“Let us go,” we said, “into the Sea of Cortez, realising that we became forever a part of it; that our rubber boots slogging through a flat of eel-grass, that the rocks we turn over in a tide pool, makes us truly and permanently a factor in the ecology of the region. We shall take something away from it, but we shall leave something too.” And if we seem a small factor in a huge pattern nevertheless it is of relevant importance. We take a tiny colony of soft corals from a rock in a tiny water world. And that isn’t terribly important to the tide pool. Fifty miles away the shrimp boats are dredging with overlapping scoops, bringing up tons of shrimps, rapidly destroying the species so that it may never come back, and with the species destroying the ecological balance of the whole region. That isn’t very important in the world. And thousands of miles away the great bombs are falling and the stars are not moved thereby. None of it is important or all of it is.

John Steinbeck

Long before the recent interest in the environmental impact of the packaging industry, we developed our own policy to promote the inherent environmentally friendly nature of the materials we supply.

This includes:
• Sustainable supply - All virgin board is sourced from mills which adopt a 3:1 re-planting programme and source only from accredited, managed forests.
• The promotion and use of recycled boards where possible.
• The promotion and use of vegetable based inks where possible, and use of environmentally friendly water based coatings for our Blister and Skin boards.
• Recycling all board waste through licensed recyling companies for re-pulping back into the board manufacturing process.

Our environmental policy includes the efficient use of energy throughout all aspects of our production processes and the Company as a whole. This initiative resulted in Clowes winning the prestigious award for energy efficiency in industry from Norweb.