Sustainability

Creating a healthy work environment forms an integral part of our staff wellbeing policy.

Inspired by a smart TED talk about the value of plants in the workforce, we chose to deck out our Igloo with a range of specially selected greenery, including Peace Lily (Mauna Loa), Mother in law’s Tongue, Janet Craig Dracaena and Rubber Plant. These amazing plants have the unique ability to produce oxygen, balance internal humidity and effectively absorb potentially harmful toxins.

All this clean, fresh air reduces the levels of stress and illness and charges the Eskimos with a positive and productive energy while they work. What’s more, the lush green plants promote a warm and calming ambiance of connecting with nature.

Our Igloo also features a thriving herb garden that provides us with organic and freshly picked mint, basil, chives, perennial coriander, parsley and chilli for our lunches. Yum!

Digital Eskimo has always worked very hard to minimise our impact on the environment. In order to help us better understand these impacts, and develop more effective strategies to address them, we calculated our ecological footprint for the 2009 financial year.

Ecological footprinting is one way of measuring whether the way in which we operate is sustainable in a global context. We chose this method because it is widely used, it provides results in an understandable format while clearly showing relative impacts of different elements of our operations.

We decided to utilise the excellent Victorian EPA calculator, developed in conjunction with the Centre for Design at RMIT. The calculator uses only generic data inputs (which are easier to audit in a small business such as ours) and the results therefore serve as approximations rather than exact figures. While this isn’t as accurate as a full audit delivered by specialists, for a company such as ours (with expertise in house and limited resources) it is the far more practical and affordable option.

Digital Eskimo recently converted our single car space into a company bike park and repair shop. This initiative was launched as a way to support the cycling culture in our company and neighbourhood by catering to the needs of both our fleet as well as the local Surry Hills community.

It’s no secret we love bikes at Digital Eskimo. To us they are more than just another way to get around. They provide a solution to traffic and parking problems, promote health and fitness, reduce stress and build communities. Most importantly, they are eco-friendly and motivate people to think about sustainability. We consider them to be an integral part of who we are and we actively encourage cycling for daily commuting purposes amongst our staff.

To support the Eskimos who are keen cyclists, we decided to set aside room in our garage so that they had a space to carry out any necessary repairs. We offer a range of tools for basic maintenance, from pumping up the tires, fixing punctures, degreasing and cleaning to minor adjustments. By sharing tools at work it means everyone doesn’t need to buy their own, which is a great way to saves resources. The repair station also parks up to ten bikes - pretty impressive when you consider that the space that would usually fit only 1 car!

Because we’re conscious of the fact that there’s a lack of bike shops in the area, we want to share what we have with our neighbours too. We’ve extended an invitation to any cyclists who live or work in the community to give us a call if their bike needs a bit of light work. Just look for the cycling sign out front and ring your bell.

Digital Eskimo launched the ‘Lug a Mug’ initiative as a simple way to reduce the negative environmental impacts created by takeaway coffee cups.

It takes 40 litres of water to produce a take away cup of coffee*. That’s just the cup – not the coffee or even the lid. If you include these too, the total is 250 litres!! To make things worse, over four hundred million of these non-recyclable coffee cups are sent to landfill each year in Australia. So each seemingly innocent cup of take away coffee you buy has an extremely negative impact on the environment.

After being confronted with these startling truths, we decided action was necessary to avoid contributing to this problem. And so the “Lug a Mug” initiative was born. We started to take our own mugs to our local cafe when we got take away coffee, and for each time we did this, we saved nearly as much water as would be used to fill a bath.

We think it’s a really important initiative that can (and should!) be introduced into every workplace. So to get the ball rolling, we’ve created a ‘Lug a Mug’ kit with some simple tools that will help any office get started.

• Simply tell your colleagues about the unseen cost of disposable cups and invite them to join you in this planet-saving initiative. Put up this office poster (colour or B&W) in the kitchen or anywhere it will be easily seen.

• You can use the mug label template (colour) to produce a sticker for your mug on which you can write your name and style of brew. Print the template onto waterproof Avery L7063 stickers and write your details on with a permanent marker so that you can put your mug through the dishwasher

• You can also get a reusable mug like KeepCup, which are designed specifically for take away coffee and have the advantage of being lightweight and having a lid.

