Folens headquarters building with modern grey and green exterior, large windows, and company name displayed near the roofline.

Our Sustainability Goal

At Folens, we set ourselves the goal of reducing our impact on the environment and becoming carbon neutral by 2025. We are proud to have achieved this goal.

This milestone reflects the changes we have made to our behaviours and business practices, with a focus on the three pillars of sustainability – reducing our energy consumption, waste and water usage.

Since the beginning of 2022, we have worked with environmental education provider Fifty Shades Greener, to support our sustainability journey and help us achieve our sustainability goals.

While becoming carbon neutral is an important milestone, we remain committed to continually improving our environmental performance and reducing our impact on the planet.

Folens team in green hoodies standing proudly around an electric delivery van outside company headquarters, promoting sustainable transport.

Our Green Team

We have appointed a Green Manager to ensure that the action plan to reduce energy, waste and water is implemented.  “Setting sustainability goals is so important for every business.  It is really exciting to see the results that even small changes can make to our use of energy, water and our reduction of waste.  I’m looking forward to implementing even bigger changes over the coming months.”  Gerard Boland, Green Manager, Folens

The Green Team is made up of 20 volunteers from across the company, whose job it is to track the resources we use each month and identify where we have made reductions and what further improvements we can make in the future. 

Our Achievements so far

Over the last few years, we have promoted a culture of sustainability among our employees through initiatives such as recycling, paperless processes, reusable drinking bottles and mugs, and compostable cups.

With the launch of Folens Goes Green, we conducted detailed audits of the energy and water we use as a business, as well as the waste we produce. We used these insights to develop our sustainability plan and have implemented a range of improvements since the beginning of 2022.

We began the process of replacing our diesel car fleet with EVs, purchasing seven electric cars and replacing our delivery van with an electric van. We also installed solar panels at Folens. The installation was completed at the end of June 2022, and the results were fantastic: despite July being the wettest on record, our building received 48% of its energy from the solar panels during that month.

Most importantly, we are proud to have achieved our goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2025. This represents a significant milestone in our sustainability journey and reflects the collective impact of the changes we have made across our business. We remain committed to building on this achievement and continuing to reduce our environmental impact.

Stone path leading through a serene bamboo forest, surrounded by fallen leaves and lush green stalks.

Next Steps

We have lots of exciting plans for the months ahead.  These include: 

  • Continuing the process of switching our Sales Rep diesel cars to electric vehicles 
  • Providing all employees with Green Skills training to enhance their own sustainability awareness  
  • Check out our social media channels for updates on our most recent achievements. 
Three beekeepers in protective suits holding honeycomb frames beside a Folens-branded hive as part of the OpenHive initiative.

Other Green Initiatives

Folens hive with OpenHive

We are partnering with OpenHive as part of our own sustainability goals by sponsoring a dedicated Folens hive. This initiative aims to help the native black bee to thrive again in Ireland. Our hive is supposed to have a population of roughly 50,000 bees by mid-summer.

OpenHive combines modern and sustainable beekeeping techniques with the traditional art of keeping bees to help the Irish black honeybee thrive and to produce high quality, local Irish honey.

Selection of Folens educational books including Abair Liom, Real World Geography, Legacy, and language resources for German and French.

Our Books & Paper

All our books are printed on officially certified paper from sustainably managed sources in line with FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) or PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification).  We made changes to the covers of our Christmas Annuals back in 2019 so that they are now 100% recyclable.  Digital versions are available for all our Teacher Guides, solutions and lesson plans as well as eBooks for post-primary student textbooks.