Sustainability and environmental policy

Loving digital – and the planet

At Bunnyfoot we recognise the climate crisis. As much as we love using technology, today it is accountable for 4% of worldwide carbon emissions which is more than the entire civil aviation contribution and we want to do whatever we can to reduce our footprint.

Making the planet a key stakeholder

Sustainability is a core part of our philosophy and values. Our work is aimed at achieving a low-carbon and green society by treating the planet as a key stakeholder. 

Not only are we focussed on changing the way we work to be for the better of the planet, we want to help other companies meet sustainability goals. We treat our clients to complimentary sustainable considerations by bringing sustainability into the brief, ideation, prototyping and beyond.

Our commitments

Bunnyfoot is committed to doing our very best to work towards sustainability which we take seriously. We have a variety of strategies implemented across our company to help us reduce our negative impact and give something positive back to the world.

We understand that our operations can affect the local, national and global environment, and we accept our environmental responsibilities beyond the basic requirements.

1. Energy & Water consumption

We aim to minimise consumption of natural resources, including energy, water and raw materials, as far as economically practicable. To reduce our negative impact on the environment, we try our best to reduce the amount of energy and water we consume by encouraging everyone to:

• Switch off electronic devices when not in use.
• Set our computers to sleep if no activity is detected after 5 minutes.
• Avoid dormant loads on the grid by unplugging any devices that are not in use.
• We close any apps/programs we are not using on our work computer.
• When needing to purchase new electronic equipment, we only buy the best energy-rated appliances.
• Set up dark modes on all our devices, programmes and apps.
• We turn screen brightness down whenever possible (reducing the brightness on your computer monitor can save up to 20% of the monitor’s energy) and we encourage all of our staff to have f.lux downloaded for the screen to automatically adjust the brightness depending on time.
• Switch off heating, fans, aircon and lights in rooms not in use.
• We reduce water consumption by fully loading our dishwashers on eco-mode and avoid washing up. When using a full load, the dishwasher is on average four times more water efficient than washing the dishes by hand. 
• We are actively careful with water and energy e.g. we only put the water we need for an intended number of cups in our kettles to boil.

As a business we appreciate that reducing energy is not enough, therefore, we are doing our best to switch to renewable energy in the way we operate:

• We don’t run any on-premises server hardware or non-essential computer equipment. We moved 100% to the cloud provider which is carbon neutral. 
• We moved to renewable energy hosting for our websites, using HostPresto. 
• We use renewable electricity suppliers for all our offices (EoN in Sheffield and Pozitive Energy in London).

2. Recycling and Reducing waste

We are committed to eliminating general waste:

• We try to avoid buying and bringing single-use plastic into our premises and encourage our staff to do the same when working from home.
• Wherever possible, all of our office food and cleaning supplies, stationary are plastic-free and bulk purchased to minimise packaging and therefore, general waste.
• We recycle all glass, aluminium and steel items such as tins and all recyclable plastic. We remind and require everyone to empty, rinse and put into a dedicated mixed recycling bin in the kitchen labelled ‘recycling’. We have a clear explanation next to the bins for our staff on what types of plastic are recyclable. 
• We collect soft plastic and bring it to our nearest recycling collection points such as shops like Waitrose, Sainsbury’s or Co-op.
• We also recycle used paper, paper packaging and cardboard ensuring we clear and remove any non-recyclable labels and wrapping tape.
• We avoid unnecessary printing to reduce paper waste. We use a shredding company to recycle confidential printouts.
• We have clearly labelled recycling bins in our meeting rooms for events to ensure our visitors do not produce unnecessary waste for landfill. We introduce our waste elimination system to all our visitors before every event/meeting.
• We either reuse or donate large items, such as furniture, to charities.
• Manufacturing electronic devices creates huge amounts of CO2, we therefore use our electronic devices for as long as we possibly can.
• We never throw electronic waste in the bin. If equipment cannot be repaired or upgraded it will be recycled through our chosen provider: https://www.gigacycle.co.uk/
• We collect and either recycle or properly dispose of used batteries (we have a battery bin available in the office), ink and toners for printers are taken care of by our tech team. 
• We encourage everyone in our agency to use reusable bags, coffee cups, water bottles instead of buying single-use items.

