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CELEBRATING OUR COMMUNITY
Covid-19 has reinforced our aims to keep things local, to bring nature in and to work responsibly with all the communities that surround us. It’s part of what makes us extraordinary and stand out from the crowd. Here are the ways we are working to make a difference...
HELPING OUR HEALTHCARE COMMUNITY
At the height of the pandemic we wanted to support our healthcare workers. Brown Thomas Arnotts and our brands have donated over €20k in gifts and supplies to hospitals fighting Covid-19 across the country including The Mater Foundation Hospital Heroes. We’ve given 10,000 disposable medical gloves, blankets, duvets, pillows and beauty care sets for the team to make their long, tiring days a little more comfortable. We have also donated kettles, toasters, to support staff rooms and make much-needed breaks better. We also sent over toys and board games to Children’s Health Ireland at Crumlin and Temple Street Children’s Hospitals, along with story books and beauty sets in order to offer some distraction to the young patients and their parents. Also team members at Brown Thomas Arnotts have also donated and raised almost over €5k for our Hospital Heroes through a number of initiatives including a collaboration between Brown Thomas’ Cork Choir and music artist Brian Deady on a remake of his beautiful song ‘Hey Baby, I’ve Changed’. The business has matched that raised with a further €5k. and our target of with a further €5k matched by our business.
REDUCING OUR CARBON FOOTPRINT AND CLIMATE CHANGE
We recognise the urgency of climate change and have committed to do our part to avoid a global temperature rise beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius. This means committing to Science Based Carbon Targets run by the SBT initiative at the World Resource Institute. We are proud to be the first Irish retailer to commit to reducing our carbon footprint using Science Based Targets. From 2020-2030 we will reduce our carbon emissions across our estate by 50% and in our supply chain by 15%, from a baseline of 2018.
NURTURING NATURE
Our Limerick team have been working for the last number of years on an Urban Hive project on the store rooftop Verette Gabbette who looks after the hive in store says, “We have a declining bee population not only in Ireland but across the world. This is caused by a number of factors including, loss of habitat, homogenisation of farming practices, the overuse of pesticides, diseases and climate change. We need to fend for the bees we have left.” The team's plan right now is to harvest their bee hives in August 2020 and to continue to work to assist bee species diversity and biodiversity in the city of Limerick.
During Covid-19 our incredibly talented community were tasked to post their work and tag Brown Thomas with #BTACallToArt. You can now see some of these works hung on the walls of Hugh Browns, in Brown Thomas Dublin.
CHAMPIONING OUR CREATIVE COMMUNITY
As we all had long periods in our homes during the last 6 months we were keen to continue to keep our creative community together and inspired. During this time we launched an initiative called A Call To Art. This was a creative challenge giving everyone an opportunity to share how they were staying inspired and expressing themselves artistically and creatively using whatever materials were available at home. Our incredibly talented community were tasked to post their work and tag Brown Thomas with #BTACallToArt. There was a huge reaction from the community which has been wonderful to see from rug art to painted internal doors the creative and imaginative entries are wonderful. See some of the amazing examples of lockdown art above. These works of art can now be seen in our new restaurant Hugh Browns in Brown Thomas Dublin.
#BTACallToArt pieces created during lockdown can now seen on the walls of Hugh Browns in our Dublin store.
ENCOURAGING OUR VOLUNTEERING COMMUNITY
Also during lockdown we wanted to support our teams as much as possible while they were at home and in particular our vulnerable team members, as well as our retired community retirees so we created a BTA Brown Thomas Arnotts community Helpline. Over 50 team members volunteered to man the phones and pick up needed supplies. While for the older communities on our doorstep over 20 of our team members took part and are volunteering with the Keep In Touch Initiative with Age Action Ireland on IT tutorials to support older people to stay connected with their families.
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Learn a thing or two from our Sustainability Team about how to Shop More Consciously with our Sustainable Edit.