It is rare in life that everyone has the same opinion as each other, but I think that we can all agree that 2020 has been one of the strangest of years of our lives.
When the UK went into lockdown in March, I honestly expected it to last 3 or 4 weeks after which we would all go back to our daily lives. This was perhaps naïve of me, but can anyone really say that they believed this pandemic would cause the shift in the way that we are currently living our lives?
It’s been tough on people, and from a commercial point of view, the promotional merchandise market was hit, and hit very hard. We could not have known prior to Covid, but it seemed that we had picked the worst possible moment to begin promoting ThinkEco, our new range of sustainable merchandise and green promotional products.
However, as I sit here writing this six months later, I am looking at things differently and with a real renewed hope for both the business and the way we live. There have been positives to come out of this for me personally such as spending six months at home with my daughter just as she hit her teens and before she realised that her dad is old and uncool (in truth she is already totally aware of this). Another is the fact that running a business is hard work, and I have actually had time to relax and take stock of things and plan, rather than running around at 100 miles an hour as I usually do.
The impact that has given me the most pleasure on a larger scale is the immediate change we saw to the environment around us – when the world slowed down the negative impacts of our existence did too. Less vehicles being used meant less pollution in our air and waters and less people out and about meant less rubbish and waste – this was a fabulous side-effect of this horrible virus, and one that we must learn from.
So where does that leave us, the team at ThinkEco and our sustainable merchandise? How are we ourselves going to learn from this and make changes? Well, we’ve already started to make them, and they include the following: -
| 1. |
The ThinkEco Office - We have realised that we do not actually need the office at the moment, the team work well from home and will continue to do so. This will mean less journeys to and from work, less energy consumption and of course there is a financial benefit too. We will of course meet, but less frequently and in a meeting room, hotel or café! |
| 2. |
Client Meetings – Face to Face meeting are a key part of our business as clients like to see, touch and feel products. However, we have made the decision to keep these to a minimum from now on and use video calls for meetings wherever this is possible. Where we do need to meet face to face, we will always take an appropriate form of transport to reduce the impact of our travel. |
| 3. |
Product Packaging – One of the things we are passionate about is practicing what we preach, and this applies not only to us but to the whole supply chain that we work with. Therefore, we pledge that we will not use any single use packaging on any product that we supply to you. This is a tough as our eco-merchandise and print needs to be protected in transit and this on occasion uses a small amount of plastic, however we will now find alternative methods to ensure that this is the case. We are already 90% there, but non-eco packaging will be completely eliminated by the end of this year. |
We are yet to know the full impact of this pandemic and how it will fully affect the way we live and work but there are positive, pro-active things we can all do right now, irrespective. Whether that is switching to green merchandise, working from home or eliminating polluting materials from our lives. It starts with us, probably in our own homes, changing our habits and methods, selecting products and services more carefully and always having the environment in our minds. Business has always had to follow consumer demand and will adapt to service demand as we move forward.
You never know, perhaps we will be able to look back at 2020 and remember it as the year that a horrible event sparked at least one positive outcome for the world.
Russ Platt - August 2020
