Wednesday 30 January 2008

The Lovely People on the Path

One of the many joys of my job is meeting people who care.
I've just come off the phone having an almost one hour chat, out of office hours, with the guy who runs the place where some of the waste from our factory goes to.
We couldn't remember today how we came to meet, probably some networking in the waste trade.
From the first time I saw him I empathised with him. I can usually tell the good guys from the bad guys (and have at times, chosen the latter at my own risk ☺ ). Well, he runs this recycling tip which started as skip hire for builders and then evolved into general waste and recycling business. His recycling rate for the yard is 90%!
That means that everything that comes to him is sorted, stripped and salvaged... then turned into something else.
My favourite part when he calls is discussing the ins and outs of the trade. He does it in such a lovely way that many sentences are punctuated by "so your waste can have a low carbon footprint", or "we were going to take it to Slough, but just think of the footprint".
For him to recycle his “bad” wood (contaminated with paint, varnish, etc), he has to pay for his good wood to be taken away. He could easily make more money by selling his good wood and landfilling the bad. People who choose to make less money to follow the best environmental route figure very high up my list.
He's looked into solar-powered lights for the outside of the warehouse, but kept being put off by people saying it was prohibitively expensive.
He feels that it's part of his duty as a waste contractor to help the clients reduce their footprint. So he recommends easy ways of compacting waste, in order to for them to have fewer collections.
That's the kind of thing that just brightens my day! People that regardless of their trade in life are doing their best to do their job in an ethical and caring way.
I think it's our duty as a company to support people like that and make sure that the money we pay for services goes to the hands of such inspiring folk.
Just wanted to share that with someone. :-)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's so good to hear. People like that make the world such a nice place to live in. :)

johnny said...

Ruthinhaaaaaaaaaaaaaa


que saudades de vc amada!!!!

lembra de mim?
o joao andre, amigo da Re?

bjbj

ainda esse ano devo dar um pulinho ai!!