Eighth Day and the Environment

We are based by the seaside in Brighton, a young city with a thriving green business community.

At the hub of this community is the University of Brighton’s Green Growth Platform, a network of green businesses from across Sussex. The team helps businesses that want to be greener, and supports the innovation and development of green products and services.

Our efforts to become a greener business matter. Our clients and partners expect good environmental practice and even small actions and changes make a difference.

We commute to work by bicycle, public transport and on foot and are signed up to the cycle to work scheme.

We support the brighton bikeshare scheme and created the graphics on the bike for American Express sponsorship.

We recycle all the recyclable waste we produce

Brighton is the home of Waste House, the third most eco-friendly house in the world. Waste House is constructed almost entirely from materials that were heading for landfill sites or incineration. Materials include toothbrushes, denim jeans, DVD cases, floppy discs, used carpet tiles, construction waste and, most recently, old duvets from the university’s halls of residence and discarded oyster shells.

To reduce waste in the first place we:

• do not print unnecessary documents. We reduced the temptation to print by moving the office printer from our ground floor studio to the basement. This works!
• avoid using disposable coffee cups and single-use plastic bottles and cutlery. In the UK, over seven million disposable coffee cups are thrown away every day. Most end up in landfill. Cumbrian paper manufacturer James Cropper have formulated a method for separating the plastic from the paper. They use the recycled fibre to create the Extract paper range for GF Smith.

We grow plants in the studio because:

• Plants make our company greener, literally.
• Plants clean the air by producing oxygen and filtering pollution.
When researching ways to clean air in space stations NASA discovered that low levels of carbon monoxide and formaldehyde can be removed from indoor environments by plant leaves alone. NASA notes that plants, ‘improve the quality of indoor air. They take the carbon dioxide from air to produce oxygen that humans can breathe.’
• Plants help us work better.
Being ‘under the influence of plants’ can increase memory retention by up to 20%, according to a University of Michigan study. Texas A&M University noted that ‘work performed under the natural influence of ornamental plants is normally of higher quality and completed with a much higher accuracy rate than work done in environments devoid of nature’.

Our Community

We support our not-for-profit community by gifting one project a year to charity. This year we did some brand development work and made a website for SameSky, a Brighton-based arts charity. The website includes a donations area, which has helped them raise their profile and raise funds for community projects.

• We support colleges and universities by offering paid student internships.
• We support local GSCE students by offering workday placements.
• Wherever possible we source from local suppliers.
• We support the Open Source Code initiative.
• We do not work with or for companies that fall below our ethical standards, for example those involved in the arms trade, animal testing, environmental destruction or unfair and discriminatory employment practices.

We design environmentally friendly packaging

For clients including Aecre, Dobbies, Mooncup® and Pecksniffs.
See our article on Environmentall Friendly Packaging

Our To-do List

Continue to invest time researching and examining our suppliers and the goods we buy so that we only purchase goods that

• are manufactured in a sustainable fashion.
• can be recycled and/or are produced from recycled or renewable materials (such as bamboo).
• do not make use of excessive packaging.
• are designed to be repairable and not ‘throwaway’.
• collect our green kitchen waste to compost in our gardens and allotments.

Recycle Electronics

When we upgrade or replace electronic items we plan to donate them to local schools and charities, or return them to be recycled by the manufacturers. We do not want them to end up in landfills, incinerators or to be illegally exported to developing countries.