Our team have been gardening this week. Not our normal day at the office! We recently signed up to investors in environment. This is to continue our work to reduce our carbon footprint and improve our impact on the environment. Our projects include a driving style challenge, an upcycling project, improvements to IT and water reduction work.

This week we completed a team project to improve the environment around the building with bee and butterfly friendly wildflowers and a new water butt.

Rubbish project

Clare suggested that we didn’t all need an individual desk bin with a bin bag in it. So we decided to remove them in exchange for two central bin; one for recycling and one central general waste. This has made everyone more conscious of what we’re throwing away. It’s also reduced our general waste output from the office. However it has left us with several desk bins. When Julie said they looked a bit like plant pots, Lisa suggested we decorate them… so we did!

What’s more, we were able to use recycled paint from Bradford Community Re:Paint, and we had lots of fun doing it!

The idea to plant bulbs and herbs and bushes in the bin plant pots developed into a gardening day, including creating a wildflower bed from an old rubble filled edge of the carpark.

Water water everywhere…

Julie, who is member of our Green Team, suggested a water butt would be useful to harvest rainwater from the building. For this task we recruited our installation engineers – who are much more used to installing fire alarms, intruder alarms, CCTV and access control systems. Shane and Steve took the lead with quite an audience. They did a good job and thanks to the weather we have already collected some rainwater!

The day was a huge success – with some of the team planting for the first time ever. HQ looks fantastic with all the colourful plant pots around the building and plants growing along the edge of the car park.

It got us thinking about the things you can do in the garden to protect your home. Head over to our socials for our top gardening tips for home security.