Giving up paper for Lent again.

For the second year running the staff at Feelgood Organic Hampers are going to be giving up paper for lent. So come Ash Wednesday we are going to be once again clearing our desk of paper and striving to keep it that way until Easter Sunday.

Although I have seen some important improvements since we first attempted to run a paperless office last year there still seems to be a large amount of unnecessary paper that builds up over time. Every task and every meeting adds to the piles that congregate on desks or get pinned to walls.

Feelgood Organic Hampers by its very nature has a commitment to the environment and by giving up paper I believe we are taking one step further to becoming a truly sustainable business. Although we recycle, our long term aim is to significantly reduce the amount we use. It’s not until you attempt an experiment like this that you realise how much we rely on paper.

In the past year we have implemented several changes. Including eliminating cheques by paying suppliers online, making use of wipe clean customisable calendars and using software solutions for managing our diary. We have even started to use virtual sticky notes.

This year I hope to take things one step further. We may have changed the way we think about paper but we are still surrounded by it every day. Our biggest challenge is our accounting and over Lent I will be investigating several solutions to make this a paperless process.

So we're getting geared up for our challenge starting on the 25th of February. I'm going to be keeping a paper diary, posting updates here.