Celebrating Green Week at Credera - 2023

On 24th April 2023, we kicked off our third annual Green Week – a week-long series of global activities designed to promote internal awareness of our sustainability efforts. The week saw our UK offices coming together to deliver a succession of virtual and in-person events with the aim of affecting internal change and giving back to our community.

Here are some of the things that we got up to:

Rewilding CSR Day

11 members of Credera’s UK team utilised one of their two annual Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) days to take part in a rewilding project at Hampstead Heath Park. Volunteering with Heath Hands, the team spent the day raking leaves and soil to prevent established fences from rusting, and building out barriers made up of branches to block out pathways created by visitors and their dogs in order to conserve the surrounding area.

Read next: Credera UK sets out its Carbon Reduction Plan

Art club: Tote bag workshop 

To encourage reduction in single use plastic bags, our Art Club ran a tote bag workshop across our UK offices. Attendees got creative with lino printing and fabric pens, bringing their visions to life. 

Film club: My Octopus Teacher

Film club ran a Green Week special, encouraging folk to watch ‘My Octopus Teacher’ and discuss their feedback in a one-hour session. Discussions ranged from man’s impact on the environment all the way through to ‘Are octopi from space?’

Panel talk with TELUS

We had the pleasure of hosting Natalia Bolanos, Sustainability Procurement Lead at TELUS, who shared her journey of championing sustainability at work.  Natalia shared how she stepped up to pursue her passion within her full-time role at her workplace. It started with her personal interest in living more sustainably as she moved across the globe from Colombia, the UK, Australia and Canada (where she is based now). Aside from taking on a permaculture course where she was on a farm for a week, she started to explore how she could weave sustainability into her role at TELUS, a telecommunications company based in Canada.  She prepared a business case of why a sustainability angle was crucial within the procurement process - highlighting revenue and cost metrics that would be improved. After months of hard work to push forward a case, the sustainability procurement lead role was created for Natalia.  Since then, she and her team have made incredible change within and outside of the organisation, such as tying bonus incentives to sustainability metrics, investing in sustainable bonds that provide returns when sustainable metrics or targets are met, buying up a tree planting organisation - and more.  The lesson learned was that no amount of change is too small - wherever there is a will, there is a way. Hopefully we have all taken some valuable advice and inspiration from Natalia to start making a difference within our own roles here at Credera.

Fundraising for the Woodland Trust

The team also set up and is continuing to raise money for the Woodland Trust, which will be matched by Credera. The Woodland Trust helps plants trees and protect our wild spaces. You can donate here!