Gloucestershire sports nutrition specialist wins European sustainability award

Gloucester-based sports nutrition specialist Nutrition X is celebrating another successful year by rounding it off with an exciting European-wide award win, shining a light on the company’s impressive move towards a more sustainable future over the past 12 months.

Last week, the European Specialist Sports Nutrition Awards (ESSNA) were held in London, aimed at celebrating the best companies, products and practices in sports nutrition across Europe. Nutrition X came away not only with the Most Sustainable Company Award, but as runners-up in the Best Targeted Sports Nutrition Product category for Probiotix; a new evidence-based daily probiotic tablet, formulated specifically with the needs of athletes in mind.

Nutrition X supplies elite-level athletes and clubs internationally with its award-winning supplements and consultancy service, with the likes of Scotland Rugby, the English Institute of Sport, Bath Rugby, Gloucester Rugby and Blackburn Rovers as club partners.

Over the past 12 months, the specialists have made a marked effort to take big strides towards improving sustainability and environmental impact across the company, making large changes as part of their dedication to being a purpose-led business which prioritises ‘People, Planet then Profits’; something the ESSNA award win was quick to recognise.

Over the past year alone, numerous changes to improve the environmental impact of supplement packaging have been put in place, including the reduction of plastic packaging by up to 80 per cent across their tub-based product by moving to mono-based material bags for all powder-based supplements (ensuring they are 100 per cent recyclable), as well as changing all single-shot bottles to 30 per cent RPET material.

Nutrition X has also removed all plastic packaging wrapping from boxes and switched to sustainable FSC certified card for all postal packaging. Alongside this, the company has introduced two fully electric company cars which staff often use to carpool commute and attend meetings, as well as launching First Mile collections; a zero-to-landfill recycling company for business refuse. Through a partnership with Ecologi, the company has also helped to tackle carbon emissions by planting 14,525 trees and counting; one for every order placed.

James Markey, Managing Director of Nutrition X, said: “It goes without saying that any award we win as a company means a great deal to us, but one that recognises how we as a company are making active steps towards a brighter, more sustainable future is incredibly significant given how important the cause is to us; both on professional and personal levels.

“We’re so proud of what we’ve achieved through our sustainability initiatives over the past 12 months, but recognise that we’re very much at the start of our journey, with so much more to come. We’re at the start of the road to becoming B-Corp certified, working hard to put initiatives, programmes and changes in place that will enable this certification in the near future. We are also currently tendering for our Net Zero journey, looking to go beyond the ‘carbon neutral’ solutions that are very popular at the moment. Whilst becoming Carbon Neutral is part of our journey, we are looking for long-term solutions that ensure that we can measure, reduce, then offset; not simply turning a blind eye to our environmental impact by offsetting alone. Watch this space!”