Published: 16/01/2025
Tell us about you, your customers, your staff and your business.
We are The Environment Centre, a charitable organisation, striving to raise environmental awareness in our area, supporting Swansea to become a sustainable city, by championing and facilitating community environmental action. We are a community hub inspiring positive action for a greener and healthier future. The Centre Shop is at the heart of this community. We have many loyal customers, and we are happy to welcome new people who discover us. Our staff cover a wide variety of roles, leading on many different environmental projects – from community greenspaces, recycling and repair space, energy hub, Climate footprint reduction, and many more.
What inspired you to open your shop?
The shop opened 30 years ago, as part of the whole Environment Centre ethos, to highlight Environmental issues, demonstrating and providing options for the Swansea community to shop in a sustainable way. We believe small local action can lead to big change. We were groundbreaking at the time in providing these options in Swansea, and we continue to be a unique outlet in the area.
What are you most proud of about your business and why?
Serving the community. The Centre has many different projects, which provide support to the community, such as a weekly Warm Hub and Energy advice. The shop is a way for us to not only sell sustainable products for a better Climate future, but also to make customers aware of our wider achievements and aspirations. We are a focal point for all things Environmental and sustainable. On an annual basis we host the Green Fair, bringing together sustainable producers to either sell their products or promote their organisations. We are proud that this has become a feature of the Swansea calendar and in November we welcomed over 3,500 visitors. Also this year, as part of our plastic free July, we joined up with Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) and became a Plastic Free Community – we achieved a gold award for this and a large part of this was to do with the products we have in the shop from Suma.
What’s your local area/ high street like?
We are located in the old maritime area of Swansea, very close to Swansea Bay, so at the gateway to the Gower Peninsula, area of outstanding nature beauty. Therefore we offer a good location for visitors to the city and the Marina to come and shop with us. The Environment Centre itself is based in the old telephone exchange and has a beautiful wooden staircase and unique history features. This reflects the history of many of the buildings that still survive in the area, and it is definitely worth visiting to explore the area. We are also within a very short walk to both of Swansea’s Museums, the Waterfront Museum, unsurprisingly, right on the marina dock side, where many boats are moored. This is also the base for our annual Green Fair. We are away from the high street, which has its challenges, in terms of getting ourselves noticed, but also a nice area of the city for customers to visit, and staff to work.
What sets your store apart from others in the area?
We are a completely unique Centre for the Swansea area, as we offer many events, such as repair café, craft workshops, as well as hosting meetings held by like-minded organisations. The shop is at the heart of it all. The shop is literally set apart from the city centre, but also as we pride ourselves on stocking products with only the highest “Green” credentials. We are a charitable organisation, so the motivation for the shop is to make sustainable options available to people in the area, and to show it is possible to make environmental purchasing decisions. All profits are put back into the organisation to promote Environmental issues. We are also able to react to peoples requests for specific products, if it matches our organisational ethics.
One of the key features of the shop is it is almost entirely hosted by volunteers, a number of whom have been committed to our cause for many years! We are extremely grateful for their dedication as, without them, we would not be able to sustain the service.
How are you and your other local independent high street retailers fairing?
Like many retail outlets, we have experienced a general fall in sales, as people have to watch every penny. We also suffer from being a bit tucked away, so it makes it a bit difficult to get our message out there, but we are grateful for the loyal customers that make the effort to visit and purchase with us. We hope to welcome more in the year to come.
What kind of products can we buy in your shop?
We predominately sell Suma supplied products, varying from food items, to cleaning materials and products, and of course refills! We also have locally produced honey and jams, and items created by local artists, such as cards, prints, gifts and local interest books.
What are the customer favourites at the moment?
As we have just been through the Christmas season, we have found that socks are a big favourite and also the recycled sari products, as they are lovely and colourful.
We are just looking at moving some of our refill body wash, shampoo and conditioners over to ALTER/NATIVE by Suma products and we are hoping that our customers will enjoy the new fragrances. We feel that this will provide people with more sustainable, value for money options within the city.
For refills we get through a lot of washing up liquid and laundry liquid, which is wonderful to think that in a year we have saved over 5000 plastic bottles being used!
Is there anything else you’d like our readers to know about you and your business?
2025 is going to mark our 30th year and we are happy to say we have come a long way since 1995, with so many different projects successfully achieved, that wouldn’t have happened without the Environment Centre’s existence. The Centre at present hosts many projects from creating community green spaces to encouraging climate change and reducing carbon footprints.
We will be celebrating this anniversary throughout 2025 so please keep in touch with us.