Commercial Office Supplies provides Sky with around 37,500 reams of paper per year. Historically, recycled paper was used, but in March 2017 Sky’s Bigger Picture Team approved a switch to paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. Sourced from well-managed forests, FSC-certified paper has similar environmental credentials to recycled paper.

As part of its Sky Ocean Rescue environmental campaign, Sky had pledged to reduce the use of single-use plastics across the organisation. However, each ream of the FSC-certified paper was supplied in an environmentally friendly plastic wrap. Despite the environmental credentials of the wrap, it was classified as a single-use plastic.

The Commercial Office Supplies team worked quickly to alleviate this pain point for Sky. It turned the situation around by approaching its paper merchant to negotiate use of an alternative paper wrap for FSC-certified paper.

Commercial Group has since briefed its paper merchant to use FSC-certified paper wrapping on all FSC-certified A3 and A4 paper that it supplies to clients across the UK. This equates to around 960,326 reams per year. That’s nearly 1million single-use plastic wraps per year that have been eradicated thanks to a collaborative approach between Sky and Commercial Office Supplies.