27th Jul 2022
This year the Cooperative Bank are celebrating their 150th anniversary and 30 years since they formed their original customer-led ethical policy. This policy meant that they would refuse banking services to businesses involved in certain social and environmental issues. Around 12 years later (in 2004) we founded our web design business, Make Hay Ethical E-media and a year later Green Hosting. We had already decided that we wanted to run our business responsibly and with care for people, animals and the planet and inspired by the Cooperative Bank decided to implement an ethical policy too.
We haven't been around as long as the Coop but we do have a few (18 to be precise) years under our belts. To this day our ethical policy is still one of the most important aspects of our business. In our ethical policy we highlight the type of work we love to support as well as the practices we will not engage with via our services. This is not about judgement but about focussing our efforts on work that has a positive impact.
We believe there are other valuable reasons for implementing an ethical policy. A publically published ethical policy holds you accountable to your words and as a business owner the buck stops at you to ensure those words are actually actions. We ask our clients to agree to our ethical policy before signing up to our services as we do not wish to earn money from exploitative practices. This means our customers can also feel confident that they are not paying their hard-earned money to a company that profits from irresponsible or unethical business.
The list of issues in our ethical policy demonstrates our priorities and guides our work. You might wonder how necessary this is for a small business such as ours but in the early days we were approched on separate occasions to work for companies linked to the fossil fuel industry and horse racing. We of course declined immediately. These days we are more well known for our ethos and customer base and such enquiries are not as likely. However it doesn't make our ethical policy any less relevant and acts as a means of continually provoking thought for ourselves as we continually learn and hopefully for others.
Is there anything you feel we should add to or change in our ethical policy? Do you have an ethical policy and what does it mean for your business? We'd love to hear from you.
13th Jul 2022
Our latest Client Origin Story comes from Rebecca of Conscious Skincare. The great thing about this story is that this business was in the pipeline for Rebecca from a young age. Find out how it came into being and the success it is today. Over to you Rebecca...
9 ½ out of 10. This was the score from my biology homework when I was 13. The topic was ‘The Skin’ and the homework was to create a skincare routine for a teenager.
From an early age, I always wanted to run my own business. I always loved experimenting, especially if I could see a way I could improve things. The perfect opportunity came along when me and my husband moved to the west coast of Wales. Soon after we moved in, however, my husband was poisoned by a well known weed killer and became instantly sensitive to everything so I scrabbled through my notes and recipes and made up some products he could use safely. And so, Conscious Skincare was born!
I had already started ‘tinkering’ with skincare recipes with an ‘Ooh what if I did that?’ curiosity at every turn. Now, over 10 years later, we’re blown away sometimes by how much our customers love our products, our ethos and equally by their loyalty and support; we’re humbled by it in fact. It also affirms to us that we’re doing the right things, the right way. This was never about a ‘get rich’ scheme for us, or to turn Conscious Skincare into some multi national faceless corporation. It was, and still is about making the best natural skincare products we can with the best organic ingredients and being close enough to these precious ingredients and the process to know their providence and integrity, rather than our products being massed produced god knows how, god knows where then shipped half way around the world. And at what true cost?
Who knew we’d reach the point when we were sitting at our dining room table in 2012, hand labelling 1800 products for a boutique, Cotswold hotel contract we’d won, with boxes piled high all around us? We hand labelled all those products with a ‘Heath Robinson’ gadget my father-in-law crafted from wood so we could rest the bottle on a cradle and line up the label so it would apply neatly and straight to look their best in the beautiful hotel bathrooms.
And so here we are, in our 11th year, still maintaining our founding principles, not being swayed or lured onto the ‘dark side’. We will always be cruelty free, no palm oil, no hideous 26 letter, unpronounceable preservatives in our products which continue to be lovingly made by us and our fabulous team here on the west coast of Wales.
Rebecca & Quentin, Founders
Find out more at conscious-skincare.com
Twitter: @consciousface
Facebook: @Conscious-Skincare
Instagram: @conscious_skincare
21st Jun 2022
Next up in our client origin stories is the Wildlife Garden Project founded by Laura Turner. What I love about this story is how it shows that something wonderful can be created from a desire to make a difference, finding something you love and applying your skills to it. Such a positive story for the start of the summer and at a time when we can all take Laura's lead and do more for wildlife. Over to you Laura...
