Sustainability - and service - starts at home. Or, in our case, in the office. As a testament to our commitment to sustainability, we have implemented a few cool programs within our new office spaces in Hout Bay!
Two of the initiatives we’d like to highlight are our organic composting and our river stewardship program, both supported by incredible organisations close to home! We put these forward not solely to toot our own horn, but to challenge other businesses and organisations to follow suit, making the little changes to their local environments that can make - you guessed it - a big difference over time!
We have partnered with the fantastic Love In A Bowl farm and community centre that sits only a few hundred metres away from our office to collect and compost all of the organic waste produced in-office. This has resulted in us diverting this potentially valuable waste stream away from landfill (where it rots and produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas) and into productive, beautiful compost that ensures that nutrients are cycled back into the earth. This compost is used by Love In A Bowl to grow delicious vegetables and herbs that are then used for community cook ups, or sold to benefit the organisation and their educare programs! We are so happy that many others in our space have joined this campaign, and our neighbours at Bootlegger and Lulu Maison are now proud members of this composting campaign.
An easily overlooked feature of our new space is the river that runs next to us. Partially obscured by a low berm and vegetation, this beautiful waterway is a stone’s throw from our window but rarely seen or visited by anyone. We have taken it upon ourselves to become stewards of this lovely feature of the space, and enlisted the guidance of Jackie, of Friends of The River Hout Bay. This incredible organisation has taken on the task of ensuring that our local waterways are clean, protected and cared for - and creates lasting opportunities and employment for the community too! Their focus on conservation and preservation sees them removing almost a ton and a half of waste from the waterways and wetlands weekly, as well as clearing alien vegetation and preventing pollution and flooding by redesigning and modifying existing infrastructure with CoCT.
Jackie gave us a very informative crash course in river stewardship, and we got the office team out in between the storms to remove waste and alien vegetation from this little section of the stream. We managed to collect four bags of aliens and a bag of waste, leaving this stream in far better condition than when we found it! The main species removed were Paterson’s Curse (Echium plantagineum), English Ivy (Hedera helix) and Port Jackson (Acacia saligna), all invasive species that outcompete indigenous plants and contribute to losses in biodiversity, soil stability, local flora - or all three. Property owners have a duty of care to remove invasives from any land they own, and although we do not own this area we stand for stewardship of local environments - the more local the better! We will monitor this area closely and hope to see indigenous species return, with follow-up clears and cleans planned for spring and summer.
Although these are just two initiatives of many, we hope to continue to find and celebrate the little wins, and encourage any and all organisations to do the same! We champion a very simple formula to achieve this - look around your environment, identify any areas in which best practices are not being adhered to, and partner with the people already solving these problems to learn how to address and implement solutions in your community, environment, or office! Some problems are large, complex and hard to tackle alone, but the journey towards a better world for all is rarely easy. It is, however, rewarding and important, and that makes all the difference.
