The greenification of Shiny Towers Part 1: Moving Day
You may have noticed a bit of a hiatus in posts this morning, so please accept my apologies on behalf of the Hippyshopper team. We haven't been out enjoying the gentle April sunshine though; we've been hard at work shifting the contents of our old office into the all new Shiny Towers 3.0, just off London's fashionable Drury Lane. We achieved this mostly on foot, though I admit we werent green enough to move some of the larger furniture items without the help of wheels. You have to draw the line somewhere, and a broken back is a good place to start...I was all for highjacking one of these cute little vans, but best not to make enemies of the neighbours.
Once we'd completed the all-important tasks of getting everyone online, bagging desks and locating the toilets, my mind turned to the question of making the office as green as possible. There are going to be some challenges ahead...
Firstly, we've accumulated rather a lot of boxes over the past three months. The move has generated even more, and we're now practically living in them. Here's our CEO Ashley pitching in with Shiny girls Isabelle and Kim to shift an aptly-named 'large box'; just one of a small army of them that we'll have to offload in an eco-friendly manner.
Fortunately, cardboard is dead easy to recycle (unlike plastic, of which there are over 50 different types and even when you can recycle it, this can result in enough C02 to make it literally a waste of energy.) So Camden Council will be getting a phonecall shortly, and we'll see how they cope with a large collection of large boxes.
Another consideration if we're going to get any work done is lighting. We don't have control (yet...muhahaha!) over all the lighting in the building, but we have brought our own lamps and uplighters, and gone are the days when using eco lighting meant putting up with ugly, oversized bulbs. Now, even the most delicate little desklamps can be fitted with low-energy lightbulbs: the tiny bulb fitted in this one, for example, is eco-friendly, even though it looks completely normal (the squiggly bits usually exposed in green lightbulbs are hidden underneath). Isabelle picked this one up in Ryness, which is currently having a big push for energy-saving electrical products.
We'll also be able to benefit from that trusty old light-source the sun, since the office is equipped with skylights and a huge glass atrium that will keep it bright throughout the day, meaning we should be able to cut down on electric light at least some of the time.
Next is something that I fear may give us a bit of a headache: those plasticky, packagingy bits that computers tend to come encased in, which are now forming a small mountain in the corner. Unsure what to do about polystyrene, bubble wrap and other plastics I couldn't even name, I turned to Recycle This for inspiration, and was happy to find a thread on this very topic. Unfortunately, suggestions on how to actually dispose of the stuff ecologically were non-existant, with a few creative re-use ideas suggested, but I'm not sure how practical they really are. My favourite was probably 'cover them in fabric to make a floating bath pillow', which I'm sure would work quite nicely if I could be bothered to do such a thing. If all else fails, I guess I can donate the scraps to the Catwalk Queen team so they can create the next season's sensation; I've heard that sci-fi materials are in!
If you're also trying to make your office greener, there are some tips here that apply to almost all workplaces. I'll be bearing these in mind over the coming weeks, and will keep you all informed on our progress.
