Last week we mentioned we were taking our rubbish home with us. We decided half-way through the week that it would be far more enlightening for us to actually keep it (on or under our desks) and audit it at the end of the week.
Unfortunately the Eskimos are a reliable bunch, and many had already taken their rubbish home. But this week, we’re going to do things differently.
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It has been a while since I started my search for sustainable eco-friendly frames to frame some of the awards Digital Eskimo has been awarded. After a few well-intentioned conversations with people we still didn’t have a solution. Then I got in touch with Peter Cerneaz again. Peter: “For me this is something that I have been thinking about also. Framing is dreadful in using eco-unfriendly stuff.”
As we were a bit worried about the aesthetics, Peter made us a test frame first using offcuts of frames from other jobs. Peter pieced together the offcuts and joined the glass or Perspex using silicone.
Peter had never done that before so it was a nice experiment for him as well. The result was amazingly good! Although the white frame looked really smooth, we decided to spray them black as it would go better with the white paper of the award.
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Last week, we bought a bright “Eskimo yellow” bicycle pump for the Igloo out of our wellbeing budget. It’s one of those things we should have done ages ago to save us a lot of irritation, sweat and hassle while trying to pump up our tires with a tiny little pump.
Besides the fact that the pump is pumping the air fast and efficient, our new yellow treasure has also got a little meter reading the pressure of the tire to make sure we are getting it exactly right. So now our bike-riding Eskimos are flying over the road enjoying our wellbeing investment 
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The Wellbeing budget is a fixed amount per month and aims at contributing to our ‘wellbeing’ and ‘happiness’. You could also say that it contributes to the sustainability of the Eskimos and our work environment. Every week we agree upon the implementation of at least one new Wellbeing initiative, which varies from taking ‘action’, doing a (cultural and/or social) activity together or buying something for the igloo. We have been to the Sydney Film Festival, have organised a small soccer competition between design agencies and have bought more plants for the Igloo. Furthermore we have got our ongoing ‘wellbeing’ activities like yoga in the Igloo on Thursday morning and of course drinks on Friday afternoon.
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In keeping with our culture of sustainability, most weeks we try to institute a “sustainability initiative”. In a nutshell, we start doing something that contributes to sustainability within our office or in our community.
In the past we’ve introduced a “no takeaway cups” (as mentioned previously), installed a cigarette butt tray just outside the main door to our building (a favourite “smoker’s step”), and reducing our use of the lift (using the stairs instead).
This week we’re taking another step towards reducing waste – if any eskimo brings waste (e.g. take away containers, paper bags, etc.) into the igloo, it has to take a ride home with us. As we have a worm farm and Bakashi bin for food waste, this means that we should have very little non-organic waste at the end of the week.
It will be an interesting experiment for us – making visible our personal contribution to waste. I’ll post again next week to reflect on what we learn…
This Ain’t No Disco {it’s where we work} “invites Agencies from across the world to show us their inner sanctum”.
Today the d.igloo was featured on the site (thanks Ian!), with some cool photos taken by Simone Rosenbauer. That’s Fiekes our uber-cool uber-Dutch Studio Co-ordinator in the shot.
The page also lists some of the sustainable features of the studio previously featured on the Future is man made site. If you like what you see, vote for us!
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We are slowly refurnishing our igloo, and one challenge is to find 2nd hand / recycled stuff that has the look & feel we are searching for. This search led us to the Auction at Mitchell Road in Alexandria… Despite the fact that we have become the proud owners of some really unique pieces, we have had heaps of fun and came home inspired.
New ideas about how we could give old furniture pieces a new meaning of life, like we did with the old airline food-trolleys that we turned into storage, were born as a result of our mission.
It sounds so simple, framing 3 awards… It might be, but not if you are determined to make use of eco-friendly, preferably recycled materials. I set up the following questions beforehand:
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Here at the igloo there’s been much debate over paper coffee cups. Some of the ‘mos (myself included) sometimes succumb and grab a takeaway coffee in a paper cup from time to time. Last week, Fieke picked up some insulated Thermos cups and we now have a ‘no paper cup’ policy in the studio.
When we were deciding what to do I mentioned that I’d read that the energy use of a ceramic or manufactured cup (like an insulated cup) was higher than a paper cup.
Today Dave found the original article I read on Treehugger: EcoTip: Coffee cups – spilling the beans.
In the meantime keep on using your ceramic cup, safe in the knowledge that over the long term, it is the [TreeHugger] choice.
While the post/research doesn’t address plastic and non-ceramic cups, it’s worth mentioning. So far my trusty Thermos mug has handled hundreds of cups of coffee – so it’s on the way to producing a net environmental benefit. Hopefully there’s a few more years left in it yet…