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.

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

Digital Eskimo acknowledges the first peoples of Sydney, and recognises the Gadigal people, who are custodians of the land on which our studio is built.

Digital Eskimo holds a deep respect for ancient peoples who established a fruitful and relatively harmonious relationship with their lands and waters. They represent the ultimate in living locally (and sustainably).

Before the colonisation of Sydney Harbour in 1788 there were approximately 29 clans and 5 distinct languages in the Sydney Basin, referred to collectively as the Eora Nation. There is a history of 40,000 years’ inhabitation in this area, close to 200 times longer than that of European settlement.

We would like to thank The Eora Nation for their care of this place over that time. They are an inspiration to us, having established a sustainable, balanced relationship with the natural environment. The boat people managed to turn their primary source of freshwater into an open sewer within 50 years.

Colonisation had a even more devastating effect on the local clans. Smallpox caused the deaths of half the indigenous population within two years. A common belief of those of the early fleets that the indigenous people were at best, primitive and at worst, worthless – leading to brutal treatment by the settlers to the extent that bounties were put on the heads of Aboriginal people. However, despite the damage done to the Aboriginal population over the last 230 or so years, their people and culture continue here.

We would love you to learn more about Sydney’s whole history, and you can start to do so at City of Sydney’s website.

For non-indigenous peoples interested in supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people a good place to begin is Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation (ANTaR).

IMAGE: Aboriginal rock carving in Kuringai Chase National Park.
Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/emmettanderson/3561989365/in/set-72157621053182266/