Sustainability, Business & Greening with Meaning

ISO 20121 AND SUSTAINABILITY

‘Single-use’ was the official Collins’ word of the year in 2018. Other popular terms from this year were; virtue signaling, humble bragging, and moral posturing; things that companies often get accused of when they talk sustainability. We’ll keep the preaching to a minimum.

LIKE THE GREEN LAD SAID

In the words of a great puppet; “it ain’t easy being green”. It can be a lot of work and a challenge to change a company’s entrenched ways of working. We’re not perfect and we might not always get it right but we’re doing our best to do our bit. With that, let us briefly (and humbly) take you through what we’ve been up to and some of the campaigns that have inspired us so far.

GREENING UP THE BUSINESS

Verve is still the only Irish agency with the ISO 20121 sustainability certification. Read what ISO 20121 Sustainability means here. So, what exactly does all this mean and what do our future plans look like?

WE’VE HAD OUR IS0 20121 SUSTAINABILITY CERT SINCE 2014

We had ISO credentials before it was cool! But… it’s never been ‘cool’? True, but it is really good for the planet and has really helped our internal processes, and that’s good enough for us. We also want our sustainable methods to be the inspiration for sustainable ideas, as some of the best work recently has come from efforts to creatively solve the world’s biggest problem; climate change.

SUSTAINABILITY SHOULD ALWAYS BE A WORK IN PROGRESS

• Maintaining our ISO 20121 standard is no easy feat. Twice a year, we undergo a rigorous audit by ISO to make sure that we’re reaching our targets and always creating new ones.
• We’re always on the look-out for new opportunities with sustainability – in everything from the production process to; suppliers, venues and the partners we work with.
• We always try to make efficiency central to what we do, working to offer value for money as well as great ideas.

SUSTAINABLE FROM THE INSIDE OUT: PROJECT EDEN

• Project Eden is the internal project that keeps us all in line in terms of our greenness.
• We’ve gathered a motley crew of 5 to make Verve a well-oiled green machine. There’s compost gift-bags, eco updates and personalised plants on the way so, keep your eyes peeled for our green projects!

Sustainability used to be seen as a nice little add-on but with 88% of Irish people in a recent Nielsen study claiming that they see too much unnecessary plastic packaging, it’s now a ‘must have’. So, that’s a lot of work, is it all really worth it? Yes. Still not sure? Have a glance through our Green Wins for some convincing:

GREEN WINS

• Sustainability makes good business sense and that makes the CFOs of this world very happy. Less waste equals: less wasted budget, time, energy and valuable resources.
• 75% of Irish consumers (Nielsen Report) feel that the government should introduce fees or restrictions on producers for plastic usage. It’s better to kick your greenness up a gear now, because big changes are on the way.
• Sustainability doesn’t need to be the enemy of creativity and can actually be the inspiration that drives ideas.
• Customers and staff members have green expectations and if you’re dropping the ball on substantiality, expect to get dropped yourself.
• Most important of all – it’s the right thing to do for this once-off miracle of a planet.

THAT’S A (SUSTAINABLY SOURCED) WRAP!

Finally, we don’t know about you but the sustainability guilt can get a little heavy sometimes, so anything we can do to ease that up is a welcome relief.  Now, enough chat, let’s go forth and keep these #GreeningWithMeaning wheels in motion.