Are we green?

Being environmentally conscious is something that is taking on more of a priority in the minds of many of us. As a result, many of our staff have recently challenged us to make sure we are telling all of you how we practice being green.

This was an interesting question because we have actually done a pretty good job being ‘green’ over the years, however we have never had a formal program or mandate. What we do have is an internal culture that believes in recycling and reusing.

As much of what we do has been driven by our staff, we decided to ask them to share their thoughts on how we are doing. This seemed like a good starting point for sharing with all of you. Then we created this green page to tell you what they had to say.

As time goes by, we will make sure we update it as we achieve new goals in this area.

In our stores:

• Reducing
• Reusing
• Recycling
• Choosing

At our support and administration office:
(includes our Inside & Outside Sales areas, plus our Purchasing, Marketing and Warehouse)

• Reducing
• we use both sides of printed photocopy paper where possible
• we have a compost at this location for our coffee grounds, lunch scraps and smaller bits of paper — anything that is compostable
• we share printed reports in meetings as much as possible, and much of our internal communication is via email instead of paper
• many staff use a reusable lunch bag to bring our lunch in every day, and we use reusable travel mugs and bottles for coffee, tea and water
• for staff birthday’s, we try to use ceramic plates, glasses and metal forks
• we use a laundry service instead of paper towels
• we switched over our previous shopping bags made of non-recyclable polymer plastic to kraft paper instead, as a step in a better direction — however ultimately, we would prefer customers re-use their shopping bags by purchasing cloth or canvas bags instead
• we encourage email communication with customers instead of printed mailers
• Reusing
• Recycling
• Choosing

Ideas for future changes:

• change our account invoices to be sent via email rather than the usual paper trail
• continue to buy responsibly for products that we re-sell and for internal supplies
• develop an online ‘ECO PRODUCTS’ section in our online product catalogue, so customers can easily find all the eco-friendly products we carry
• repeat some of the customer outreach sessions we have done previously on ‘safe studio habits’ including non-toxic painting options
• take advantage of some of the incentives and programs available to businesses making ‘green’ improvements, such as BC Hydro and Live Smart BC, and the Clean Air Foundation