Our second day of Green Week 2016, Act Local Tuesday, focused on acting and eating locally, giving us a better understanding of where our food comes from and sharing the benefits of communal eating. We also took inspiration from World PARK(ing) Day, and transformed our front of house, take a look below.
Food Maps
We created a simple, easy solution to share food suggestions for the best local, sustainably-sourced food – whether it be a café, restaurant, deli, market, supplier or vegbox scheme – we used Google Maps to create a ‘Strides Sustainable Local Food Map’.
By plotting all of the suggestions on a map, it helps us eat good local food, no matter which office somebody is based, and with suggestions coming from known colleagues, it makes it easy to follow reliable suggestions.
This idea stemmed from one of our ’52 Big Ideas for Bristol’, where we suggested that local food places should show a map to highlight where their produce has come from, helping customers make informed decisions about what they are eating and whether they are supporting the local economy.
We wanted to create a global picture of what the company eats, so we started using the tag #SustainableSupper and asked staff to tweet or send us photos of what they cooked during Green Week. The online gallery is designed to give us an insight into how healthy we are, and whether there are regional differences in our dinners (hot pot in Manchester, pasties in Truro?).
A couple of results are below, and we will be collecting more throughout the week.
From Parking to Planting
We have transformed our front-of-house in Bristol into a people and plant friendly space, including a special trial of new prototype seating designed by one of our landscape architects, Sarah Jones-Morris.
We were inspired by World PARK(ing) Day which highlights how so much more can be done in a small space than just parking your car. Shame about the weather, but a fun and interesting arrangement to welcome visitors (including some transformed BBQ’s, turned into planters to promote veg growing).
A Shared Lunch
Due to the busy nature of our working lives, many of us rarely take the time to eat as a group, despite the social, intellectual and psychological benefits of eating together. Our Bath office took the time-out today to eat a shared communal lunch, with everybody bringing in a dish and sharing it all out. It’s simple, and a great way of bringing people together (and another way of promoting local food, or a dish from a different culture).
