Green with
At the beginning of 2006 environmental issues began to prod gently at our collective Cake conscience. We thought it sensible to act on this before the gentle prod became an aggressive poke. So, the obvious was done - the light-bulbs were replaced, an A rated fridge was purchased and we placed so many recycling-bins around the office it was all you could do to hold onto a five pound note for fear someone would whip it off you to put into the 'coloured paper' section. Job done...
Or was it? After a few months our efforts started to feel like no more than token gestures. We didn't feel like we'd honestly put in the commitment that these massive issues deserved, nor had we gained any greater understanding of the true nature of being a socially aware business - that prodding feeling was back.
I wanted to be able to describe Cake as a friendly environment and environmentally friendly, in the words of early 90's power-ballad legends Extreme it needed to be 'More Than Words'. We also wanted to prove that despite little guidance, assistance or understanding we had the smarts to do this ourselves and go beyond the obvious CO2 reduction stuff.
The only serious environmental benchmark we could find was the ISO14001, so never ones to shirk a challenge, we decided to take this goal, aimed at industrial heavy polluters, shrink, bastardize and adapt it to little old us, a boutique, brand entertainment agency. The UK has a total lack of guidance on what a small company like Cake can do, so we thought this was a damned good starting point and so the mission began...
We will eventually get around to creating a permanent blog link so we can share with you the things we've learnt, but, in the meantime, here is the environmental platform that we've adopted:
Seven Slices of an environmentally friendly workplace:
- Energy use and reduction
- Transport and workplace travel
- Social investment
- Water usage and reduction
- Staff health and exercise programme
- Waste management
- Sustainable procurement
This process has been long, time-consuming and frankly, expensive, but tricky as it may have been, we are now in a position where we've surpassed the simple stuff. We've swapped suppliers, incentivised staff travel, dramatically cut energy use, fully recycled, reduced waste, off-set transport, adopted the local school, managed our output and we even have bowls of fresh organic fruit for our staff to enjoy, lucky, lucky people. If you'd like an in-depth look at what we've been up to then click the temporary link on our blog site. The full independent site is coming soon, promise.
Mike Mathieson, September 2007