Sustainability. What small steps are we taking to help the environment?
Sustainability has been the nation’s buzzword for many years now. As a company that is always keen to get things right, Point of Difference have been ‘doing our bit’ for the environment but 2023 has seen us step it up a level.
What does sustainability mean?
In simple terms, sustainability is the ability to maintain or support a process over time.
It is often broken into three core concepts: economic, environmental, and social and many businesses and governments have committed to sustainable goals, such as reducing their environmental footprints and conserving resources.
Like a lot of local businesses, we have already made a start on these sustainability ‘pillars’ – more commonly referred to as people, planet, and profits – with the way we run Perch Coworking and our other sites across Bicester, Banbury and Aylesbury and we continue to try to reduce, re-use and re-cycle as much as we can.
Our vision for 2023 and beyond is to build on this and, as we become increasingly aware of how our decisions as a company will have a lasting impact environmentally, we need to use ethical and thoughtful decision making with the environment at the centre.
So, what are we doing…?
We felt it was important to map out the areas we needed to focus on and, after a lot of discussion and research, we now have a detailed Sustainability Policy in place along with a framework of projects we’ll be working on.
One of our targets for 2023 (but by no means the only thing we will be addressing!) is to look very carefully at how we can start to increase environmental habitat at each of the sites we have.
We are lucky that most of the buildings are situated within their own grounds which means we can start to install a selection of habitat boxes for bats, birds and Hedgehogs and convert areas of waste ground to wildflower ‘meadows’ all of which will help to encourage and support local wildlife. The Old Bakery, St.Edburg’s and the newly acquired Bicester Innovation Centre (all based in Bicester) are perfect for a few carefully positioned boxes and each of the sites have areas that can be converted. Even a little patch of wildflowers is better than nothing!
Who have we found to make our boxes?
We researched who we would like to use in the production of the boxes and were very lucky to discover a fabulous local resource in the Bicester Green recycling centre – 5 minutes from Bicester town centre – where the AMAZING team of volunteers there, reuse, repair, repurpose, recondition and recycle bikes, electricals and wooden items.
With this in mind, we approached the team in the wood workshop with our plan, discussed options and they were delighted to take on our order…and, following a little recent trip to see them in action, it looks like work is well underway and the handmade boxes will be appearing soon at our sites.
As the centre re-uses and re-cycles materials it means we can donate all the waste timber that has accumulated from previous Point of Difference refurbs to be used within their future projects and commissions.
We’re looking forward to monitoring the boxes and seeing what turns up. The waste areas will be worked on and although they will take a little time to become established, we know it will all help. We’ll keep you posted!
Sustainability is a big subject to tackle and we have a long list of things we want to address BUT you have to start somewhere…and we feel we’re definitely on the right track.
For further information please contact us. e: [email protected] t: 01869 690126
w: pointofdifference.co.uk
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If you would like more information on our sustainability policy, please get in touch.
Call 01869 690126 or email [email protected]
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