The Year That Was
This year has been really trying for so many, and lots of you have had a very tough time of it. Thank you so much for supporting us. With your support we've still been able to give back, in terms of donations, our community, and employment.
At Flora & Fauna we focus on doing what we can and being kind to the Planet, People, and Animals. Being Kind is at the forefront of any decision we make and we think of our business as a platform for purpose.
People
Something that has really hit home this year is the importance of community and, we know this is common amongst our friends and other businesses.
Australia has not had an easy year at all. The start of the year was very difficult for many with the bushfires destroying homes, land, and native forests. We felt pretty helpless as a business and diverted our attention away from promotions to donations. We became a drop-off point for food and managed to take a van full across to the Foodbank warehouse to distribute to those in need including a lot of toothbrushes. In addition, we donated to the Port Macquarie Koala Hospital. We realised we could make a difference, however small it was.
When Covid-19 hit the World in March we, like most businesses and people, were left wondering what to do and how to cope. Due to your support, we saw a surge in orders overnight which meant we needed to shift our business to cope with demand. We moved to two shifts in the warehouse to socially distance our team and we were able to recruit 38 people to work at F&F. This helped a few people get an income when many industries were challenged.
We rallied together as a community and we had some great brainstorming chats with many of our brands and suppliers as we figured out how to get more hand sanitiser - if only we could have forecast the future - we didn't need that much!
Through this, we've still been able to focus on our core purpose by being truly inclusive when we recruit and giving people of all abilities opportunities.
The Planet
We continue to push forward in our quest to reduce our impact. We have now saved over 30 tonnes of plastic from heading to landfill by removing plastic from our orders and over 15 tonnes this year. We made that decision in 2016 and haven't looked back.
We continue to be 100% Carbon Offset. We work with Greenfleet to offset the carbon produced in our business from deliveries, our internal operations, travel and even team cars. We offset all deliveries of your parcels. In the year to June 2020 we offset 144 tonnes of CO2-e.
On Green Friday, we offset the daily carbon emissions of over 1000 people!
Our F&F Recycling Program is bigger than ever before and this year you have returned over 1100 boxes of plastic beauty packaging to us that we have recycled with TerraCycle helping to keep plastic out of landfill. This is over a tonne of plastic recycled and kept out of landfill.
In July we launched Take It Back, an initiative to help reduce plastic in the retail supply chain. The intention is that this is bigger than F&F and a call out to all businesses to be better with how they package. We've encouraged all our suppliers to improve their packaging, unless it's already fantastic - thanks Viva La Body and Earths Greetings to name two!
In October we became 1% for the Planet members with our own brand Green + Kind. We will donate 1% of all revenues of Green + Kind to environmental causes - this is audited so if we say we do it we do!
Animals
We’ve introduced lots of new brands so we now have close to 10,000 products at F&F, all vegan and cruelty-free and plenty with reusable or plastic-free packaging. Brands that have joined the F&F family this year include Boody, Perfect Potion, Pela, Tooth Chews, Edible Beauty, Retreatment Botanics, Vitus, NueBar, Asuvi, Meow Meow Tweet, Dirt and so many more.
We also continue to grow our own Green + Kind range which is focused on plastic-free alternatives to things we use every day. A BCorp brand making a difference with no plastic packaging and now a member of 1% for the Planet.
We also support our favourite Animal Sanctuary, Where Pigs Fly, and even had our end of year party up at the sanctuary. We were very honoured to be able to name two lambs that had just found the sanctuary as their forever home. Welcome Flora & Faunzie!
Charity
We continue to be focused on charity partnerships and doing everything we can to support charities whether that is raising awareness or donating much-needed funds.
We continue to work with the amazing Where Pigs Fly Farm Sanctuary raising funds and selling their merchandise. We like to be very transparent on funds raised. You can be assured with us if we say we're doing something we do it however large or small. This year, with your help, we have raised $13,452 for the following...
- Where Pigs Fly Farm Sanctuary = $8,013
- Down Syndrome Australia = $500
- Greenfleet = $3,238
- 1% for the Planet: $1,701
- Foodbank - donated 500 toothbrushes and a van full of food
Awards
We’ve had a few awards in our time and this year we picked up a few more.
Feb - Sustainable Retailer of the Year - Power Retail Awards
Feb - Punching Above Our Weight Award - Power Retail Awards
Feb - Julie, was named No. 2 in the Top 50 People in eCommerce in Australia and Tom was named No. 35 - got to be pretty happy with that!
Nov - WOKE Leader award at the Online Retailer Awards
Nov - Listed in Deloitte Tech Fast 50 and in the Deloitte Tech Fast Female for the second year in a row.
We're all looking forward to a positive 2021 and continuing to drive change.
