The Stella McCartney brand has a strong ethos of sustainability. Part of the environmental strategy for the brand incorporates a monitoring and target setting exercise for resources consumed and carbon emissions generated. XCO2 carried out energy and environmental audits of a selection of European stores and offices in order to identify a strategy to achieve a 25% reduction in CO2 by 2016.
XCO2 carried out a three-step Building Performance Evaluation (BPE) in order to develop an improvement strategy for the existing stores and offices. The primary component of this BPE was an energy audit of six premises, a representative sample of the Stella McCartney portfolio covering both the style of store and the age of the building. The audit highlighted good design, operation practices and sustainable behaviour of the staff, but also indicated that there was potential for further improvement.
As a result of the audit a series of recommendations were made for measures that could be applied across all Stella McCartney stores to reduce their energy consumption and carbon emissions. The recommendations covered a range of refurbishment, replacement and retrofit measures as well as an array of strategies relating to operation, behaviour and energy management. Each recommendation was categorised with respect to scale of impact, payback and impact on business in order to prioritise the measures.
