Carbon Net Zero

LBS is an award-winning watch strap and watch battery supplier with customers in over 40 countries. 

We are also a 2nd generation family business that is committed to addressing our part in the climate emergency that we find ourselves in. 

We think that our business and the businesses we work with should be a force for good and that true sustainability involves uniting economic growth and human progress without negatively impacting the planet. 

For many years our UK office has been using renewable energy which has helped us to achieve a low carbon office. But we are not content with doing the bare minimum, and for us to make a meaningful impact, we want to go further. Let us explain…

Our office and our own direct emissions (Scopes 1 & 2) have a small impact on the climate. In fact, it is less than 1% of our total carbon emissions. The biggest factor is our ‘Scope 3’, or in other words, the watch straps and batteries that we have purchased and shipped to the UK. 

In 2022 we decided to work out exactly what impact we were having on the climate so we calculated every last part of it. Calculations were taken for every single product purchased, (over 7,000 line items), the materials, packaging, weight and distance travelled from different factories all over the world. Once the goods arrived in our warehouse every single delivery made to our customers was calculated with its driving distance, (over 10,000 shipments), to work out the carbon emissions.

We then ended up with a pretty big number - 475.8 Tonnes of CO2e to be exact. 

To put that into perspective, that’s like driving a car around the world nearly 500 times or filling 475 hot air balloons with nasty gasses.

Along with our operational footprint we are also looking at more environmentally friendly materials to use to produce the watch straps themselves. We currently have watch straps made from apple skins which are a byproduct of the juicing industry, pineapple husks and even plastic recovered from the oceans. We are always looking out for sustainable ways to produce our products.

Next steps

• The main focus for us is to reduce our carbon impact. 
• Our watch straps are made in Italy, Germany, China and India and we are cutting our air freight as much as possible by shipping goods by sea instead. 
• We are reducing our packaging and plastics use whilst developing great packaging that keeps our watch straps in perfect condition. 
• We are setting our expectations with our suppliers with the development of our Supplier Guiding Principles & Supplier Survey.
• We already have a small fleet of electric cars for business use. 
• We are investing in a rooftop solar project that will mean that we will reduce our reliance on the grid. 
• And we have set ourselves the target to cut our carbon impacts by 5% in absolute terms by in 2023. 
  
  

How to balance the rest!

By doing the above we will reduce the carbon emissions for our business, but until we figure out a way to produce watch straps and batteries without any climate impacts at all, we have to offset the rest.
Insert details about carbon offsetting here:

In simple terms, offsetting one tonne of carbon means there will be one less tonne of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than there would otherwise have been. To offset emissions we must purchase the equivalent volume of carbon credits (independently verified emissions reductions) to compensate for the emissions they cannot avoid. C

The purchase of these carbon credits enables carbon finance to go to projects which are avoiding and reducing emissions elsewhere in the world, and ensures they are financially viable and sustainable.

Every carbon credit represents one tonne of emissions reductions that has been delivered by a project, and is independently audited to internationally agreed standards. They are all certified by third parties and go through a rigorous system of checks and balances to prove they are real, measurable, permanent, additional, independently verified and unique.