How aware are you of your carbon footprint and impact on the planet?

This is the question I wanted to ask everyone at Propel. For many, carbon footprint is a term you are familiar with and have heard a lot about, but have you ever actively investigated your personal impact on the planet?

I knew I wanted to make small and impactful changes within the business, and Propel being such a forward-thinking and supportive company makes it the perfect place to do this. I approached our Director Ben for his thoughts on my ideas. A few zoom calls and a lot of research later, myself and our lovely Marketing Executive Laura went about implementing our ideas.

A greener future for Propel…

Awareness

First was the awareness around our digital carbon footprint. To date, we have switched out internal browsers to ecosia, lowered our screen brightness by 30%, limited ‘mass’ mailing to the whole company, and redacted carbon-heavy internal email signatures.

Office changes

Secondly, we needed to make physical changes around the office. Propel’s hybrid working patterns means our carbon impact is already lowered. Everyone uses public transport or cycles, and this is only on 2/5 days! We also have a great cycle to work scheme to take advantage of.

We are currently in the process of re-organising our waste systems and bins to ensure we are maximising what can be recycled.

Plastic waste:

Finally, something which we noticed to be a major problem given our prime location in the middle of Soho, was disposable coffee cups. Not to name any one in particular *cough* Jake, Joe, Ben, Matt….Being surrounded by independent cafes, getting a free coffee on O2 priority from Café Nero, and having a Pret A Manger every 10 steps was definitely not helping our cause. We have now introduced reusable silicone cups for everyone in the business. It was important to Laura when designing these cups that they were practical, simple, and collapsible to fit in everyone’s bags. I think she nailed it! Moving forward, we are introducing a ‘charity pot’ and fining employees caught with a disposable coffee cup with all donations to an environmental charity TBC.

Going forward

While these changes are small in the grand scheme of things, we love to shout about our success at Propel and this is a great step forward for the business. We are always on the lookout for more ideas, and will continue to strive in being as environmentally friendly as we can be.

– Antonia Davis, Consultant