Green for Micro Project
First Pottery Producer in Ireland to sign Climate Pledge
Arran Street East is an artisanal lifestyle brand, designing and making simple and beautiful ceramic tableware. Their studio is in the busy Markets area in Dublin, Ireland, where they design and produce their hand-thrown pottery homewares. They make products that are authentic, with provenance and originality.
The company has been very successful and have presented their collections and won many awards at shows and festivals over several years. Sustainability is at the heart of what they strive for and they have made several changes over the years to reduce their environmental impact.
Those changes have already reduced their carbon footprint and they intend on undertaking further projects to ensure their business aligns with national targets for carbon reductions to impactfully reduce their contribution towards climate change in line with Climate Science.
As a customer-facing brand with such authentic values, their first steps on their pathway to net-zero should ideally consider the long-term aspects of the journey.
Arran Street East in 2021 became the first pottery producer in Ireland to sign a climate pledge through the SME Climate Hub.
The objectives of this assignment was to quantify the carbon footprint of the business and identify opportunities to take Climate Action and improve the environmental sustainability of the business.
A full look at the business was undertaken including Scopes 1,2 & 3 emissions, Water, Waste & Biodiversity impacts.
The pottery manufacturing process is energy intensive, particularly in the production of the ceramics in the 2 kilns onsite.
The building is a 19th century Georgian building which requires additional heating in colder months.
A new building is currently under construction to increase the training capacity of the business.
A number of solutions were presented including:
The identification of opportunities to potentially reduce costs by 49.7% has presented a great opportunity for this business to boost competitiveness
Arran Street East now has a clear strategy to reduce their carbon emissions in line with Climate Science.
As part of this process an Energy Efficient Design review was undertaken of the new building and identified some potential opportunities to incorporate low energy technology in the finished building.
