At The Beech Consultancy, we are doing our best to operate in a way that is both compatible with our environment and good for the community.
We recognise our responsibility as a global citizen and we are continually striving to reduce the environmental impact of the work we do and create a positive impact on the community we operate in.
Our CRS Objectives
Our commitment focuses on 2 key objectives: -
- ‘Our environment’ - to have and promote a positive impact on the environment, and
- ‘Our community’ – to be in ‘win: win’ partnerships within the local community which will provide sustainable community based benefits
Our Environment
We believe that every little thing we do has an impact on our environment. And as our environmental impact policy continues to take shape, these are a few of the things we are already undertaking: -
Waste Management
- We recycle all waste paper products on a weekly basis
- We continue to promote a ‘paperless’ office and encourage our employees to engage in the use of emails, both for internal and external communications
- Our emails contain a ‘strap line’ asking people to ‘think before they print’
- We aim to reduce our energy consumption by 10% over the next year through energy saving devices/practices
- We recycle all printer cartridges/waste toners
Ethical Suppliers
We aim to use ethical suppliers to maximise our social impact, for example we use a childcare voucher scheme whereby the provider donates 5% of profits to charities relating to children and childcare
Environmental packaging/products
- We promote the reduction of our carbon footprint by allocating client work to local employees/associates, the use of teleconference facilities and car-sharing options
- We aim to source supplies from local companies to reduce our carbon footprint
- We use where possible recycled paper products or source printing requirements from printers that use sustainable resources
Eco Assessment from local school
We recently enlisted the support of local Market Weighton School St Mary’s Roman Catholic School to help us look at the effect our organisation was having on the environment.
The school has received the prestigious ‘Eco Schools Award’ four times. And we thought it would be great to find out what we could lean from such a progressive, forward thinking school.
We asked the school eco-committee members to undertake an eco-assessment of our business and recommend ways to neutralise the environmental impact.
After the audit, the pupils made a number of recommendations to our business and they asked us to remember the 3 R’s - Reuse, Recycle and Reduce.
Their recommendations included car sharing wherever possible, switching off lights, PCs and printers when not in use, placing peace lilies close to computers and servers to soak up emissions, using ‘energy dream’ plugs from eon to help save energy when computers are on standby, recycling all paper and using a caddy in the kitchen to collect tea bags and waste foods.
We are already car sharing wherever possible, switching off lights, PCs and printers when not in use and recycling all paper. And we will be looking to implement the other suggestions in the near future.
If every local business were to make small changes, the impact on the environment would be quite significant.
Our community
As an organisation that focuses on learning and self development, we believe we can have a great impact on our local community.
We recently conducted an online survey where we for each response we received, we agreed to donate 5 minutes of time to the community – from this we will be donating 20 days of time to St Mary’s College implementing an internal coaching academy. Read on to find out what we’ve been up to with St Mary’s College.
St Mary’s College project
Given the increasing trend for pupils to take responsibility for their own learning, it would be surprising if professional development for the adults in schools didn’t place a similar emphasis on self-direction. And they are.
Coaching is now high on the agenda at a national policy level to help increase performance. And local catholic school, St Mary’s College is no exception.
It therefore felt like a natural fit to be working with St Mary’s College. By developing a coaching academy it offers the ability for our own people to utilise their coaching expertise whilst having a positive impact in the community – a win: win for all involved.
And although we are at the very early stages of our relationship and this project, this is a very exciting time for us and we’re delighted to be working with St Mary’s College.
“There is strong evidence that coaching promotes learning and builds capacity for change in schools. And here at St Mary’s we can see the real value to our staff and our pupils, which will help us move from a good school with outstanding features to an outstanding school” commented Deputy Head, Damian Walmsley
Further suggestions
If you have any suggestions on how we could reduce our impact on the environment further, please email Helen@thebeechconsultancy.co.uk
One of the hardest tasks of leadership is understanding that you are not what you are, but what you're perceived to be by others.