Changing the way businesses buy merchandise

Pinksheep believes branded merchandise can be an opportunity to make better choices.

Since launching in 2013, the Surrey-based merchandise company has challenged the idea that promotional products need to be disposable or environmentally costly. Long before sustainability became an industry expectation, Pinksheep was working with responsibly sourced materials and helping customers understand the impact of the products they purchased.

Industry: Promotional Merchandise
Location: Surrey, United Kingdom
Website: www.pinksheep.co.uk
Partner Since: 2021

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Together, better choices create bigger impact

Pinksheep believes sustainability shouldn’t make purchasing more complicated—it should make better decisions easier.

Through its free sustainability platform, Ora, every product is assessed across multiple environmental metrics and assigned a simple red, amber or green rating. Customers can quickly compare products, understand their environmental impact, and earn EcoTokens for choosing more sustainable options.

Those EcoTokens can then be used to support environmental initiatives, including Plastic Bank. Every five EcoTokens funds the recovery of one plastic bottle from the environment, giving customers a tangible way to extend the impact of every merchandise purchase.

Solving a complex challenge

Few industries have supply chains as fragmented as promotional merchandise.

Pinksheep works with hundreds of suppliers across multiple countries, each operating under different standards and regulations. Rather than trying to simplify that complexity behind the scenes, the company chose to make it transparent.

“We wanted to make a way of providing transparency to people buying merchandise.”

That philosophy became Ora.

Instead of asking customers to navigate complex sustainability claims, Ora brings everything together in one place—giving businesses richer product data, clearer comparisons, and an easy way to reward more sustainable purchasing decisions.

“Plastic Bank stood out because the blockchain technology, the traceability, the integrity of the offering—it gave us confidence we could prove the impact we were creating.”
— Emma Potter, Marketing Manager, Pinksheep

Why Plastic Bank?

Pinksheep was looking for a partner whose approach matched its own commitment to transparency and innovation.

The team wanted confidence that every environmental claim could be backed by evidence, while also ensuring their customers could trust the impact their EcoTokens were creating.

Plastic Bank offered something more than environmental impact alone.

“What really resonated with us was the social side. Plastic Bank wasn’t just recovering plastic—it was improving the livelihoods for the people collecting it.”

Many of Pinksheep’s clients were interested in protecting oceans and coastlines. Plastic Bank’s collection branches are located within 50 km of the coast or ocean-bound waterways, reducing plastic pollution in coastal communities. This partnership became a natural extension of reward options for EcoTokens.

Through its partnership with Plastic Bank, Pinksheep rewards customers for choosing more sustainable merchandise, helping recover plastic from the environment while supporting collectors and contributing to a more circular economy.

To date, Pinksheep customers have helped fund the recovery of more than 5.2 million plastic bottles through Plastic Bank.

Building customer confidence

While the partnership is still in its early stages from a marketing perspective, it has already become an important part of the Pinksheep story.

Customers joining Ora can choose to support Plastic Bank alongside other initiatives, including Ecologi. These partnerships are featured throughout the company’s communications and reinforce Pinksheep’s long-standing commitment to sustainability.

That commitment has been recognized through a Platinum EcoVadis rating, placing Pinksheep among the top 1% of companies globally for sustainability performance, and B Corp Certification achieved in 2026.

Externally, it has become a meaningful differentiator.

According to Emma, the partnership has helped attract new customers—particularly organisations looking for practical ways to support cleaner oceans while making more responsible purchasing decisions.

Looking ahead

For Pinksheep, sustainability has never been about claiming to have all the answers.

“It’s hard to define sustainability because it’s always evolving.”

As expectations continue to change, the company plans to keep expanding Ora with richer reporting, new ways for customers to understand their impact, and additional opportunities to reward more sustainable choices.

Together, Pinksheep and Plastic Bank are helping demonstrate that every purchasing decision can make positive change for the environment.