Gekås environmental work

Since the early 1990s, Gekås has worked to take greater environmental responsibility. Our ambition is to achieve as little environmental impact as possible and we work with a number of different measures aimed at minimizing the environmental impact of everyday operations.

Biogas

Gekås Ullared is investing in biogas. We are therefore a partner in Falkenbergs Biogas AB. The project is a collaboration between E.on, Falkenberg Municipality and Gekås Ullared AB, who are all co-owners and financiers of the company. All food waste from the Restaurangen, the Coffee Bar, the Salad Bar and the Sportbaren, as well as food from the department store that has to be discarded, is turned into biogas, which is then used as vehicle fuel. We have a fleet of 40 pool cars, most of which run on biogas.

Read more about E.on biogas here.

Charge your electric car

Since most visitors come here by car, we offer several charging points for electric cars. These are located in several different places. Today we have more than 200 charging points.

Recycling and recovery

Gekås recycles 3 000 tons of corrugated cardboard a year, which is then made into new boxes. If all our recycled corrugated cardboard were to be made into new standard 30x30x40 boxes, we would fill the department store with boxes from floor to ceiling.

We recycle about 200 tons of soft plastic every year. Of the recycled soft plastic, 25 tons are reused for new yellow Gekå bags. Of the remaining 175 tons, 2.7 million garbage bags of the same model are sold in the department store.

Every year, customers leave over 4.5 million hangers in the wooden bins at the checkout. The hangers are collected and then sorted by hand by our staff. Some hangers are reused, while the rest are sold for recycling and turned into new hangers, buckets and other flat products.

All used office paper and newspapers are collected and sent for recycling and turned into new newsprint.

Natura 2000

Gekås Ullared is located by the Högvadsån river, in a so-called Natura 2000 area. There are around 4,000 Natura 2000 areas in Sweden that the EU designates as particularly worthy of protection and conservation. For us, this means that every expansion of destination Gekås Ullared undergoes a careful review by the county administrative board to ensure that the project does not adversely affect the nature in the area.

Energy consumption

Gekås has made a conscious choice to use 100 percent renewable energy in its operations. Since 2021, we have solar cell installations on parts of the department store and the central warehouse Sönneräng. We are actively working to reduce all unnecessary energy consumption throughout our operations. Among other things, we use presence control for lighting, temperature and ventilation, which means that the light is turned off and the temperature is automatically lowered when places are unmanned or the department store closes. Ventilation in the store is controlled as needed.

Wind power

Gekås AB is part-owner of a large wind farm, where our share accounts for about 50 percent of the group’s annual energy consumption. The wind turbines generated 9.26 GWh in 2023.

Human Bridge

Gekås Ullared has a collaboration with Human Bridge where we donate unsaleable textiles to their activities. There are also collection bins around Ullared where you can donate whole and broken textiles to Human Bridge.