Deadline Day Reflection

So today is deadline day and it falls on me to write our final blog. I had a few ideas floating around, ranging from how Apple have recently been having heated discussions with shareholders on the amount they spend on ‘green’ initiatives, all the way to wondering how much water has just been lost from that eruption in the Arts Tower car park (quite a lot judging by the hole). However, what I decided to blog about was my proudest part of our Green Impact year.

This year our department decided to make a donation to a Sheffield Food Bank, namely Jubilee Food Bank. Jubilee Food Bank offers immediate support to those in financial crisis by providing short-term emergency food supplies, at no cost to individuals and families, through referrals from health and social care professionals.

Setting up a donation was an idea that had been around the department for a couple of months, but hadn’t had the platform to be advertised. After looking through the Green Impact workbook, we saw the opportunity to build the donation against one of the criteria.

To help advertise Green Impact to the department, we had already planned to launch a Green Impact Google Community in the New Year. The Community would allow us to take advantage of social networking and gave staff the opportunity to informally share ideas, enter competitions and learn interesting facts that they could use to be greener at home, as well as in the office. Now we saw our chance to also really get the idea of a Food Bank donation out there.

We decided the best time of year to donate would actually be before the Christmas break. This is a time when most are out there doing a big Christmas shop and struggling to find space in the kitchen cupboard. It’s also a time when Food Bank supplies run particularly low. We asked staff to go out and buy something extra in their shop, or bring in those extras from the cupboards. The response we got was overwhelming (image below – there was a box this full on each floor).

We are planning on setting up other donations over the year and would like to thank Green Impact for giving us the platform to advertise. If you would like to donate please visit: http://jubileefoodbank.org.uk/?page_id=14

Luke