05-03-2020
British online retailer ASOS has released its annual carbon report, revealing the success of its Carbon 2020 strategy, launched in 2015, which achieved a 30% reduction in operational carbon emissions per order since 2015/16.
Other performance highlights covered in the report include three years of consecutive reductions in carbon emissions per order, and an 18% reduction in customer delivery emissions in the 2018/19 financial year, principally due to the opening of a new fulfilment centre in Atlanta, USA.
During the four years of Carbon 2020 (which ran from FY16 to FY19), ASOS grew from a £1.44 billion (€1.66 billion) revenue business with 12.4 million active customers, to a £2.73 billion (€3.15 billion) business with 20.3 million active customers, resulting in an increase in total emissions.
However, as a result of its Carbon 2020 strategy – which prioritised increasing energy efficiency, reducing delivery and packaging emissions, and increasing ASOS’ use of renewable energy – emissions fell on a per-order basis.
CEO Nick Beighton commented: “In 2015, I signed off a new carbon strategy, ‘Carbon 2020,’ which defined how ASOS, through the delivery of six big ambitions, planned to meet its goal to reduce carbon intensity – grams of carbon dioxide per customer order – every year until 2020.