Reflecting on The Very Group’s ESG initiatives with Erinn Dunworth

At The Very Group, we’re committed to creating a sustainable future for our business and the communities in which we operate.

Our journey to minimising our global impact is built on three clear pathways: environment, social, and product. To support this across 2024, we collaborated with partners around the world to make a difference in the communities we operate in.

Here are a few of senior sustainability assistant, Erinn Dunworth’s, favourite ESG initiatives of 2024.

Happy Summer Holiday programme

Over the summer of 2024, we got involved with the Happy Summer Holiday programme in China. We partnered with the Council of Toy Industries to create a family-friendly space at one of our factories in Zhejiang Huaxing, China.

The programme helps to provide a place, and facilities, for workers’ children to play and learn in a safe environment while their parents work over the school holidays. Given the success of the programme in 2024, we will be rolling the initiative out to more factories this summer.

Continued supporting the South Indian Spinning Mill Project for the sixth year

Through the South Indian Spinning Mill Project, we’ve been working with global brands to actively address the welfare of textile and garment industry workers in various areas of South India for the past six years. Over this period, the project has supported more than 13,500 people across 20 villages.

The project has five fundamental principles which focus on improving working environments and welfare of female workers. This includes providing financial literacy training and healthcare support for workers, and supporting and protecting migrant and vulnerable workers.

Over this time, the project has helped 166 women independently open savings accounts, while we’ve been able to support hundreds of adolescent girls diagnosed with anaemia to be connected to a health care centre for treatment.

In 2024, The Very Group introduced two new suppliers to the programme, and we are looking forward to seeing what we can achieve in 2025.

Launched our SAVE colleague network

Here at The Very Group, we have a whole host of colleague networks to drive change within the business and, in 2024, we launched SAVE – Sustainability at Very. Our SAVE network and provides colleagues the opportunity to learn about all things sustainability and improve how we engage on the topic as an organisation. 

A personal highlight since launching the network is where we teamed up with our FAVE network (Families at Very) to host Swap Shops at Skyways over Halloween and Christmas. This allowed colleagues to trade in their old items for someone else’s, and in doing so extending the products lifecycle, avoiding landfill and promoting circularity. Any leftover clothing was donated to our circularity partner Traid, and the toys were donated to Aid to All and Speke Swap Shop.

Find out more about sustainability at Very here.