THIRTY THREE

Sector: Recruitment                    

Number of employees: 65 

Region of UK: London  

Summary

Thirty Three is a specialist recruitment communications company based in central London servicing a number of large corporate clients. To address increasing client and staff interests the company wanted to ensure that even as a relatively low-impact business they consider the environmental impact of their operations.  An environmental review from Global Action Plan helped the business identify several low-cost, simple actions they could take to improve their environmental impact and provided practical guidance to help them implement the actions.

What Impact It Has 

Key Savings & Achievements

• Significantly increased recycling rate, using a space-saving collection method
• More environmentally friendly drinking water for staff, provided at a lower financial cost

Business Benefits 

Increased Recycling

Thirty Three had already set up a paper recycling scheme, but did not believe it was being used as effectively as it could be, partly due to problems with storing the recycling at one collection point – bins were always overflowing - and partly as staff needed encouragement to use the system more. As in many London offices they have limited storage space, so to solve this issue they arranged for a mixed material collection that could be collected from several smaller bins distributed throughout the office. With the new system in place communications were made to educate and encourage staff to recycle as much as possible (rather than just some materials) and as a result the recycling rate has increased significantly.  

Environmentally Friendly Drinking Water

Thirty Three had not realised the environmental impacts of using bottled water coolers which arise due to the transportation of the bottles from source to warehouse to site (and back again), and their eventual disposal.  To avoid this Thirty Three switched to mains-fed chiller and filter units that provide a higher quality of drinking water at a much lower environmental and financial cost (and they don’t have those enormous plastic bottles cluttering up the office!)

And last but not least!

Thirty Three have also eliminated the need for disposable cups by providing more ceramic ones; switched to environmentally benign cleaning products; and last year purchased a sustainably grown Christmas tree!