Fly like a T6
Livity has moved into the the future in 2011 by replacing our kettle with a pretty amazing machine called T6, which dispenses boiling hot and ice cold filtered water, by connecting straight to the water supply in our kitchen. Our poor kettle never survived to see its first birthday, we drink that much tea here at Livity. The decision to upgrade to the T6 was as much about energy saving as it was about style. Boiling a kettle as many times a day as we did really isnt very environmentally friendly!
Keeping it green
Since Livity joined the 10:10 campaign in March this year, we’ve been taking little steps in our office to improve our green credentials and reduce our carbon emissions. Stuff like collecting all our food waste and sending off to be composted, unplugging the dishwasher, growing more plants that purify our air, and automatic timer plugs on our appliances.
And one day whilst I was on the 10:10 website seeing what everyone else is doing, I entered a competition to win a giant logo made of grass…… and we won!
Here it is enhancing our reception area, until the day we get our verticle garden constructed and then the salad wall will be born! This is Livity’s no 1 green ambition of 2010 to have our very own salad wall, and it will happen soon, watch this space !
Thanks to CURB Media for making this super cool natural decoration, we really LOVE it !
By Rebecca
Livity loves green garden parties!
By Rebecca, Livity staff
I had the pleasure of going to a garden party this week… at a palace!
Start and the Prince of Wales decided to throw a 9-day long party to get people together, thinking about what a sustainable future could look like. I wanted to go for the chance to hob-nob round the rarely seen gardens of Clarence House, maybe get papped with a prince, and nosy round their gardens and be inspired by amazing environmental projects that I could bring back to the Livity offices. Oh, and any excuse to dress up…
The gardens were very impressive, neatly kept and so much produce growing.
I took lots of photos to help me recreate the look back on our roof garden we have planned for next year. from keeping bees to growing salads in unwanted chest of drawers.
I learnt some shocking facts about energy consumption.
All this inspiration has given me ideas like growing wheat grass in between the desks and having a few orange trees about the office, just to make it even more super cool to work at Livity.
It wasn’t exactly a party, but I left feeling positive about the many simple ways we can change our habits to make a difference.
I promised a recipe last week but will you be happy enough with me telling you what foods are in season for September? Butternut squash, figs, pears, plums, pumpkins, cabbage, leeks, mussels and oysters. Mmmm!
Food for thought
I recently read that the UK wastes around 8.3 million tonnes of food a year. That is obscene, and surely not a sustainable situation. Most of this could be avoided if we planned our shopping and food storage better.
Obviously there will always be some food that gets chucked, but how can we make sure all that waste doesn’t just go to waste?
Well, I found a company called Aardvark Recycling not far from Brixton that collects food waste and converts it into compost.
Aardvark are a not-for-profit social enterprise who work with local community groups to put the compost back into local environmental improvement projects.
I love the idea so much I’ve managed to get the whole of our office building – that’s 20 companies – to join the scheme and recycle their food scraps.
This might even provide a future opportunity to collaborate with our neighbours and set up and maintain the roof garden that I dream about on a daily basis.
By Rebecca