Hello! I’m Laura. Before I started the Wildlife Garden Project back in 2010, I was completely new to the idea of wildlife gardening. I was working as a freelance videographer making videos for small local businesses. I was loving my job, but becoming increasingly concerned with the growing problems facing our planet. I wanted to do my bit in some small way, so I started looking for a conservation based project I could work on in my spare time.
At the time, I had just started renting my first house with a small garden and I began researching things I could do to attract wildlife. The concept of wildlife gardening appealed to me straight away – this was somewhere where I, as an individual, could make a difference to help conserve the struggling wildlife in my local patch. Wildlife gardening wasn’t a new concept, but it was far less known about than it is today, and so I started forming a plan to inspire others to make these small but important changes in their gardens.
I believe film is one of the most powerful mediums we have to communicate important messages, and so I decided it was the perfect way to demonstrate how to garden for wildlife. With little to no knowledge myself, I gathered a team of experts and volunteers to help make tutorial videos on everything from building a bird box to growing a wildflower meadow. With the help of my little brother Michael, we built a website to house the videos as well as lots of articles, tips and advice to help people create their own wildlife gardens.
In 2014, I started my own company, Fuzzfox, making videos for charities and local businesses. This tied in perfectly with the Wildlife Garden Project. Not only did it mean I had the equipment and skills to make tutorial videos, but importantly, it paid my bills whilst I devoted my spare time to the Wildlife Garden Project.
In the 12 years since forming, I’ve learnt so much from my work on the project, as well as gaining knowledge shared by all the experts who so kindly dedicated their time and experience to help make videos and write articles for the website. A few years ago, I managed to buy my first house with a garden which I have been slowly but surely transforming into a haven for wildlife. Finally having my own patch means that I’ve been able to put more of the techniques I’d learnt into practice and I now get visited by a huge array of birds, insects and mammals, including badgers! I’ve even dug a small pond which the gang of sparrows that hang out in my hedges love to bathe in.
In 2019, I was lucky enough to acquire a stand at Birdfair, the UK’s biggest wildlife festival (nicknamed the wildlife Glastonbury!). A few weeks before the event I had a phone call from a wonderful woman called Tina. She’d found us on the Birdfair website and saw that we were new to the event. She asked me, ‘Would it be ok if I bring Chris Packham to your stand to do a book signing?’ After much screaming and excitement, I gave her a huge YES. The event was amazing, we met so many wonderful people and gave wildlife gardening advice to lots of new people. Meeting Chris Packham was the icing on the cake.
Tina and I stayed in touch, and many phone calls and fits of laughter later, we realised we shared so many of the same aspirations and decided we wanted to work together. I had been wanting to move the Project forward for a while, and so in 2021, we registered the Wildlife Garden Project as a Community Interest Company (CIC) along with bird and moth fanatic and expert Tom Shields.
As a not-for-profit, we are now able to apply for funding which will allow us to spread our wildlife gardening message even further. In fact, we have just secured our first lot of funding which will allow us to develop a project that Tina and I have been chatting about for over two years. Exciting times!
We have so many plans for the future, but at the heart of it all is to make wildlife gardening easy and accessible to everyone. We are all still working on the project in our spare time, but we hope in the future that we may be able to find a way to earn a small income from it so that we can afford to devote even more time to the cause. But for now, we have lots more videos planned, as well as the funded project which we hope to be able to announce in the coming months!
We are always looking for collaborations and so if you’d like to discuss working together, please get in touch!
Find Laura online at:
wildlifegardenproject.com
Instagram: @wildlifegardenproject
Twitter: @WildlifeGardenP
Facebook: @wildlifegardenproject
YouTube: youtube.com/user/wildlifegardenfilm
fuzzfox.com
25th May 2022
Next up in our Client Origin Stories series is Green Squirrel, created and run by Becca and Hannah. This story really is testament to how much a small yet mighty team can achieve and how the best way to run a business isn't always the traditional way but what works for you and those who benefit from what you do. Over to you Hannah...
Green Squirrel started life as Green City Events when in 2011 Becca, returning to Cardiff after a year of travelling, became frustrated with the lack of opportunities for city dwellers, particularly those on lower incomes, to pick up the skills for planet-friendly living. In 2012 Hannah got involved and together they began testing and trialling different ways of bringing green skills to the city, from bike repair and food growing workshops to pedal powered cinema, supper clubs, and swap shops. In 2015 we formalised our community focus by becoming a CIC and in 2018 we became Green Squirrel!
