To celebrate Earth Day, we’ve caught up with our co-founder, Elspeth Brown, who is leading the charge on our sustainability and environmental efforts across our offices in the UK, Ireland, and Canada.
She explains why even consistent, small changes can still have a big impact:
I strongly believe that every business has a responsibility to make positive changes in their day-to day operations when it comes to looking after our environment, which is why I have spearheaded our everyday green initiatives, with the help of some other planet conscious team members.
While we are not experts by any stretch, we are passionate about sustainable practices so, in honor of Earth Day, I am sharing the changes we have made, the challenges we have faced, and what the next steps are to reach our goal of being more sustainable.
Hopefully we can inspire you to make your own green initiatives, not just for Earth Day, but for every day.
Contents:
- Why Sustainability Matters
- Identifying Challenges
- Initiating Change: Forming the Green Team
- Educating & Engaging
- Measuring Progress
- What Challenges Have We Faced?
- What Are Our Next Steps?
- Conclusion
Why Sustainability Matters
Sustainability is more than just a buzzword.
As a business, tigerbond believes sustainability should be at the core of every business and, as an agency who specialises in sustainability PR among other industries, we live and breathe this philosophy every day.
We are also finding that clients, our current team, and prospective candidates are taking an interest in our sustainability goals, demonstrating that it shouldn’t just be a ‘tick box’ exercise, it’s undoubtedly the right thing to do, even if we aren’t 100% of the way there yet.
Identifying Challenges
First off, as we are in the business of service with no manufacturing or heavy logistics, there were no large areas to identify where we could make improvements.
In reality, our agency locations across the UK and Canada operate in a similar way to most people’s homes, so the changes we can implement feel quite small, however every little bit counts.
Our initial focus areas included:
- Reducing heating
- Minimising lighting
- Encouraging recycling
- Reduce materials across operations and services
However small these changes are, they cannot be achieved alone so I set up our very own task force made up of likeminded individuals who are passionate about sustainability.
Enter ‘The Green Team’.
Initiating Change: Forming the Green Team
Our Green Team is made up of representatives from across the business, and have a clear mission:
“To integrate sustainable practices into every aspect of our operations.”
The Green Team meets regularly to determine objectives, review initiatives, and make recommendations on other areas we can improve upon.
Our current objectives are:
- Implementing energy-efficient measures to reduce consumption and emissions.
- Promoting waste reduction and recycling initiatives to minimise our environmental impact.
- Educating and engaging the tigerbond team to cultivate a culture of sustainability, environmental responsibility, and awareness.
- Encouraging planet friendly travel options and measuring our carbon footprint in line with our amended travel policy.
Educating & Engaging
Implementing changes across the business involves a lot of education, so the Green Team communicate regularly with the wider business, letting everyone know about any changes, why we are making them, and how people can get involved and do their bit.
Posters are also displayed around the offices, providing help and information on recycling best practices.
Measuring Progress
Keeping track of the progress of our initiatives and changes is not only hugely rewarding, but it also gives us ideas on other areas where we can improve.
Some of our green initiatives include:
- Installation of electric car charging points
- Lighting replaced with LED bulbs
- Toilet light sensors
- Windows fully refurbished with double glazing or draft proofing
- Removal of central thermostat
- Planted 3000 trees in Nepal as past of the Earth Runs project
- Ensured all website hosting facilities are approved by Green Web Foundation
- Reduced paper spend by 20%
- Replaced business use handsets with eSIM technology
- Reducing power consumption on everyday appliances such as kettles and other kitchen items.
What Challenges Have We Faced?
As an SME, we have been limited in what we can achieve, however the changes we have made are beginning to show results, which is incredibly encouraging.
Buy-in from both the team and our clients was also an initial hurdle to overcome, however we now have a team who are embracing the green side and doing their best to make improvements and clients who are also adopting our philosophy in their own businesses.
What Are Our Next Steps?
While I am proud of how far we have come, there are still a lot of green initiatives that we could improve on, and a lot of these areas involve how we use technology.
This is why our next steps will be:
- Measuring our data footprint
Decommissioning physical servers and desktop/landline phones (no one needs two phones!)
- Deleting data
In the same way that we minimise printing, we are hoping to introduce deleting data so we aren’t filling up our servers with old information.
Conclusion
Sustainability isn't just a trend — it's a fundamental responsibility that every business must embrace, and I am deeply committed to driving positive change within tigerbond's operations and our green initiatives.
While there's still a lot of work to be done, and learnings for both the Green Team and the rest of the tigerbond team, particularly in addressing our data footprint and technology usage, I believe every small change we make can have a huge difference and I am already very proud of our Green Team’s current and future plans.
To find out more about sustainability PR and how we advise companies, from start-ups to global businesses, on their ethical marketing and communications strategy, contact tigerbond.