• Make friends with your local barista – give them the poster so they know why you’re bringing your own mug. They might be keen to promote the idea to their other customers too.

• Tick off the scorecard (colour or B&W) every time you lug your mug. You’ll quickly see just how much water you can save in a month by doing something very simple.

That’s it.

Sustainability is made up of small things like this and by participating you’ll be further along your way to a sustainable lifestyle.

For an overview of the ‘Lug a Mug’ initiative, including this list of instructions, please click here.

* source: WWF

Our open plan, bright meeting space is the collaboration hub of the Digital Eskimo studio.

Our vision is a world that is sustainably designed. With this in mind, we’ve designed our physical workspace to encourage communication, collaboration and openness for the eskimos, clients and visitors to the Igloo.

The interior design is informed by Digital Eskimo’s unique process – our agile methodology – accommodating innovation and scoping workshops and our iterative design & development methodologies. The open plan space increases the inclination for us to engage with each other with multiple breakout spaces for collaboration.

We carefully consider the unique objects that fill our space and each has its own sustainable story. Workshop materials are stored in rescued Ansett airline trolleys and the meeting area is lit (on darker days) by salvaged dentist’s lamps. The rolls of scrap paper we use are offcuts from printers (available from Reverse Garbage) and we always have worm juice bottled up at the door ready to give away to visitors.

We post our work in progress on the walls to provide visual stimulation. Seeing our own work on display is a constant reminder of the project goals we’re working towards. We’ve used yellow (our brand colour and the colour of optimism) sparingly throughout to inspire us without overpowering the space with TOO much yellow energy.  Our design library is highly visible at the entrance so it is referred to more often by the Eskimos.

The area is flooded with natural sunlight and airflow and we have chosen bamboo flooring and tables as our material of choice in building the Igloo as it’s a very sustainable material, fast growing and with a high carbon sequestration rate. We have sealed the wood with natural oil and beeswax to negate the side effects of off-gassing from toxic synthetic products. Bamboo (which has an environmentally sound manufacturing process) has become a pillar of Digital Eskimo’s low-impact procurement policy. This is part of our aim as an organisation to promote extended producer responsibility (EPR) making manufacturers accountable for the environmental and social cost of their products’ life cycle, including managing e-waste.

Our Fuji Xerox printer was selected on this basis and uses solid ink that reduce the amount of particles released into the air. For more information, Greenpeace monitors and reports on the performance of leading electronics manufacturers.

Best of all, a four-seater (ecologically sourced!)  lounge and cafe grade coffee machine keep us both relaxed and stimulated as we work towards a more sustainable future.

Who wouldn’t love to receive a bottle full of worm juice? The liquid that results from worm activity digesting organic waste is a potent fertilizer that can be used to give gardens a super growth spurt.

Worm juice is highly concentrated and very efficient when diluted water 1:7 and the castings can be spread around the garden too. Our team of worms produce litres of juice which we bottle in salvaged vessels to give away to clients, visitors and the eskimos.

Digital Eskimo has taken comprehensive steps to ensure bikes are readily available to encourage our staff to cycle. Our allocated garage space can fit one parked car but instead we fit in 10+ bicycles to form the studio fleet.

We have a Dahon fold-up bike for quick pedals to meetings which can also be taken on the bus or train, and commuter road-bikes for those of us who ride between work and home. We support a cycling culture and this reaches beyond an individual level. The benefits of cycling are on general health and fitness, a more enjoyable journey and reduction of city congestion.

Our efforts are part of a solution to make our city more people-friendly with healthier streets, better air quality, a greater sense of community and improved quality of life. Bikes aren’t always practical so our mobility policy involves the integration of the bike fleet with a membership for each employee to the GoGet car-sharing program.

To get your workplace to cycle more, there are a few things to think about such as providing showering facilities and a secure lock up area. There is a wealth of information available about cycling in Sydney.

Related Links

• GoGet Car Share
• Sydney Metropolitan Cycleway Maps
• Bike Sydney
• Fieke’s Live Local experiment: filming her own ride to work!
• User Generated Bike Paths in Sydney