There has been a lot of learning along the way. Neither of us are ecologists or climate scientists so we work hard to make sure that the information we’re sharing and the skills we’re teaching are evidence based and genuinely impactful. We’ve had to learn every aspect of running a small business because - as a two person core team - we do everything, from marketing and project management to fundraising and HR. As a social enterprise sometimes traditional business advice, designed to maximise profit, doesn’t work for us, so we’ve sometimes had to find our own path.
Now in 2022 our work is across three main strands. First is our local work as we offer a wide range of workshops and activities across the Cardiff and Valleys area. You might find us popping up at local festivals or playschemes to run creative nature or climate activities or training a local business in climate communication.
Next we have Railway Gardens, our community resilience hub in Splott, Cardiff. Due to open in June 2022, this former derelict playground has been transformed into a multipurpose space for growing, learning, play and connection. It will feature small business spaces for social and ethical enterprises, a community room and kitchen, a mini allotment, an outdoor classroom and climate and nature friendly planting. Creating this space has been a six year labour of love, extremely challenging at times but enormously rewarding, and working so closely with local residents in that area is a privilege.
Finally, since 2021 we have taken our service UK wide with The Something Club, our online climate action community. This project arose in part from our own need for a friendly and genuinely non-judgemental space to share the highs and lows of being part of the climate and nature movement, and a way to pick up the skills we need to make a change. The Something Club offered a monthly programme of online workshops and events. We bring in amazing speakers and teach all kinds of skills, from food growing and clothes mending to campaigning and communication. A key idea behind The Something Club is that no one one person can do everything to fix the climate crisis, but everyone can do something, and with a little support we can each find our ‘something’ and make a big impact.
We - Becca and Hannah - have been working closely together since 2012, but in 2020, right in the middle of lockdown, we began a new adventure together as we decided to move to a smallholding for our two families to share! In early 2021 we moved to Bryn Ysgafn, a two acre site, where we share an old farmhouse and quite a lot of poultry! Since arriving here we’ve been working to make the land as productive as possible, with a veg garden and orchard, a food forest, bee hives, and plenty of wild space left for nature. This spring we began hosting hands-on workshops here too, such as fruit tree grafting and composting.
Living and working together is a new experience, but it’s working well! From breakfast planning meetings to foraging for wild crafting materials right here on site, we find lots of ways of making it work. We’ve also got something of a ‘no work at weekends’ rule where we take care to switch off entirely and enjoy working in our garden or messing about with geese and chickens!
We’re looking forward to what the next few years hold for Green Squirrel. We now have a wonderful Community Coordinator supporting our work in Splott and a great ‘Green Team’ of freelancers, and we’re keen to grow our team further in the next year or so. We’re always keen to explore new collaborations and partnerships too, so do get in touch if you’re interested in discussing working together!
Find Green Squirrel online:
Website: greensquirrel.co.uk
Instagram: @bemoresquirrel
Facebook: @BeMoreSquirrel
Twitter: @BeMoreSquirrel
11th May 2022
On this year’s Earth Day we talked about how we have decided to invest more of our time in asking those who have the biggest influence and impact to do more for our planet and the life upon it. We do this already in a more organic way but I want it to be more effective, build it into the structure of our day and have a focus.
The two main areas where we have chosen to concentrate our efforts are clean energy (for obvious reasons) and nature because we know by now that when we care for nature, nature cares for us.
The first campaign we are supporting is Nature for Everyone, brought to our attention by Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust. #NatureforEveryone is about equal access to green spaces near to people’s homes. There is a huge disparity between who can and cannot easily benefit from the positive impact that natural environments have on our wellbeing and we agree with the Wildlife Trusts and 60+ other organisations that this needs to change. Many studies have shown that living close to nature and even views of nature from a window can support our physical and mental health, it can reduce crime and conflict in neighbourhoods and help children to learn. Everyone should have a legal right to nature and whilst the government are talking about their ‘Levelling Up’ plans and will be implementing new laws this is a great time to tell them that easy access to nature is vital for good quality of life.
So as a start to support this campaign we have:
We will continue to follow and support this campaign as it progresses. Would you consider supporting it too?
Find out more about it at:
The Wildlife Trusts
Wildlife and Countryside Link
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