7-days to Sustainability- Case Study 6
10 August 2012
BW Interiors recently participated in the 7-days to Sustainability programme and have seen some vast changes to the way the business operates since doing so.
The programme of 7-days worth of emails allowed BW Interiors the opportunity to review their current practices and behaviour from a sustainability perspective and gave them some ideas and advice that they could integrate into the business.
Some of the measures instigated as a result of the campaign include:
Food
• Small team to start growing of a little food in a window bay for use by employees.
• Food Waste to be incorporated in to current recycling scheme.
• Investment in some BWI bags for life for use by employees going out to get lunch, to avoid daily use of plastic bags.
• Restaurants that are part of the Sustainable Restaurants Association to be used whenever business lunches are required.
• Business supermarket Shopping list reviewed, some products changed to more sustainable or socially responsible options. E.g. fair trade tea and coffee, recycled kitchen roll, ecologically friendly washing up liquid.
Energy
• New poster campaign instigated to raise awareness of energy issues in the office and to encourage best practice in terms of energy conservation.
• Regular surveys to be undertaken to check on employees efforts to switch off things at the end of the day. Good performers to be rewarded with small treats.
• Installing of PIRs in meeting rooms to reduce unnecessary energy use.
• Installing PIRs in toilets to reduce unnecessary energy use.
Water
• Installed ‘water hippos’ into WCs to reduce water consumption.
• Flow rate of taps reduced to reduce water consumption.
Operations
• Review of current Site Waste Management Plan template and system underway.
• Environmental seminars to be provided to all site staff to increase understanding of environmental issues associated with construction and to encourage the site staff to think about possible methods of reducing the environmental impacts of our sites.
Other
• New recycling bins ordered and new recycling strategy set out across office to cover paper, cardboard, plastics, batteries, food.
• Formal green team set up within the business to meet monthly to evaluate previous actions and suggest and implement to ideas.
These fantastic developments are just the start of some brilliant sustainability work that can be done at BW Interiors. Employee engagement is key, which BW Interiors have clearly embraced with eight people becoming part of the Green Team scheduled to have monthly meetings.
Joe Croft, Environmental and Sustainability Coordinator at BW Interiors said: “The 7-days scheme provided us with a framework to review all our operations from sustainability perspective. As well as providing a framework, the scheme also gave us some great ideas, and in reading what other organisations had done during the scheme, we were able to get some more innovative ideas. The scheme was excellent for helping us to engage employees from all sides of the business and get everyone thinking about how their actions affect the environment and how relatively small adjustments can have a vast and positive effect.
Planet Positive would like to thank BWI employees for embracing the 7-Days scheme and working hard to instigate these improvements.