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Becoming Green… Not Just a Matter of Color

By: Marie-Josée Lavigne

Becoming green

For us at Zone W3, like many other businesses, thinking green is important! We love our planet and aim to treat it respectfully. But how can we know what we can change in our daily life that can have a positive impact on the planet? How to make a Web and Branding agency more environmentally responsible? We wondered!

The Green Shift… Following Through

Since we’ve always wanted to become more and more environmentally responsible, we took the time from the start to think about the right structure for our business. We put in place some processes we think make an important difference on our environmental footprint. We revised each of the steps in our production process as follows:

First, we made sure our team was in line with our organisation’s definition of an environmental footprint and environmental responsibility. Once that was done, individual members of our team started taking actions that follow our business vision for the preservation of the planet. This vision started gathering momentum and a real “green” spirit drives the organisation.

All this seems simple and, in fact, it is! Only the initiative of a few people within the organisation is needed to begin a movement towards more environmentally responsible business practices. Can we reconcile our private life, work, ecology and sustainable development? Why not!

At Zone W3, the reconciliation of work and private life is already a fact as each of our experts work from their homes. No more traffic jams! This enables us to offer a greater flexibility in opening hours for our clients, but the most obvious benefit for us is the contribution to sustainable development. As we do not have staff in large offices, our expenses in fuel, heating and electricity for example are significantly reduced. These make for impressive sustainable savings!

We are environmentally responsible! We only print documents when obligated and all our printing is done on 100% recycled paper. The time of presenting graphical mockups, web site wireframes or diagrams on paper is long gone. We only present them to clients on screen. We also recycle our ink cartridges and sort our waste of course, even more importantly, we choose suppliers that are also respectful of the environment.

Most of our printing jobs are done by partners who run on Bullfrog Power renewable green energy and who have put in place zero carbon policies.

Our suppliers use biodegradable cleaning products. Our printers use vegetal based inks and our main printing partner is certified to be respectful of forests and the environment via an FSC traceability certification that enables consumers to identify and choose products that sustain responsible forest management. Our environmental awareness pushes us to use PVC free Greener Solutions products. The steel in our signal plates is of course recycled and we use corn based Bioflex banners. We also use energy efficient transporters that have environmental policies in place and are committed to reducing air emissions.

Having a green awareness means that you need to regularly challenge yourself and revisit your processes in order to constantly improve. So, if you also have green strategies in place, do not hesitate to share them with us! Idea sharing and constructive criticism push all of us forward!

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