As a digital agency, we understand the scale of digital industry contribution to the climate crises. So we do our best to eliminate digital waste in our work as much as we can:

• We don’t copy everyone in the company onto an email unnecessarily.
• We clean up our junk/spam mailbox regularly.
• We unsubscribe from all unnecessary newsletters.
• We don’t download videos, images and documents to our computers but rather work on our shared Google drive.
• We don’t send big files to our clients and where appropriate we send online links from our project sessions.

3. Office supplies and merchandise

We choose environmentally friendly office supplies & merchandise whenever we can.

• All our office food is bulk purchased or purchased at a local shop to minimise packaging and energy waste. We prioritise sustainable and local producers.
• We choose low impact food and refreshments where possible by providing a larger proportion of vegetarian and vegan options for all our work events and meetings.
• All our cleaning products are natural & biodegradable and are bulk purchased. 
• We avoid single-use items so we use towels, washable cloths, natural long-lasting sponges and glasses instead of single-use cups.
• All our newly purchased office stationary is sustainable, plastic-free, biodegradable and purchased in bulk.
• All our marketing materials and company merchandise are purchased from Fairtrade and sustainable companies, and are plastic-free and biodegradable. We don’t send corporate Christmas gifts to our clients any more. Instead we plant trees on their behalf.

4. Travelling and commuting

We have a climate positive approach to travelling & commuting. To reduce our carbon footprint we encourage our staff to work from home.

• Our work-from-anywhere policy sets no requirement to travel to/from the office unless the client requires it. 
• All company meetings are available via Teams – attendance face to face is not compulsory.
• A virtual option is our default setup for all client meetings.
• We run all our events (training courses, quarterly seminars and group talks) remotely by default.
• We only stay in Net-zero hotels when we have internal face-to-face company events or we need to go to another city for client work. We select hotels that are verified by Staze.
• We offer all staff the Cycle to Work Scheme to support those who wish to cycle to work.
• We have an Electric Vehicle Scheme with Octopus Energy, in order to encourage all staff to travel on renewable energy.

5. Supporting climate focussed local organisations and charities

• We are a carbon positive workplace since we partnered with Ecologi in 2021.
• Every month we sponsor sustainable initiatives and earth friendly projects around the globe to help countries that suffer the most from climate change. Some examples of the projects we supported include Mangrove planting in Madagascar and forest gardens in Tanzania, rainforest restoration in Brazil and Peatland restoration in Indonesia. 
• Once a year we deliver pro-bono work to support local environmental initiatives or volunteer for green charities.
• We have a company salary sacrifice scheme where we can offset our carbon emissions or give to green charities.

6. Spreading the word – internally and externally

Our aim is to bring awareness/educate our Bunnyfoot staff on ways to limit our negative impact on our environment and how to live more sustainably. 

• We run internal training sessions on how to live and work sustainably and have regular catchups so everyone at Bunnyfoot understands and acts on our sustainability policy.
• We have a sustainability section at our company calls where we share tips on how to be more sustainable and give updates on our sustainability progress.
• We run quarterly contests encouraging our staff to share what environmental improvement and new climate-friendly practices they introduced in their lives.
• Bunnyfoot has allocated time in the monthly resourcing schedule for a sustainability team collaborating to make us net-zero by 2030.
• We have a dedicated Teams channel to talk about sustainability and the climate crisis, a place to voice our frustrations and to seek help, share resources and inspirational stories.
• We also coordinate the sustainability group across all 10 Sideshow group agencies. We organise environmental events and knowledge sharing sessions.
• We created separate simple checklists and guidelines for our staff encouraging environmentally friendly products and practices at home and in our offices.

We believe we have the ability and responsibility to educate and inspire our clients and research participants.

• We write blogposts and deliver talks and workshops on designing sustainable UX and deliver sustainable service design.
• We introduced a sustainable design category for UXUK awards.
• We contributed to including Sustainable Design to the ‘CPUX-Foundation’ and ‘CPUX-Essentials in UX and HCD Management’ curricula – the UX certifications delivered by The International Usability and User Experience Qualification Board (UXQB).
• If possible and appropriate, we include a sustainability topic at our alignment and briefing calls to bring the planet into the discussion of design/ research/  UX/ UI/ strategy/ service design projects from the beginning.
• We encourage clients to consider environmentally friendly design solutions by adding sustainable UX and UI recommendations to our reports.
• We offer a donation to an environmentally friendly charity, as an alternative to payment to all our research participants.