First Steps in Sustainability with…
“[TBL’s reporting] has helped show us the carbon and cost value in switching from air freight to sea shipping for the North American market. It’s helped us offset the cost of the tariffs.”
The medical devices manufactured by Trulife make a vital difference to the quality of life of countless people around the globe. Founded in 1958, the company is built on health and wellbeing. Today, Trulife knows that wellbeing extends beyond the products it makes to environmental and social wellbeing, which is why it began exploring how to capture its sustainability efforts in a report.
“We’d never taken on a sustainability report before,” says Eoin Redmond, General Manager at Trulife, “so we needed clarity about where to start and how to get through the process. TBL are very good at breaking that down into simple steps and creating the roadmap.”
A practical, insightful line in the sand
Eoin describes this first report and the carbon accounting that accompanied it as “a marker”. “This was our line in the sand, the point at which we said, ‘this is where we’re at and this is where we should be focusing’”.
While reporting was driven by necessity for part of Trulife’s global market (“We are one of the largest suppliers of crutches and walking frames into the NHS and the NHS expects its suppliers to have sustainability reporting in place”) the reporting process threw up a surprising number of opportunities.
“It helped us understand the relative impact of shipping products and raw materials for manufacture,” says Eoin. “It opened up board-level questions about the value of R&D in developing frames and crutches in materials other than aluminium. It’s shone a (sometimes surprising) light on the relative performance of different parts of the group in terms of emissions. It’s helped us target end-of-life improvements when thinking about the fabrics, silicones, and polyurethane films in our products.
“And at a time when tariffs present a risk to every exporting business, TBL’s carbon accounting has helped show us the carbon and cost value in switching from air freight to shipping for the North American market. It’s helped us offset the cost of the tariffs.”
TBL did this…
“Going through this process with TBL has helped us build momentum,” says Eoin. “It’s informed our decision making. It’s helping us ask the right questions, because it’s easy to lose perspective when you’re in the day-to-day of delivery. It’s also helping to build our reputation. We’ve always focused very much on quality but the ethics of what we do and how we do it matter to many of the companies we work with too – reporting helps us articulate our commitment to that.”
“TBL helped take the confusion out of the reporting process. They made the pathway clear. But they’re also just so easy to work with. I’ve rarely you come across an organisation where you get on with everybody, where you feel like there’s a real harmony, a real partnership.
“Every business wants fewer headaches from its suppliers. TBL gives you fewer headaches and just make life a little bit easier for everybody.”
