Hello and welcome to another CrowdLeaf newsletter đ Vicky is away this week, usual service will resume when she’s back.
This weeks newsletter is jam packed full of green and sustainable goodness.
With two guest articles coming out in the last week, I point to the upcoming event as listed below, the Brave New World Variety Show Shindig and another fantastic company doing great things to make the world just that little bit more sustainable ‘The Eco Collective’ a fully vegan Supermarket for good.
Firstly our usual plea, anyone or any company who is organising green events, sells sustainable products or any other variation thereof is welcome to contact us about working together on boosting the green community and economy. As part of this we are also restocking our store and are looking for local providers to link up with our store so if you are interested, please email us.
This week just like the last has had some pretty interesting developments. Solar reached a peak at 28.5% of the UK’s energy this early May bank holiday weekend, producing more energy than nuclear and gas powered energy plants.
Again, there are some great events going on this month so please check them out and get involved. Once again last week Ryan @rwscarter was back on the airwaves to discuss all things green and sustainable with Xan Philips, you can listen again here.
Government unveils plans for business-backed plastics innovation hub
As mentioned in last weeks newsletter –
Now Morrisons is trialling bring your own tupperware to reduce plastic waste.
UK’s Most Polluted Towns And Cities Revealed
Terra watch: Rocks Could Have A Role In Combating Climate Change
AB InBev – the world’s largest brewer orders 800 hydrogen-electric trucks
Solar reached peak energy so far this year, on the hottest Early May bank holiday on record.
In pictures: Kenyaâs coastal conservation heroes
Whitley awards for nature conservation 2018 winners – in pictures
Storage And Organisation Ideas For Recycling Centers
Swanage Pier Dive And Litter Pick 12th May
Southdowns Green Fair 13th may
Brave New World Variety Show Shindig in Southampton – 18th May
Sholing Valley’s Spring Fayre 2018 19th May
Tools And Tips For Reducing Plastic 24th May
Something we look to help businesses do in the future. If you are a business that is in the waste(not) business please get in touch –Mixed Plastic Banks In Southampton
Here is Southampton’s list on what to put into your blue lid recycling bin: What Can I Recycle?
Pledge Your Commitment To Improving Hampshires Recycling Habits
This brilliant website gives tips and ideas about food waste and how to reduce it.
Instead of throwing out or bagging up (to gather dust) all those clothes children quickly grow out of this is a brilliant website to buy or sell unwanted children clothes. It is run by a busy mum who also knows what itâs like with ever growing children and the endless amount of clothes children accumulate.
âLast year a quarter of the clothing we got rid of was simply thrown away. Thatâs a staggering 300,000 tonnes that went into landfill. So many of those items could have been re-used and enjoyed by a another child, instead of contributing to the destruction of the planet.â
Please join us on Facebook, like and share with fellow environmental and wildlife enthusiasts where we will keep you up to date with climate change, sustainable and wildlife and conservation news and anything else green.
We would also like to start adding a directory to our newsletter, making it more accessible for everyone to gain information, join other environmental groups or eco-friendly businesses that sell eco-friendly products. If you or someone you know are interested, please contact us. We can also help advertise and advise on any campaigns and fundraising events, with the option to advertise on our webpage, facebook and newsletters.
Equally if you have an article or blog which is relevant to the local or global cause of making the world cleaner and greener or feel there is an issue that could be part of a discussion, then feel free to send it over and we can publish it.
Contact us via our website:
Look us up on Facebook or drop us an email:
vicky@crowdleaf.org.uk
ryan@crowdleaf.org.uk
On behalf of CrowdLeaf,
Vicky & Ryan
Please come and check out our store to support our cause and green community!
London Air Pollution Live Data
See you next time!
The Challenge: Since the path to sustainability is rooted in local context, creating an overarching corporate program that is also relevant to numerous departments and locations may seem counter-intuitive. How do we create an overarching corporate sustainability program that is relevant to every employee and is implementable across an entire organization, especially those with diverse departments, services and geographic locations? How could we implement programming that would be relevant to office, laboratory, retail and field-based settings or perhaps in operations located in New York City, New Delhi and in a small rural town in northern Canada?
Another key consideration when we are thinking through the scope of corporate vs. local, is that the reverse also needs to be considered. How does the program engage employees to directly understand their impact locally on organizational performance? For example, would employees be able to read a sustainability report and relate their everyday actions to the outcomes that the organization reports on? Do employees feel that their daily actions make a difference toward organizational goals?
An Effective Approach: âStrategic Flexibilityâ: I encourage an approach that I like to call âStrategic Flexibilityâ. This approach is about finding an effective balance with aligned action between corporate level targets and locally organized events and activities.
What does this mean in action? Companies focus program efforts on their overarching sustainability targets, but provide local autonomy by working with all locations to plan how they will meet the company targets in a way that is relevant to their specific context.
