As you may have seen before on blogs or our social media platforms MPI are very committed to making positive changes to the environment as a company and individually.

Last week we encouraged everyone to take part in Great Big Green Week for climate change and make some small changes each day and it was a fantastic week.

To kick off the week on Monday 20th MPI joined the movement to keep our community clean.  It’s was World Clean-up Day on Saturday 18th September, which is the world’s largest one-day civic action to engage more than 180 countries to tackle global waste crisis. Millions of people around the world helped to clean their communities and we went out in groups throughout the day and picked up litter from around our head office business park. It has some beautiful areas of greenery around and it was lovely to spend time amongst it and doing good by clearing litter too.

On Tuesday 21st, we unveiled our Bird Bath/Feeder which has been made from recycled materials, offering birds a sanctuary in our concrete jungle. It was made and donated by a local charity to our head office called Mudlarks. Mudlarks is a lovely charity supporting adults with learning disabilities, they have several allotments for them to work and a cafe too. If you are in Hertford they love receiving visitors: https://mudlarksgarden.org.uk/

On Wednesday 22nd, we asked staff to think about the packaging they use bring snacks or lunches into work.  Is the packaging recycled? Do you need to bring your sandwich/lunch in cling film, baking parchment or tin foil? Could you use a plastic container you can recycle! Staff stepped up to the challenge and therefore it fed nicely into Thursday 23rd, when we removed waste paper bins from under desks. All rubbish went in the communal bins in the kitchen areas. We are hoping this one sticks and we can reduce the number of plastic bags MPI send to landfill.

And the Finale was the real challenge on Friday 24th. We asked our staff to choose an alternative mode of transport for getting into work.  Those that had to come by car we asked to ensure we had a car free lunchtime. Again our staff rose to the challenge and used public transport, as well as lots of walkers that sent us some beautiful views. We even had someone keep it up in the evening and travel by horse instead of car.

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WHY DID WE TAKE PART?

We are seeing the impacts of extreme weather events caused by climate change on the people and places we love both here in the UK and abroad.  The time is now to do everything we can to protect them. 

More than two million pieces of litter are dropped in the UK every day.

70% of our oxygen is produced in oceans, but each year 8 million tons of plastic ends up in them polluting our waters.

79% of all plastics ever produced have accumulated in the natural environment or landfills.

2 billion people live without any waste collection services and annually, 270,000 premature deaths are caused by uncontrolled burning of household waste.

The average passenger vehicle emits about 280g of CO2 per mile, therefore you can estimate how much your journey to work produces by multiplying this figure with the number of miles you travel. For more accuracy you can use your car’s CO2e/per mile, if you know it. To put it into perspective, driving approximately 4 miles is equivalent to a bag of sugar in CO2 emissions!

In addition to CO2, cars produce methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) from the exhaust and hydrofluorocarbon emissions from leaking air conditioners. The emissions of these gases are small in comparison to CO2; however, they have a higher global warming potential than CO2.

We are all responsible for protecting the environment, so we wanted be a part of the solution not the problem and encourage everyone to think about small changes they can make day to day that will make a big difference.