Creating a Positive Impact Through Our Consumption

At Ecovantage, we’ve taken simple steps to ensure that our consumption results in the least strain on the Earth’s resources as possible and aim to have a positive impact wherever possible. Below is an outline of practices we follow, there may be some you can adopt in your office or home!

Essentials:

Two items that get used a lot in any office are, of course, toilet paper and washing liquids.

We purchase our toilet paper and tissues from Who Gives a Crap, who donate 50% of their profits to help build toilets and improve sanitation in the developing world. They offer free delivery for orders over $35, you can also subscribe to a delivery schedule so it’s more convenient than carting back toilet paper from the supermarket.

Friends of the Earth Melbourne Friends of the Earth (FoE) Melbourne is a non-for profit organisation working for a socially equitable and environmentally sustainable future. The international Friends of the Earth network is  active in 77 countries with over 2 million members. We purchase our dish liquid & powder and hand wash from FoE Melbourne, as well as tea and sugar.

Waste:

To ensure we create minimum waste, we have 4 different bins in ur office; recycling, compost, soft plastics and landfill. This ensures that whatever materials can be reused are reused and whatever can be diverted from landfill is.

We also have a supply of Keepcups for staff to use and strongly encourage the use of bringing your own reusable containers when purchasing takeaway food.

Recently, each of our employees were gifted a refillable Pentel Gel Pen to reduce the plastic waste that is created through the use of single fill pens.

Art:

The design of a space can have a huge impact on mood and wellbeing, improving the ambiance can be done without a huge price tag and can also result in a positive contribution.

One way we have done this is filling our offices with indoor plants, which improves air quality and simply creates are more pleasant environment,

We have also decorated each of our offices with art from organisations that contribute to a great cause. Tutti (SA), Arts Project Australia (VIC) & Studio A (NSW) are all organisations that support disadvantaged artists, but you’d never know – the quality of the art is wonderful and brightens the days of all of our employees..

Food & Functions:

When organising any out of office staff get togethers or catering, we always ensure we support local businesses. Additionally for any functions and workshops organised out of our Victorian office, we promodiminately use STREAT Cromwell St, Collingwood as a base. Streat is a social enterprise offering disadvantaged youth a support pathway from the street to a sustainable livelihood.

Ecovantage is also closely tied to CERES Community Environment Park in Brunswick East, Victoria. CERES is a not-for-profit community based business set on the banks of Merri Creek in the heart of urban Brunswick East. They run educational programs, urban agriculture projects, and a number of social enterprises. We recently held our company conference at CERES and receive a weekly fruit delivery to our Victorian office from their Fair Food social enterprise.

Gift Policy:

Ecovantage is committed to assisting our greater communities in every way we can. When it comes to showing appreciation at the merry times of year this is no different.

We do this in the following ways:

• We purchase greeting cards and desk calendars from Arts Project Australia
• We donate to charity in lieu of corporate client gifts
• We purchase socially responsible and charity-led gifts when giving physical gifts
• We swap out Kris Kringle gifting for a donation to one lucky employee-submitted charity. How do we do this? Each employee donates $10 or more into a charity pool and submits a charity that they would like the money to go to, then one of the submitted charities is randomly selected and all of the charity pool money goes to that one charity with Ecovantage matching the donations dollar for dollar.

We encourage you to adopt changes like the ones above, whether it be in your home life, if you own a business or encourage your employer to do what they can.

Find a full list of organisations we support and how we support them on our website.