The way we act has an impact on the lives of street children. By reducing our carbon footprint, we reduce the impact on the environment and thus the adverse impact on the street children we seek to serve. Small changes will help.
Therefore Toybox commits to:
Minimising the environmental impact of travel by:
- travelling within the UK, where possible, by train;
- wherever possible, staff should seek to minimise emissions from work-related car travel, for example, avoiding unnecessary car use, sharing journeys or using low-emission vehicles;
- international travel should only be booked when all other avenues have been exhausted, for example, through Teams/Zoom, video conferencing, telephone conferencing or where these methods are unsuitable;
- when planning international travel, it should be explored if several tasks could be achieved in one trip in order to keep international flights to a minimum (although individuals are not encouraged to have trips that exceed 3 weeks for the sake of their well-being);
- a ‘cycle to work’ scheme is available to all UK staff to encourage bicycle use;
- encouraging some work from home days to reduce travel.
Minimising the environmental impact of energy use by:
- ensuring all staff members understand they are required to switch off computers, monitors and printers when leaving the office each day, not to leave chargers plugged in and to switch off lights when a room is not in use;
- ensuring that all new equipment complies with environmental regulations and meets the minimum of A-rated energy-saving standards.
Minimising the environmental impact of paper use by:
- ensuring where possible, we will use e-communications; including Eversign;
- ensuring where possible, recycled paper is used for internal printing and for external publications. Non-recycled paper should be Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified;
- when having items designed, consider how much ink is being used and where possible reduce the amount of ink and therefore waste ink produced;
- in the office we will print on both sides of paper and use a lower percentage of ink by printing in black and white unless colour is essential;
- striving towards a paper-light office;
- maintaining a user friendly website which encourages paperless transaction.
Minimising and managing waste by:
- ensuring items that can be recycled are recycled, this includes food waste;
- ensuring appropriate numbers of printed items are ordered.
Ethical purchasing by:
- where possible purchase only fair trade consumable items. For further information please refer to the Toybox Ethical Fundraising and Partner Policy and the Toybox Investment Policy.
Responsible event management by:
- considering all elements used at events for their recyclable qualities, and only create stands and exhibitions that can be used multiple times;
- not giving away items that are bad for the environment and cannot be recycled. We will not give away five leaflets when one will do the job!
Minimising the use of storage by:
- scanning files and recycle paper copies, where appropriate and within legal guidelines;
- keeping electronic files tidy and organised. We will not store electronic files in several places, just one. We will delete items on a regular basis so to ensure that extra storage space is not purchased unnecessarily.