Our Contributions To Sustainability

Some of our initiatives include:

Protecting our green spaces

he River Stewardship Company (RSC) is a social enterprise based in our home city of Sheffield which delivers social impact through ‘Riverlution’, bringing local communities closer to their local waterways. The River Don is a central part of the landscape surrounding our manufacturing sites, with two of our factories located next to its banks. Working in partnership with the RSC, our people actively volunteer their time to the clean-up, maintenance and development of the river

Delivering energy sources to deprived areas of the world

Alongside our friends at Vero Power, we are supporting the provision of renewable energy systems to energy starved communities around the world. Over 1.4 billion people live without access to electricity, a key requirement to deliver environmental sustainability, human development and economic growth. We work with Vero on the installation of solar panel solutions, providing engineering support during the design phase, bracing solutions for the solar arrays, and technical support during the installation.

Gripple Foundation

Supporting charitable organisations through donations and volunteer projects has been a core objective for Gripple since its formation in 1989. We challenge our people to drive our charity activity; in the last 10 years, alongside donations of over £1m to deserving causes, we’ve delivered a variety of ‘people power’ projects, renovating vital community spaces close to the hearts of our teams around the world.    

In 2021, we’ve enhanced our approach to supporting charities with the formation of The Gripple Foundation. The Foundation will now receive 1% of Gripple’s budgeted profit annually, alongside dividends from 200,000 personal Gripple shares donated by our Chairman and Vice-Chairman. Its purpose will be to drive more charitable donations to deserving initiatives, more volunteering opportunities for our people and even greater contributions to our communities.

Raleigh International partnership 

We’ve been partnered with Raleigh International, global youth action organisation, since 2018. Working in remote, rural areas Raleigh’s mission is to ignite youth-led action that creates solutions to the world’s most urgent problems. Raleigh works globally to promote the role of young people in decision making and civil society, to protect vulnerable environments and combat climate change, create meaningful youth employment and enterprise, and ensure the right to safe water and sanitation. With Raleigh Expedition programmes now a regular feature of our annual graduate, apprenticeship and future leader programmes, 25 Gripple employees to date have contributed to projects in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Borneo, Nepal and Tanzania.

A regular focus for our volunteers during the Expedition is the ‘WASH’ project – Water, Sanitation and Hygiene in Schools which directly align with UN sustainable goals 4: Quality Education, 5: Gender Equality and 6: Clean Water and Sanitation.

Raleigh Re-Green

New for 2022, Gripple will also be supporting Raleigh’s new UK programme, Re:Green, by sending employees to volunteer on it in Scotland. The volunteers will work on a conservation project aimed at protecting Scottish rainforest, learn rainforest, learn about environmental campaigning and sustainability, and develop their leadership attributes.

Gripple hangers - saving CO2 in the built environment

For every metre of Gripple hanger kits specified to replace threaded rod, it is estimated that a saving of 1.2 kg of embodied CO2 is made. This equates to a total embodied CO2 saving of up to 95% when switching from threaded rod to Gripple hangers.

We continuously strive to integrate sustainability into our product design process; a Gripple hanger today contains 30% less zinc than the original design, without compromising on strength or functionality.

In short, we solve problems for our customers which deliver significant, long-term sustainable environmental benefits - see our Leadenhall case study.