Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

Visual thinking, best explained by Kermit the frog. Some things are timeless.

Kermit Scats

Imagining Shapes

About a year ago we started Capstrat Green, an employee-led group that helps us collectively understand sustainability. By doing this we’ll know the sacrifices individuals may need to make, the expected outcomes and understand the balance needed to make both work.

We approach Capstrat Green as a living experiment to provide both external and internal learning.

• We help our clients better understand how sustainability plays into Corporate Social Responsibility by being a living example. We learn to communicate sustainability efforts with credibility.

• We inspire our colleagues to think creatively, yet pragmatically to solve problems. We get paid to do this every day. This program helps keep us in top form.

In short, sustainability is the ultimate in “step ahead” thinking. We’re required to learn, explore, analyze, refine and implement solutions that have a guaranteed impact on our company’s culture, our client’s business and the environment.

Our core team leads our company to find creative ideas that can be practically implemented.

It’s worth noting, this is not planned as a Capstrat cost savings initiative. It’s reasonable to assume that conserving environmental resources may also have an impact on our spending. However, we are looking for the biggest impact we can make with the smallest sacrifice. The team solicits sustainable solutions to learn from and inspire others.

Criteria

Ideas must be implemented within reason. The team reviews ideas for:

• expected environmental impact versus cost to implement

• ease to implement and adopt

• results that can be documented

•originality

The team promotes Capstrat Green throughout the company to drive behavioral change. More importantly, the team shall drive creative thinking with a purpose that balances all the moving parts to understand all sides of an issue. Then they promote innovative thinking to design a solution that works fairly for all concerned.

As more companies want to understand their impact on the world, I imagine we’ll see more internal teams pop up like Capstrat Green.

What do you do with 1500 pounds of spent coffee? We do something a little unheard of in Class A office space, we reuse it. Eeeewww! Not what you think! We only brew our creative jet fuel once. However, every week 30 pounds of used coffee grounds are reincarnated in compost. Those rich Columbian relics of countless brainstorms, late nights and waaaaaaaay too early mornings have a lot of energy in them. Specifically, soggy nitrogen which cooks with dead leaves, grass clippings and other stinky kitchen scraps.

Shortage of landfill space makes compost recycling an easy process for converting decomposable waste into rich, clean, natural fertilizer. Modern composting originates from early 20th century European organic farming. With the 1999 issue of the Landfill Directive to “prevent or reduce as far as possible the landfilling of waste", the EU elevates that whole reduce, reuse, recycle thing even further.

Shouldn’t we learn from them?

The Coats household is trying. We started composting 2 years ago but not being a lover of the dark beverage, we needed coffee grounds to balance the dead carbon stuff. I see a colleague tossing used coffee grounds in the trash. Shazam! Right under my nose, the triple bottom line.

We can save valuable landfill space, create an endless supply of free fertilizer and invest in fair trade products with the savings. I encourage you to set up a coffee collection in your office. Besides being good for our environment, it promotes discussion. No, compost doesn’t smell when finished. It’s magic. Mama Nature handles it. No, it doesn’t take long to decompose. Usually about 1 month. Yes, it does look intriguing, though. It looks like fertile teamwork and forward thinking.