14,357 Trees

14,357 Trees and Counting…

We started our sustainability journey planting trees. Now we’re sending them (and plants and flowers) to our clients, candidates and partners. ZD co-founder Danny Monfea explains why.

When Zac Clements and I founded Zachary Daniels in 2012, climate change was very much on the world’s agenda in a big, government-driven sort of way, but it wasn’t necessarily high on our agenda. If you’d asked me back then exactly what impact our operations had on the climate, I couldn’t have told you with any certainty. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have realised even a largely internet and phone-based business could still generate lots of carbon. It’s not as though we were mining coal.

Of course, we’ve all become much more aware of our impact on the planet over the past decade. That’s certainly true of everyone at ZD. Environmental sustainability has formed a large part of in-office discussion and suggestions over the past few years and it’s had an effect in lots of ways, small and large.

Creating a more sustainable ZD

One of the first tiny steps was ditching business cards. Then we switched our paper shredding supplier to one who would recycle everything we sent their way. When we gift notepads to our friends and partners, they’re now made from recycled paper bound in recycled plastic covers.

A couple of years ago, we stepped up our activities by partnering with Ecologi. For every candidate we place we fund the planting of a tree. At time of writing, our contributions have seen 14,357 trees planted. Our work with Ecologi also extends to long term global projects, from wind farms in northeast Thailand and clean hydropower in India, to landfill gas conversion projects in Turkey. Each month we buy carbon credits which support these projects and help compensate (I’m not wild about the word ‘offset’) for the carbon our business generates. To date, our contributions have avoided the emittance of 399.47 tonnes of carbon equivalent.

You can find our latest Ecologi stats here

Most recently, we’ve installed electric vehicle (EV) charging points at our Warrington HQ and we’ve just launched a salary sacrifice scheme to help our people switch to EVs.

Spreading the sustainability

We’re rather proud of the ‘forest’ our successful candidates are helping us grow, but we’re conscious that it’s not very tangible. The trees are planted worldwide. It’s not as if you can take a stroll through the ZD forest. We wanted to do something that brought our drive for sustainability closer to home. We’ve done that in two ways.

1. Now, when a candidate is successful in securing a new role with us, they get a congratulations card from us that contains seeds. Plant the card, and as their career grows, so will the seeds.

2. Christmas is always a time when we’ve enjoyed pushing the boat out a little for our friends and partners. Last year, I reckon we outdid ourselves by gifting small Christmas trees (complete with lights and decorations). Once Christmas was done, the decorations could be stored for reuse next year, and the tree could be planted. As I write, I’m looking at mine now in the garden, doing its bit for carbon capture.

We know there’s plenty more we could be doing. Over the next few years we’ll continue to look for opportunities to put sustainability into action at ZD, growing our contribution to the planet as we grow our clients’ businesses and candidates’ careers.

Want to find out more about sustainability at ZD? Talk to us.