“Sustainability Sam” is set to drive environmental change

Making JYSK more sustainable is extremely important for our company. Therefore, JYSK has employed a Sustainability Manager to help us on the way.

Customers care how companies act, and therefore a lot of companies have set ambitious environmental targets to heighten focus on their environmental footprint.

This also includes JYSK, which is set to move in a more sustainable direction within all areas of our business.

In JYSK, we have already cut our per-store consumption of energy with LED lights and modern energy-efficient distribution centres. We have reduced waste, sourced raw materials from more sustainable sources and much more.

However, JYSK needs to take more and bigger steps to become more environmentally responsible, and working with sustainability at all levels is part of the current business plan process, which will drive change to become more sustainable in the years to come.

JYSK has also created a new position and employed a Sustainability Manager to be the driver of change. His name is Sam Harrington, and he looks forward to the challenge.

“While society works to phase out fossil fuels and harmful chemicals, we won’t ever be phasing out affordable duvets, mattresses, home goods or other timeless Scandinavian products that JYSK sells. There is tremendous opportunity, though, to improve the products we sell, the stores we sell them in, and every area of JYSK to do things in a more environmentally responsible way,” says Sam, who joined JYSK on 29 April 2020.

Bright green ideas

Within his first month on the job, Sam has already been presented with a lot of great ideas on how to make JYSK more sustainable.

“It has been great to begin at JYSK. I was excited to receive hundreds of smart sustainability ideas from passionate colleagues across the business to build upon the good work that’s already been done,” says Sam and continues:

“We need to move faster, and it is my responsibility to make sure that happens. However, sustainability is certainly not a one-person job. Everyone at JYSK can make a big difference.”

Sam is originally from the US, and after 10 years as co-owner of a start-up company producing biomaterials, he moved to Denmark in 2016 to work as Senior Manager of Sustainable Packaging for LEGO in Billund before moving to JYSK in April 2020.

“What is so exciting about working for a big international company like JYSK is that we can come to work and make a small improvement and then it will be multiplied out over thousands of stores and millions of products. So one small change that reduces some waste or cuts a little energy can add up to saving several lifetimes of an individual’s personal environmental impact,” explains Sam.

With an engineering background, Sam takes a data-driven approach to assessing where JYSK needs to make the biggest changes.

“While we are excellent at measuring financial aspects of our business, the environmental impacts from JYSK have never really been quantified. So I am initially focusing on conducting a greenhouse gas audit, which will inform our strategy and tell us where we should focus our efforts to fight climate change,” says Sam.