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ASOS reports 21% year-on-year reduction in operational carbon emissions per order

Lauretta Roberts
08 July 2021

Young fashion giant ASOS has revealed a 21% reduction in carbon emissions per order or its 2020 financial year (September 2019 to August 2020).

The achievement means emissions per order are now down 45% since 2015 baseline, according to the online group's 2021 Carbon Report published today.

The Report also reveals a 13% reduction in absolute (total) operational carbon emissions over the reporting period.

Operational carbon emissions refer to emissions generated in the running of business, including offices, inbound stock, customer deliveries, and returns. As the number of orders fulfilled by ASOS continued to grow through the period, the percentage reduction in emissions per order (21%) was greater than the reduction in total emissions (13%).

Emissions reductions were driven by several key projects: the move to more localised fulfilment through the launch of ASOS’ Atlanta fulfilment centre in 2019; switching to renewable energy for three-quarters of ASOS’ global electricity consumption footprint across all sites; prioritising sea or road freight over air freight for inbound products; and further enhancing recycled plastic content in packaging.

Commenting on the results, CEO Nick Beighton said: “We’re incredibly proud of what our teams have achieved against a very difficult backdrop. A 21% year-on-year reduction in operational carbon emissions per order is a significant achievement that shows our efforts to decouple our growth from our carbon footprint are having an impact. We know we have more to do in this area and we’re looking forward to sharing more on that very soon.”

Last year, ASOS signed up to the British Retail Consortium’s Climate Action Roadmap, pledging to achieve net zero emissions across its entire supply chain by 2040. In the new reports, Beighton confirmed that ASOS would soon be publishing new, science-based targets in support of that 2040 commitment, ahead of the publication of integrated figures on emissions across the company’s entire supply chain next year.

ASOS's websites attracted 248.6m visits during February 2021 (February 2020: 214.1m), and as at 28 February 2021 had 24.9m active customers (29 February 2020: 22.3m), of which 7.8m were located in the UK, and 17.1m were located in international territories (29 February 2020: 6.8m in the UK and 15.5m internationally).

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