Office: London
Client: Greater London House
Challenge
Ask people about climate change and they’ll listen attentively. They’ll then go back to work and behave exactly the same. So how do you increase their awareness of green issues and change the way businesses operate? But do it quickly and with a minimal budget. This was the challenge facing Greater London House – a huge office block in Central London which houses a variety of companies, different management structures and over 2,000 employees. To make matters worse, any potential changes we put forward would be disruptive and inevitably cost money. Plus the incessant messages from the ‘Green Warriors’ were getting a little tiresome. That’s why we needed something fresh that created awareness and encouraged participation.
Solution
Instead of lecturing people, we set about engaging them with imagery and ideas. By elevating rubbish into art, we wanted to inspire them to be greener. We created a campaign of posters featuring items of everyday office rubbish (naturally printed on recycled paper), which dramatized a variety of surprising green facts. Rather than make them generic, they were all specifically relevant to the building and surroundings. These posters also invited people to subscribe to a series of Green Tips emails. These gave updates on our energy saving and recycling progress and offered suggestions of new ways in which we could be greener. The emails also announced events and competitions to encourage even greater participation.
Results
What started as a stunning creative idea, turned into a powerful campaign. It’s created ‘green champions’ who have used the Green Tips emails to lobby Management and Central Services to push through major changes. In just 2 months, the quantity of paper recycled has increased from 42% to 87%; use of plastic cutlery has been eliminated; in 7 months, we’ve recycled 130,400 kg of rubbish and saved 177,950 kg of CO2 (equivalent of 1,595 trees).