Council first in cruelty-free guarantee

The move makes the council the first in the country to exclusively use products that are officially accredited as being free from animal cruelty by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV). The decision to source BUAV-approved products was made in keeping with Enfield Council’s wider commitment to maintaining and improving its environmental strategy. 

Following in-depth research and development, Enfield Council and its supplier partner, Chela, developed a set of new products free from animal testing. However, phasing these into use as a permanent replacement proved difficult due to the lack of a sufficiently capable logistics platform. Office Depot formed this vital link, ensuring that Enfield Council’s ambitions were backed up by a robust and reliable distribution channel.

Councillor Andrew Stafford said: "Developing a new range of products was a huge step forward in realising Enfield Council’s green objectives. Office Depot’s collaboration has allowed us to maintain our existing supplier relationship with Chela, therefore enabling us to fully support our cruelty-free agenda without incurring unnecessary switchover costs."

David Brown, head of public sector at Office Depot, said: "Our priority from the start was to introduce an efficient logistics platform that provided the Council with the volume necessary to meet previous service levels without this amounting to increased costs or disrupting current operations; by streamlining the delivery process, we were able to keep costs low and performance high."

Office Depot’s role in facilitating product availability has also opened up these new BUAV-approved products to other organisations and councils seeking to adopt green policies similar to Enfield’s.