Nine easy ways to make your office a greener place to work
By: Lucy Hook
Tags: Recycling, Environment, Green, Office Culture, Flowers

Nine easy ways to make your office a greener place to work

From chatting to my colleagues at Bloom & Wild, it was obvious they were very green-eyed. No, not with jealousy. But with a hunger to do good for the environment. And while we all adopt do-good habits at home, I realised that at work it can be a very different story. With this in mind, I set about started to think about what we could do in September’s ‘Recycling Awareness Week’ (23–27th September) to get everyone excited about the great things we already do and to get them thinking about other ways we can all reduce our personal impact on the planet (at work and at home).

Nine easy office switch ups I’ve made at Bloom & Wild, that you can too:

Moving to 100% recycled toilet paper and kitchen roll (thanks, Who Gives A Crap) Filling our bathrooms with eco feminine products, like TOTM and Grace & Green Stocking our office bar with local brews, like Brew Dog, Beavertown and more Recycling all our coffee waste through Bio Bean Growing our own herbs such as mint and rosemary Adding healthier snacks with eco-friendly packaging to cupboards. Ordering communal lunches to reduce both food and packaging waste. Drying leftover flowers to turn them into office decorations (rather than waste!) Using as many recycled stationery products as we can, including envelopes, post-it notes and pens

Now, let’s talk about the fun ‘Green Week’ activities I planned.

Our first challenge was to upcycle some of the materials we include in our letterbox flowers. As we’re lucky enough to have conscientious customers who post us back their plastic petal nets, I was able to build up a little collection to give a new lease of life. Things we made included a seed holder for birds, a drainage cover to pots, and much more.

Up next, we had a BYOC (container) body scrub workshop. According to Garnier (via this Stylist article) ‘while 90% of us recycle kitchen waste, 50% of Brits don’t recycle bathroom waste such as shampoo, conditioner and shower gel bottles simply because it’s inconvenient, meaning 2.7 billion plastic bottles hit landfill every year’. So we decided to turn old hair mask tubs, shower gel tubes, jam jars (and many other old pots) into vessels for our homemade scrubs.

Leaving the office smelling aromatic (and our later our skin super soft), we mixed essential oils, coconut oil and brown sugar to make our personalised scrubs.

On Wednesday lunch time, Bywaters came in to clear up any confusions and complications of recycling. Like can we recycle pizza boxes? (No, FYI) Bubble wrap? (nope and we now use a sustainable alternative). They also told us about the life cycle of an aluminium can.

As the week continued, we turned our attention to foster the green space around us with potted plants. We’re proud to sell a range of letterbox plants. And we wanted to reduce our space’s carbon dioxide levels with more of them. Having personally already killed off one plant in the office, our resident plant expert (and Customer Delight Associate) Keira was quick to help us out. Supplying us with a selection of plants — from the pretty to the prickly — she showed us how to pot, replant and care for our green friends.

To round off the week, we invited Sustrans to come in and talk to us about how we can cycle and walk more every day. Over vegan summer rolls, we learnt about the National Cycling Network and how the charity is working to keep both people and the air around them happy and healthy.

While Green Week was a great way to focus on these issues, we’re committed to reducing our office’s environmental impact, every week. And I hope this has given you some helpful ideas for your office because any small changes we can make together really make a difference.