With its focus on improving environmental and sustainable practices, Keep Britain Tidy works with people, businesses, organisations and public bodies to care for local environments and create places which people can be proud of and prosper in. Those principles filter through everything the charity does – including its search for new office space.
Here Alice Bonifacio, Executive Assistant at Keep Britain Tidy, tells us about their experience of moving into The Green House.
Once we’d made the decision to move to a new office, we looked at a few options but the thing that kept drawing us towards The Green House is its sustainability credentials. As an environmental charity we want to practice what we preach, so it is important for us to be in a building that mirrors our objective of reducing our collective impact on the world and has sustainability at its core.
The Green House absolutely ticks that box and is sustainable in the broadest sense of the word. Not only is it a ‘green’ building, with lots of natural light and an airy feel, it is also filled with likeminded and exciting NGOs. This gives us lots of opportunities to share ideas, build partnerships, realise common goals and ambitions – and discuss and solve challenges. That kind of mutual support is priceless and is a huge benefit to an organisation like ours.
But it’s not just the office building that impressed us, Ethical Property shares our ethos too and the team made the moving in process really smooth. In the run up to our move I worked with The Green House manager to sort out our tech requirements and he answered all my questions quickly and efficiently. He’s also been really accommodating about office layout and furniture and is helping me look at options for meeting pods that our staff can use for private moments like prayer or breastfeeding.
A central part of our work is being part of a circular economy and this is another area where Ethical Property shares our values. As tenants move around, we’re encouraged to share and recycle materials which aligns directly with how we behave. There’s also a second-hand office furniture warehouse around the corner from The Green House and we’ve sourced lots of things from there.
In fact, Bethnal Green has a strong ethical vibe which we love. It’s got a great community feel, there are lots of options for vegan eating and it’s got a vibrant social scene. It’s a much more diverse area than where we used to be located and I think we’ll all be really happy there!