Our plans for sustainable operations
From our shops and stores, to how we raise money, our operations must be responsible for us to meet our ESG targets. Discover how we aim to make this happen.
Making sure how we raise money and carry out our work is responsible is a key part of our environmental, social and governance (ESG) strategy.
Our shops and stores promote re-use, recycling and the circular economy by allowing people to buy and sell used items. They also provide thousands of volunteering opportunities. But we know that these operations can have a wider environmental impact. We want to make sure we minimise any negative impact on the planet and society through everything we do.
The environmental impact of our operations
We have worked with sustainability consultancy Bioregional to make sure our environmental targets are ambitious. They’ve been developed in line with international standards such as the Science Based Targets Initiative and Greenhouse Gas Protocol.
Our roadmap to net zero has 6 key areas for initial focus:
- making our buildings more energy efficient
- decarbonising our energy sources
- changing our transport fleet to electric vehicles and working with decarbonised third-party transport partners
- reducing the environmental impact of the new goods we sell and supporting our suppliers’ decarbonisation efforts
- reducing the environmental impact of our travel and logistics – from how our staff get around, to the transport businesses we partner with in our supply chain
We're also working hard towards achieving zero avoidable waste.
Although we still have goals we would like to achieve, we have made significant progress to cut our environmental impact over recent years. You can read more about the progress we have made in our Annual Report.
The social impact of our operations
We’re always aiming to increase the positive impact our work has on people – whether that’s our staff and volunteers or the 7.6 million people in the UK who are affected by heart and circulatory diseases.
A key equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) ambition of the BHF is to ensure the organisation is somewhere people from all backgrounds can succeed. Beyond our own workforce, we’re also working hard to influence health and care systems to ensure that everyone affected by cardiovascular disease has equal access to treatment and support.
You can find out more about our EDI ambitions in Igniting Change.
BHF has 18,000 incredible volunteers . But the volunteering provides for BHF, volunteers and the wider community. You can find out more about the impact volunteering with BHF has on volunteers and wider society through the results of our volunteering survey.