Strategic flexibility is where the âtop downâ big picture planning, meets the âbottom upâ operational insights and practicality. Each approach has advantages, but reliance on only one restricts the potential effectiveness and success of your strategic goals. It combines the strategic alignment of efforts with the business vision, while leveraging local experience, operational knowledge and momentum of existing initiatives. Creating efforts that are strategically flexible builds trust, commitment, enthusiasm, buy-in at every level, and company resilience by creating the space to be responsive to internal and external influences.
How it Works: Whether your program focuses on individuals or teams, create an overarching framework around your organizationâs sustainability targets that is clear and relatable to your sustainability reporting. Using the focused framework you have created for guidance, allow local offices to develop their own plans to address each target. Local offices may or may not be implementing the same activities, but they will all be working towards overarching sustainability targets.
Some key elements for implementation:
Local Planning â Encourage the development of a local sustainability plan by involving the entire office/location. Sustainability/Green Teams often only look within their limited group for ideas, champions and resources. Developing a local sustainability plan by involving all employees will open up avenues for participation, discussion, ideas, solutions, collaboration and resources.
Encourage involvement in the process by providing various approaches that appeal to employeesâ interests and time commitments. This is an amazing opportunity to build on the momentum of existing local activities, previous success and identify local champions. When itâs time to prioritize and decide on action plans, create space for productive discussion; for example host solution lunches, where you can bring into the fold anyone interested in a specific issue or initiative by discussing solutions to a particular challenge.
Local Support â This sort of âbottom coming up to meet topâ approach will be a new concept to many people, so providing ongoing support for planning and implementation for local offices is important and necessary. Having a strong support network for them to move forward will be key. In addition to corporate assistance, creating a community support network of local champions/mentors is also effective.
Networking and Knowledge Sharing â Providing an avenue for discussion, sharing ideas, success stories and advice on lessons learned is an effective way to make offices feel supported and ultimately more successful. Learning from each other and feeling connected as a community working toward a common goal greatly increases enthusiasm and momentum.
Want to learn more?
Watch for the next installment of our 6-part âStart a Sustainability Movement in Your Organization: Part 4 – How to Systemize â series. We will focus on how to systemize your program, no matter the size, function or structure of your organization or program.
Start a Sustainability Movement Series:
¡ Part 2: Building buy-in at every level
¡ Part 3: How to scale
¡ Part 4: How to systemize
¡ Part 5: All in for sustainability
¡ Part 6: Fostering culture & embedding sustainability
Connect with Wendy om the links below.
Twitter: @EngageIntl https://twitter.com/EngageIntl
LinkedIn: Wendy Firlotte https://uk.linkedin.com/in/wendyfirlotte
Wendy is a Corporate Sustainability Employee Engagement Strategist. She specializes in translating high-level strategy and purpose into aligned and embedded employee action.
Used cups are not only a challenge for recycle depending on materials and waste management, but also a big waste of space when binned and thrown away and into trash bins.
Too often we walk along streets and see trash cans quite exploding or worst we have to deal with this problem in our offices near coffee break areas or vending machines.
This is my personal experience and honestly, watching this garbage obscenity and the number of wasting bags used for waste management, I couldn’t take it anymore to see all that space wasted.
So I tried to find a solution to this problem, and too bad I found only big machines which are awesome to collect and/or destroy used cups managing big numbers, but too big and too expensive to install in my office or my home.
So here came the idea: realize a device to be inserted into the bin that let me collect and stack my used cups easily instead of trying every time to stack one into another one and often failing.
The solution should be low cost, small size and possibly affordable to everyone and most important could be applied to almost every type of existing trash bins around the world.
After a lot of modifications and tests finally a brand new tool was born to satisfy my needs: Daizyp. And using it for the first times gives me knowledge to use it even for other type of waste, or for example I found it great when using it in my office desk bin to collect coffee plastic cups into Daizyp and paper into the bin. A smart and eco-friendly solution all-in-one!
Daizyp helps people to collect used cups stacking them nicely avoiding waste of space and at the same time improving recycle collecting cups all together easily.
Daizyp transforms your trash bin into a smart one and can be installed in almost every type of trash bin.
Install and using it is very simple, all you have to do is inserting it into your bin (or outside the bin) and begin to throw inside it your used cups.
All the cups will stack together and when full emptying Daizyp is a simple and fast operation: you release the pin on the bottom and let the stacked cups fall into waste bag and you’re done.
Daizyp benefits are many and helps you:
Daizyp comes in 2 sizes version: normal size (84mm diameter) for plastic cups and glasses, and XL size (95mm diameter ) for fast food or big cups.
Daizyp project is young but promising: these days we are performing tests at our friend’s offices and small business and they are enthusiastics about it!
We are working for crowdfunding campaign scheduled for the first quarter 2017 and in the meantime trying to let people know Daizyp, the benefits it will bring and join the Daizyp recycle revolution.
Discover more on www.daizyp.com or follow Daizyp @thedaizyp