate due diligence. But RAJA are different – even if we ignore that the company was founded on recycling cardboard boxes back in 1954, this year alone the company has appointed a CSR director on the board and has joined CSR Europe (the first company in our industry to do so at a corporate level). We’re always working to be greener. Here in the UK, we’ve been taking steps to more clearly delineate our impacts across all three scopes of environmental impact.

Scope 1: Emissions we produce ourselves, i.e. transporting goods.

Scope 2: Emissions we indirectly produce, i.e. power used in the office.

Scope 3: Emissions our goods can be used for after purchase, i.e. customers not recycling our products.

Our first report on our environmental impact will be coming soon alongside our new CSR policy!
But that’s no excuse for us to sit back and not get started. One of the major things we’re committed to are the 17 sustainable development goals from the UN.

We’ve been doing work towards these for years thanks to the Daniele-Marcovici foundation and their Woman and the Environment projects. But this year, after we scoped out our Carbon Foot Print at RAJA UK, we began work to become Carbon Neutral by offsetting. Offsetting is ensuring that even the damage we can’t reduce is mitigated by our work to help. We measured 1,040 tons of CO2 in our Scope 1 and 2 which we need to offset. By backing projects like the Southern Cardamom REDD++ project, Zoba Anseba Community Safe Driving water project and the 199.70 MW Wind Project in Maharashtra by BWDPL, we have begun work to offset our own emissions directly while supporting the 17 goals directly. And while these three projects have left us at neutral, we didn’t stop there!

Corby Tree Planting

On October 17th, 10 of our RAJA Green Team travelled out to Corby and began work planting 200 trees. In addition to our goals of reducing our environmental impact and the investments we’ve done to aid offsetting, we’ve been going the Extra Mile and worked with Carbon Footprint to help the planet. This takes the form of activities designed to help improve the environment and make real changes ourselves as well as our work supporting projects like the three above.

The team had a great time learning more about local plant life and making a real impact. They planted a selection of trees including oak and wild cherry, each explained so the team really learned something. The work wasn’t simply planting, it was about regeneration with trees cut back to make room for new growth. The canopy was trimmed back to allow more natural light to reach the vegetation on the forest floor. These trees are a first step to move us beyond just off-setting and towards becoming a truly eco-friendly company.

What’s next in CSR?

We’re far from done! We will be updating our blog more often with the ongoing work our Green Team is doing to make a real difference to the environment and to our way of working. More than just the products we sell, we want to help our customers become as eco responsible as possible by being the most environmentally sound choice for packaging. If you want to know more about our work in reducing our carbon footprint, get in touch! Help us work together to make a better world.