Banner Blog

Banner's Studio Manager, Clive Andrews-Lewis, made good use of his annual Charity Day by taking on a double shift for Staffordshire, Shropshire, and Cheshire Blood Bikes (SSCBB).

Starting at 7am on Thursday 1st September 2022, and covering in excess of 300 miles over the next 12 hours, Clive carried blood tests & samples, fecal matter for treatment, and even loaned blood (of rare blood types) between Queens Hospital in Burton-On-Trent, two locations in Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham, Royal Worcester Hospital, George Eliot Hospital in Nuneaton, and University Hospital Warwickshire. 

We all need to become more environmentally conscious, so there’s a greater focus than ever on workplace sustainability. Trying to find greener products, and making sure they truly are better than the alternatives, is a complex task. 

Julie Hadley, Corporate Social Responsibility Manager at Banner, explains what she looks for in green workplace products…

Once you’ve acknowledged that you really do need to make a purchase and other options have been exhausted, you’re in a prime position to swap to a cleaner, greener alternative, but choosing one product over another can be a headache.

There has been a lot of talk around sustainability, and for some people it can become overwhelming.

But with environmental focus becoming something we need, rather than want, to implement into a business it can be a mammoth job to tackle. So where do you begin?

There are a lot of areas of focus in creating a more eco-conscious workplace - from everyday tasks like remembering to turn your monitors and the lights off, to keeping recycling bins in the breakrooms and kitchens. However, there are also areas of sustainability that require a longer period of time to implement, like a greener commute to work or switching to more sustainable products.

Here are 4 easy ways to you create a more sustainable workplace:

With Plastic Free July now over, Julie Hadley, CSR and Social Value Manager at Banner, shares the wins, challenges, and reflections that occurred in her household throughout the month of cutting down on plastic waste.

You might expect, given my role, that I’d be a paragon of virtue, but like everyone else I’m time poor and with two teens in the house, I sometimes feel I’m on a hiding to nothing when it comes to the amount of plastic passing through here! It’s harder than you think to go plastic free and requires a real behaviour change, but with my two girls now on board, I’m quite pleased with the result.

The trigger was guilt, especially with the knowledge that lots of plastics are ‘wish-cycled’ – you pop it in the recycling and hope your local authority deals with it! Often though, the plastic we put for recycling goes for incineration, so the only way to deal with it was to cut down what I brought into the house.

Given that I’m the one doing most of the shopping, the buck stops with me…

Plastic free July was a good opportunity to tackle my mixed waste recycling output.  Our general waste is pretty minimal (around half to a third of a tall wheelie bin per fortnight) as I employ the following strategies:

• A compost bin in my garden for all fruit and veg peelings and cores
• Little cooked food waste as I plan food with portions and either freeze or leave any left-overs for lunch next day
• Salad drawer soup/stock to use up end of life veg and salad
• Cardboard and paper are recycled separately
• Plastics, cans and bottles are mixed separated from other waste and put in to mixed recycling
• Batteries and electricals I pop to one side for a visit to the local recycling centre
• Soft films and bags are recycled at my supermarket

With the above as my start point, I had a look at the mixed recycling bin contents and I’m sad to admit that our mixed recycling was 2 bins a fortnight, this included all glass, plastic and cans, of which I’d say plastic made up half.

Banner are proud sponsors of F.C. Dacii, a Super Sunday league football team in Wakefield. 

In the fight against climate change, every little helps. For businesses, little changes across the board can have a big overall impact. Below, Julie Hadley, CSR and Social Value Manager at Banner, discusses green products you could swap out to create a more sustainable office.

Planting 200+ trees with Edding and Tree Appeal

The sun came out for us last week, 26th April 2022, at the tree planting ceremony organised by Tree Appeal and Edding UK. As Edding UK's partner, Banner got their hands dirty as part of the tree-planting team at Ryecroft Academy in Leeds.

Four members of the Banner team - Alex Clayton, Kirk Townsend, Alex Milano-Tee and Natasha Barker - joined colleagues from Edding, as well as a big group of pupils from Ryecroft Academy, and got stuck in to planting over 200 trees of different varieties - helping us and them learn more about sustainability and the environment.

Banner joins local companies to raise money for the NSPCC in a 5-a-side football tournament. 

On 10th March 2022, members from Banner's sales and marketing teams joined forces with Business Fives, a corporate charity events company, to raise money for the NSPCC through a 5-a-side football tournament at Bradford Goals, Bradford, competing against other local companies. 

As a team with rolling substitutes, Banner's All Stars played 8 games and made it all the way through to the semi-final, before unfortunately losing and being knocked out of the tournament.

Demonstrating our ongoing commitment to zero waste to landfill; Banner donated 5,280 bottles of Hand Sanitiser to Trinity Methodist Church Mission in Castleford, Yorkshire.

Banner is delighted to be Supporting Sals Shoes Charity Toe to Toe school campaign 2021

Since 2016, Sal’s Shoes has distributed over 2,000,000 pairs of pre-loved children’s shoes in 46 countries around the world, including within the UK, to support families who would otherwise be unable to afford them.