OceanPositive Professional Practices

From choosing locally made milk to installing solar panels for our energy supply, we realise it’s these little things we do everyday that make a big impact.

Solar Powered

When we moved to new premises away from our rural location complete with wind farm and water from a borehole, to a more urban setting, we felt it was time to up our green game a little more.

The entire building runs on Solar power generated from the roof, which makes us even happier to be based in sunny Cornwall.

Glass Bottles

Our milk is delivered in glass bottles from a local dairy, reducing food miles and waste, as well as having the added benefit of supporting a local business.

Toilet Paper

We chose to move to the most innovative toilet paper company around – Who Gives a Crap. They only use 100% recycled post consumer waste fibres in their toilet paper, so no trees are harmed in the making.

They give 50% of their profits to WaterAid to build toilets and improve sanitation in the developing world and they don’t come packaged in plastic unlike most of the supermarket brands!

You can order it for your home too, visit whogivesacrap.org

Recycling

We recycle or re-use as much waste as possible. Most plastics, paper, cardboard and glass are recycled locally, and where we can, we re-use cardboard packaging to send out our own deliveries, getting more from the resources at hand. Nothing is wasted if we can help it.

Wetsuits which cannot be repaired or sold are either donated to charitable groups such as those introducing wounded servicemen and women to scuba diving and surfing, or scout troops, or they are re-purposed by local groups into book bags as part of a local young enterprise programme.

Composting

As much of our packaging as possible is compostable and we compost our organic waste on site (it’s a good way to test the voracity of claims of compostability by our suppliers).

We hope to soon be putting this compost to good use in our own vegetable garden too.

Reducing Our Own Impacts

No one is perfect, but we try to reduce our own individual impacts by using refillable water bottles and re-usable coffee cups when we are out of the office, and of course, remember to refuse plastic straws and other unnecessary plastic.

Jim, one of the co-directors even collects all the plastic waste he creates when he is travelling and brings it with him – serious incentive to think about creating less of it – not always so easy, but he’s learned a few tricks on the way. On the plane for example, keep the plastic cup they give you at the start of the journey and ask for it to be re-used; travel with wooden stirrers for drinks and refuse the plastic; take your own blanket. If you are somewhere where you can’t drink water out of the tap, buy a large bottle of water and refill your smaller water bottle from it. Take your own shampoo (preferably in a bar) and your own soap – you don’t really need to use the little plastic single use bottles in the hotel bathroom.

None of these little things will save the world, but if we all made a change, perhaps we could all make a difference.