Why sustainability matters to us

The Howdens culture is to be ‘worthwhile for all concerned’. Our business needs to be worthwhile for our staff, our customers, our suppliers, the environment, and the communities we work in.

Sustainable behaviour also gives us a competitive advantage and builds business resilience.

Lowest cost production in our own UK factories leads naturally to minimising waste, energy, and raw materials.

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 900 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.

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, and it also mitigates our ‘Health and 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, where sustainability considerations are built in as a pillar of the design process, mitigates our ‘Product design relevance’ risk.