Introduction
2022 has seen the group return to activity levels around CSR that match the pre-pandemic efforts. Fund-raising saw a great leap despite the cost of living challenges and we have introduced a number of new initiatives. We have continued to reduce our use of plastic in our offices and made strides in recycling. Education on many environmental topics continues to be a challenge but our direction of travel has been much better across the calendar year.
Our Acting Responsibly points
As part of our message to our stakeholders, we introduced our core values in 2018. We want these values to underpin everything the companies do and influence the decisions we make in the future. We continue to embrace these values.
Lead by example
Enhance stakeholder wellbeing
Do more with less
Economic, Social, Environmental contribution in 2022
Our nominated charities for 2022
It’s only by helping others that we can hope to make a difference to society. We see it as our duty to lead from the front in this respect and that’s why each year, we nominate two charities for whom we will concentrate our efforts throughout the year.
These remained unchanged throughout 2022 and will continue for 2023. However, it has been decided that in conjunction with the CSR team, we will seek to review these for 2024.
Our charity partners for 2023 will be:
Key achievements and Initiatives 2022
Fund raising & donations: 2022 saw us raise our record amount for charity, topping over £9,000. This included almost £5,500 donated by the group businesses and over £3,500 raised by staff, a great result. A special thanks to all our staff for their contribution.
Julia’s House Jurassic Coast Walk: An intrepid team again took to the Dorset coastline to raise £2005 for Julia’s House. The walk consisted of a 43km route that took the team over 8 hrs to complete!
Bournemouth 10k and half marathon: In October a number of staff took on either the 10k race or half marathon at the Bournemouth running event. With a number of people running their longest distance ever, some great personal goals were achieved as well as raising £1550 for charity.
Introduced blood donation days for staff: We have introduced the option of staff donating blood in work hours at the start or end of the day within a 5 mile radius of their office.
Reinstated beach cleans: Post-covid restrictions, 2022 was far easier to reinstate our beach cleans over the warmer months. We carried out another 3 beach cleans across a number of locations in Dorset.
Removed plastic in many items we purchase: We continue to remove plastic from as many items that the group of businesses purchase for our Head Office locations. Whilst some can’t be helped, we have had the following impact:
· Changing dishwasher tablets to ones supplied in cardboard boxes
· Changing hand soap to use 5L refills, reducing plastic usage by 74%
· Moving to ‘Biopods’ (just add water capsules) for our surface cleaner and washing up liquid
We will continue to drive the group towards elimination of single-use plastic and reduction in any purchase of virgin plastics.
Changed our paper supplier: We now use Woodland Trust printer paper in our Head office sites that is FSC certified and uses energy in the production process generated from waste.
Goals and targets for 2023
Nominated charities for 2023:
We will continue to support both Julia’s House Children’s Hospice and Surfers Against Sewage.
Introducing volunteer days for staff:
This year, we will be rolling out volunteer days for staff. As a group of businesses, we will allow one day per year as paid leave to contribute to local volunteering opportunities.
5% reduction of energy across all sites:
Roll out an initiative to reduce our energy consumption across all our locations (where we have had presence in early 2023) by 5% by the same point in 2024.
‘Coat drive’ for winter 23/24:
Organise a coat drive to collect unwanted coats for those in need.