Through its cleverly worded strapline, supermarket giant Tesco has been telling its customers for years that ‘Every Little Helps’.
What’s not to get? It’s simple. Tiny savings on your shopping add up to much bigger things and a healthier long-term bank balance.
Although few of us here at Be Bold would lay claim to being Tesco loyalists (we have Aldi, Lidl and Waitrose on our doorstep!) its famous slogan and the premise behind it has been resonating with us for an entirely different reason of late and that is how it can be applied to the environment rather than our shopping bill.
The debates surrounding climate change, carbon reduction, environmental protection and sustainability have been taken to a whole new level recently – supported, no doubt, by the vast media coverage given over to Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thurnberg and the ripple effect of her actions.
Closer to home issues have been catapulted into the limelight by UK politicians after they approved a motion to declare an environment and climate emergency.
Even amongst all the Brexit shenanigans, Euro-election results and the impending departure of our PM, the current environmental crisis continues to dominate the headlines across national and local media titles and quite rightly so.
Our last blog focused on The Guardian newspaper changing its house-style when reporting on environmental issues. This week we’ve seen stories about Morrisons pledging to become the first British supermarket to roll-out plastic free fruit and veg areas and even our local newspaper (The Newport Advertiser) has been covering a story on three different businesses becoming Plastic Free Champions.
Next week, we’re sure there will be more of the same and that’s why here in the office we’ve been thinking a lot more about our own actions, both as individuals and collectively as a company, and the impact of these on our world.
In fact, like many other businesses, we’ve been making a more concerted effort to reduce our carbon footprint and be more environmentally sustainable where we can.
Some of the things we’ve achieved so far include reducing the amount of energy we use either by boiling the kettle less often, not switching the office lights on if they’re not needed and making sure we turn-off our computer screens at the end of the day.
Some of us are managing to leave our cars at home by choosing to either walk or cycle to the office at least once a week. It goes without saying that we car share where possible when we’re attending meetings but we’re also flexible when it comes to home-working. After all, zero car equals zero emissions.
We’ve switched to plastic-free teabags in the office and we are currently researching other products we can invest in – refillable washing up liquid for example.
We’re almost paperless – we print very little but if we do, we make it double-sided; we have online newspaper subscriptions where possible and we recycle what we can – plastic, card, paper and glass.
At home staff are also making a massive conscious effort to be more environmentally sustainable and in particular they’re reducing their use of plastics.
Some of us now have our milk delivered by a proper milkman where milk arrives in recyclable glass bottles and those of us who are slightly more green-fingered are growing our own vegetables.
Those that don’t garden are looking at plastic-free alternatives for purchasing fruit and veg and Lidl’s ‘waste not want not’ boxes at £1.50 are proving a huge hit!
We’re reducing the amount of meat we consume, particularly red meat, and are being more proactive when it comes to sourcing locally produced goods to further reduce carbon miles.
We’re working on some other things too as well as ways we can monitor and record our carbon footprint so we track what kind of difference we are contributing to the environment over time.
Admittedly, it’s all relatively small-scale stuff at the moment and individually it’s probably not having a huge impact when it comes to saving the planet. However, collectively it’s a start, right? A step in the right direction. Small changes which add up to bigger things.
In Tesco’s own words ‘Every Little Helps’!
*We’ll try and keep you up to speed with our latest environmental efforts on social media and if you wish to join in, feel free to post your pics and thoughts along with us every Friday using the hashtag #footprintfriday.
