Here’s a little update on what’s been happening since we signed up for 10:10, pledging to cut our carbon emissions by 10% this year.

At least one of us (usually me) drives into Tewkesbury town centre from our office at Basepoint Business Centre every day, to buy lunch or run errands like going to the bank. It’s about a 3.5 mile round trip… a little too far to walk when you’re in the middle of a busy work day, but easily achievable with 2 wheels and a little pedal power. So in the name of cutting carbon we decided to get a bike that would live at the Vivid office for us all to share.

We decided the best thing to do would be to borrow a bike from somewhere. But where? As with so many of life’s unanswered questions, Twitter turned out to be the source of the perfect answer.

The very next day, look what came back…

Our lovely new bike arrives at the office on Friday. We’re very excited.

We’re also steaming ahead with #stayathomefriday (check for the hashtags on Twitter… it started out as #workingfromhomeFriday but that was outvoted as being too much of a mouthful!) It pretty much does exactly what it says on the tin – instead of us all driving to the office (about 70 miles there and back total if the whole team are in) we’re going to stay home on Fridays instead whenever we can.

There are a swathe of advantages to this, other than the fact we get to reduce our road miles, cut our carbon footprint and move one step closer to hitting our 10:10 targets.

·         Proximity to kitchen

·         Pyjamas

·         Less travel time = shorter working day.

·         It’s a great chance to experiment with remote working technology, trying out new ways of keeping our office communicating even when we can’t see each other.

·         Having a change of scenery is good for creativity and focus.

·         You get the chance to network (do lunch) with people in a different town.

We’d really love it if some other organizations took up some of our ideas – if you too like the sound of staying home on Friday please let us know!

And if you’ve launched any creative carbon cutting initiatives we’d love to hear about those too!