7-9 April I Free Shipping no min spend
Sustainability is a big word.
For a business, it can mean many things – energy efficiency, carbon emissions, waste reduction, responsible sourcing, packaging, resource optimisation, certifications and more. With so many areas to consider, one of the biggest challenges is often not knowing where to start, what to prioritise, or how to know if you are making progress.
For Freshening, our sustainability journey has been exactly that: a journey.
We were recently recognised at the DBS Sustainability Day as one of the companies to successfully complete and graduate from the DBS ESG Ready Programme, a 12-month programme by DBS and Enterprise Singapore designed to help businesses build their sustainability capabilities through training, carbon assessments, strategy development and implementation.
For us, the value of the programme was not simply in having another sustainability initiative. It gave us something we needed – a framework and a clearer way to look at where we are today, where the gaps are, and where we want to go next.
Before embarking on the programme, sustainability was not entirely new to us.
We had already been taking steps in different parts of our business. From energy and resource efficiency to product development, packaging and operational improvements, there were already initiatives taking place. But the challenge was that these efforts did not always sit together in one structured framework. Sometimes, you can actually be doing quite a lot without necessarily tracking it systematically or knowing how you are progressing against a longer-term goal.
The DBS ESG Ready Programme helped us take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
Through the programme, we were able to better understand our current position, put more structure around what we were already doing, identify areas where there were gaps, and begin setting clearer goals for the next stage of our journey.
Enterprise Singapore describes the DBS ESG Ready Programme as supporting businesses in areas including carbon accounting, resource efficiency and standards adoption – all of which helped us move from thinking about sustainability as a broad concept towards translating it into practical business actions.
An important part of the programme was also building knowledge within our own team. This was valuable because sustainability cannot sit with just one person or one department.
Our staff went through training that helped us develop a deeper and more consistent understanding of sustainability, so that we could be more aligned in how we approach it across the business.
One of the most important outcomes for us has been seeing how sustainability can be integrated into the way we operate, rather than treated as a separate initiative.
Today, some of the steps we have taken include the installation of solar panels at our facility, which has helped reduce our electrical bills by around 50%. We have also introduced fleet electrification and continued to enhance automation across our operations. These initiatives are not only about reducing environmental impact, but also about improving efficiency and making better use of resources.
Our participation in the DBS ESG Ready Programme has also helped us formalise our reporting. We now have a sustainability report, giving us a more structured way to document our efforts and progress.
At the same time, we are working towards ISO 14001 certification and preparing for the evolving requirements of the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR).
These are not boxes we want to simply tick. They are part of building stronger systems and processes that can support our business over the longer term.
Sustainability is increasingly becoming part of business conversations, particularly with customers operating in international markets.
For our European customers, for example, sustainability requirements and expectations are increasingly relevant when evaluating suppliers and products.
Having a structured sustainability framework and documentation means that when customers ask us about our environmental efforts, we are now better equipped to provide the information and documents to support what we are doing.
If there is one thing we would share with other businesses that are still at the beginning of their sustainability journey, it is simple:
Start first. Get the ball rolling. You do not need to have everything figured out before taking the first step. A small change can be a starting point. Once you begin, you can build on it, measure it, learn from it and gradually expand your efforts.
And you do not have to figure everything out on your own. There are programmes, resources, industry partners and support available to help businesses understand where they stand and what they can do next. Enterprise Singapore, for example, provides a range of sustainability resources and programmes to help businesses at different stages of their journey.
Graduating from the DBS ESG Ready Programme is a milestone for us, but it is not the finish line. Sustainability is an ongoing effort. There is still much more for us to learn, measure, improve and implement.
What has changed is that we now have a clearer understanding of where we are, a stronger framework for tracking our progress, and a better sense of where we want to go next.
We will not stop here.
We will continue putting in the effort, finding ways to improve our operations, making better use of resources and taking meaningful steps towards building a more sustainable business.
