Improving Health and the Environment at Payara Services

The importance of business environmental sustainability and social responsibility is growing and we at Payara Services are doing our best to make sure our impact on the environment and our local community is as positive as possible. In the recent months, we’ve been implementing some changes to further improve in those areas. In addition to some environmentally friendly day-to-day behaviours that we take for granted (such as switching the lights off when we leave the office!) we are now taking some proactive steps to improve and make a more positive impact.

Payara Week – Say Goodbye to Single-Use Plastic!

Our recent Payara Week was a great opportunity to try some new ideas:

• Re-usable bottles – our amazing HR Team provided Payarans with the reusable, UK-made bottles and home-made drinks to make sure no one had a need to buy bottled or canned beverages.
• Glass cups were provided for hot drinks.
• Reusable plates and cutlery were used during the week – another plus is that time spent washing up reduced our time sitting! 😉
• We arranged car-shares for getting people to the office every day, saving some fuel.
• We also arranged a coach for our day out travel to further cut down on our fuel consumption.

Day to Day Healthy(-ish) Choices

Talking about more regular activities we do in our Malvern office; I have to mention ‘Baking Buddies’ where every other week one Payaran brings home-made cake or cookies for everyone to share. It’s not only good for our minds and souls (bring on the sugar!) but also for the environment – with home-made goods, there’s no need for the extra packaging that comes with store-bought goodies, and on Baking Buddies days, people tend to stay away from the plastic-filled vending machine. 😊 Also, some Payarans like to experiment with more healthy baking, so we’ve had a chance to try a beetroot cake and some vegan brownies – yum!

A younger brother of Baking Buddies is another initiative called ‘Fruity Friends’ – it follows a similar rule, but instead of cake, we bring fresh fruit to the office. We won’t ditch the sugar completely but we will at least try to keep the balance between processed and unprocessed sugar intake!

And during the week, most of us are still using our Payara Week water bottles – I can’t remember seeing anyone in the office using a single-use plastic bottle since we got them!

Our lovely HR Team (again!) has recently introduced some standing desks at the Malvern office, which means we can reduce our sitting time during the day. Rumour has it that some of the remote Payarans like to use bicycle and treadmill desks, and others join the online meetings while walking around the block. All are really clever and very easy ways to keep us moving = healthier = happier!

There’s So Much More We Can Do!

There are still many more improvements we can make. For example, we can reduce our carbon footprint further by limiting the amount of times that Payarans have to fly to other locations. We try to limit that by using public transport where possible (e.g. travelling on trains within Europe!), making sure that we involve our localized teams or partners to attend events, or simply by scheduling virtual events and online meetings where possible.

There are also some personal choices that we can make – some Payarans are cutting down on plastic use or the consumption of animal products at home which has very positive effect on the environment.

We are also working on establishing a partnership with an environmental charity – I cannot say much more at this stage but it’s very exciting and more info on that is coming soon!

Topics: Giving Back

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