Breaking new ground with RS Group’s sustainable product criteria
The big challenge
RS Group offers an unrivalled range of a whopping 750,000+ products which are integral for the worlds of industrial design, manufacturing and maintenance.
The team needed support to expand the criteria for its Better World product guidelines – establishing exactly how to classify 5 new ‘families’ of product. The group’s long-term target is to get 100,000 products achieving the necessary standards.
The challenge was tough. We were genuinely breaking new ground – from our research, no one has set sustainability criteria for these specific products before – but with our huge experience working with Kingfisher plc on over 100,000 Sustainable Home Products, we were ready.
Our people-shaped support
It’s fair to say we formed a genuinely collaborative relationship with RS Group’s team - and this relationship was key in maximising the group’s internal knowledge and consulting with its manufacturers.
We also:
- Scoped out the new product families and all available data
- Created procedures and processes for review
- Consulted with manufacturers
- Tailored our approach based on the data available
- Kept in mind where we wanted to push the industry standards towards
The big impact
Firstly, our biggest takeaway from this project is a newfound appreciation that sensors are absolutely everywhere, and often integral to processes that create everyday objects or keep the modern world moving.
It’s an area that’s been under-researched up until this point, but there’s definitely scope for huge energy and carbon savings simply by keeping things running efficiently. RS Group sells a lot of sensors around the world – and a sustainable product in these families could save an industrial operation a huge amount of energy, simply by working accurately and reducing operational downtime, as well as reducing water usage and waste.
By the end of the project, we’d successfully set Better World criteria for 5 product families, totalling over 17,000 products, which can now be reviewed for inclusion in the Better World range – all while ensuring a robust and independent process that avoids greenwashing and over-claiming. RS Group is now in a much better position to monitor and improve the sustainability credentials of a huge chunk of its product range.
You've found your people
We're here to tackle planet-sized sustainability goals. So if you've got big plans, you’ve found your people.
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Brilliantly business-literate
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Collaborative and flexible
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We make it easy
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