Take care of what we share
Today is Earth Day and as a team of people passionate about the environment and caring for the world we share, we thought it would be best to share a story on our Journal.
Earlier this year and following months of effort, we were proud to finally achieve our iso14001 accreditation and a momentary pat on the back. But in reality this marks merely the beginning for us to take responsibility, analyse our consumption and inform the processes necessary to make any real change.
We regularly quote the great words of Herman Millers founder D.J. De Pree - “A business is rightly judged by its products and services but must also face scrutiny as to its humanity.” Amazing to think that these words came many decades ago and for many we are only just getting the significance and context of this today.
DJ Depree - The man behind Herman Miller
So, bringing things right up to date, Covid-19 is clearly and rightly on everyone’s minds at this extraordinary moment. In just 8 weeks this virus has literally changed the world as we know it, and there’s been many an article on how the planet it benefitting from an almost worldwide lockdown. But just like climate change, the current virus has been acknowledged by scientists, doctors and experts as a real threat for many years. If you haven’t seen Dr Michael Greger’s YouTube talk from 2008 it’s scary how true and real this became. A quote from Gerry Taylor’s book ‘that’s not a stick, that’s a log’ springs very much to mind - “slowly slowly then all at once.” - as much as we try, we simply are never prepared for what is about to come.
Now we are here on national Earth day, reminded of something we have been challenging ourselves with for decades, how do we survive as a business and industry that relies so heavily on consuming new furniture, new technology, new or refurbished buildings? All these things no matter how well we source them still have an impact, a carbon footprint! For sure there are some amazing advances in building materials, technology and recycled content. But the advance and uptake of these over traditional or cheaper alternatives can be damaging and needs a complete change of mindset and uptake. Not to mention effort on our part to stand up and be counted.
At the same time and something I am pleased to say we are already doing is offsetting. Earlier this year, David and Hannah set up trees for schools - a competition based scheme for North Tyneside primary schools to design a classroom of the future. The winning school are to receive a full Tree Planting opportunity, in order to create woodlands on school grounds. We all know the many educational and environmental benefits this can have, but through this scheme we hope inspire the next generation to be more mindful of how we take care of the earth and how we can make our schools kinder to the environment. Teaming up with Trees Please and NEPO, we hope that we can continue this scheme across the North East.
An example of our Trees for Schools competition
We think of trees and relate it to our rain forests - places that are decreasing at alarming rate only to accommodate our greed, we know that it will take 1 trillion trees to start removing the amount of co2 to reverse the effects of climate change. Tree planting is something we can all do today and benefit from relatively quickly. As as a team we all really try to be mindful and make those small changes to our lifestyle, our products we use and our daily lives to achieve the more simple and quick solutions, because even small change can create a large impact.
In conclusion, one thing we have learnt over the past few months is that the science is there and that we are very good at ignoring it until it’s too late! Ironically, one other thing comes to mind with our current crisis - the very thing that is helping people to survive corona virus is oxygen. But what we must all remember today on earth day is we have really came together as a community, not forgetting the selfless and amazing care provided by healthcare workers around the world! Humans and humanity can make a difference for the better!
So I ask a question, is it the planet that needs saving? Or our humanity?