Why sustainability matters to us

Howdens is a growing business. Sustainable behaviour will help us continue to grow in a way that preserves our culture, supports our business model, mitigates our risks, and addresses the needs of our stakeholders.

Part of our culture

We describe the Howdens culture as being ‘worthwhile for all concerned’ and ‘creating the conditions that allow everyone to succeed’. That means that our business needs to be worthwhile for our staff, our customers, our suppliers, the environment, and the communities we work in.

Supporting our business model

Sustainable behaviour also gives us a competitive advantage. Lowest cost production in our dedicated UK factories leads naturally to minimising waste, energy, and raw materials. Our mission statement aim of ‘no-call-back quality’ means that we need to produce and source product which is durable and safe.

Being trusted partners to our suppliers and customers means that our relationships need to be worthwhile for all parties concerned over the long-term.

We have over 850 depots in the UK and Europe. Each one of them relies on strong local relationships to trade profitably, so we need to be a good neighbour in each of those communities.

Mitigating our risks

Sustainable behaviour helps us to address some of our principal risks. For example, we invest in keeping our people safe, developing their skills, and offering them a great place to work. We do this because it’s the right thing to do, but it also mitigates our ‘Health & Safety’ and ‘Loss of key personnel’ risks.

Developing and maintaining sustainable supplier relationships mitigates our ‘Interruption to Continuity of supply’ risk. Energy efficient, safe and durable product mitigates our ‘Product design relevance’ risk.