In December 2013, the green team at Peterborough’s local accountancy firm Rawlinsons were busy working towards their Investors in the Environment (iiE) Green Accreditation when they started looking for new initiatives to boost the office’s green credentials.
Rawlinsons discovered that Marks and Spencer had been working with the Woodland Trust for a number of years, collecting Christmas cards for recycling and planting much needed trees. Marks and Spencer promised that for every 1,000 Christmas cards bought into its stores the Woodland Trust will be able to plant one tree, so Rawlinsons launched an internal campaign, and managed to collect a fantastic 3,524 cards.
Inspired by Rawlinsons' results a year earlier, in November 2014 Investors in the Environment (iiE) repeated the campaign, encouraging iiE businesses across the city to join forces to help collect and recycle Christmas cards for a joined-up approach.
Since then, an amazing 43,000 cards have been collected by a range of businesses, including Rawlinsons, Cross Keys Homes, Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust, Kitchen Range Foods, Queensgate Shopping Centre, Roythornes LLP, Peterborough Environment City Trust, Peterborough Cathedral, City College Peterborough, Shield Technologies, Bulley Davey, Buckles LLP, Vivacity, CUB UK, and Axiom Housing (who collected a fantastic 17,256 cards) plus more.
“These cards have now been collected by the iiE team and taken to Marks and Spencer ready for recycling,” explains Kim Coley, Senior Green Business Coordinator at iiE. “Thank you to everyone for such a fantastic job collecting the cards, together we've managed to recycle enough cards to plant over 40 trees!”
To find out more about the network of iiE businesses take a look at the website www.iie.uk.com and sign up to the free monthly e-newsletter. Plus join in the conversation online with the hash tag #GoGreen2015 @iiEUK with your company’s green pledges for 2015.