Success Stories
The success stories below feature B.C. businesses that are taking climate action into their work.
For other LiveSmart BC success stories, be sure to visit...
Growing City
Can you provide a brief description of your business?
Growing City is an urban organic waste management service specializing in corporate composting (www.growingcity.ca/). We make composting simple, clean, and convenient by taking care of all the steps in your organics recycling program. We place (good looking) Compo-Capsules in your office kitchen that are lined with compostable bags and each week (or more frequently if you'd prefer) a Growing City team member comes to clean, re-line and refresh your Compo-Capsule. Growing City also sends out monthly Diversion Updates letting you and your team know just how much waste and CO2 equivalency your business has diverted from our local landfills!
How did you come to start your business?
After spending a week on Savary Island (where composting is mandatory), we were amazed at just how little waste we created. When we returned to our lives in the corporate world we had a new appreciation for organics recycling and were shocked at the amount of organic waste generated by the corporate world (think of all those Monday morning coffee grinds!) We tried to find a company that could help us create an organics recycling program at work, but none of them were really suited to the office environment. That was when we had our "aha!" moment. We knew that composting in the office needed to be as simple as possible, so we came up with a full service approach to corporate composting. Looking into Toronto's municipal composting program, we identified key road blocks for urban composters and came up with our innovative individualized bin service.
What kind of customers do you attract?
Composting can help a business reduce it's overall waste by up to 40% (!) - so most of the companies that contact us have recently undergone waste audits and are looking for a simple and cost effective way to implement reductions. However, more and more company's are seeking green initiatives not only to be leaders and innovators in their field, but also for cost saving potential and because their customers and employees genuinely care. Working with Growing City provides a concrete return on a green investment. People get really excited about participating in a tangible green solution - seeing is believing - and when employees see the actual results of their greener choices (like filling their Compo-Capsule at the end of the week) they find it very empowering!
At Growing City, we try to have a 360 degree approach to sustainability. We're always looking at ways to make our company more green and community oriented.
Currently, some of our choices include:
- monthly events where we partner with a different local organization or charity to bring our clients and community exciting volunteering opportunities or experiences in sustainability!
- we use ethically made Compo-Capsules
- we use compostable bags instead of cheaper plastic ones
- we're switching our trucks to biodiesel
- we've banned use of plastic bottles at Growing City
- our uniforms are sustainably made
- we are now 95% paperless!
Every year we try to find new ways or technologies to help us reach our goals of being 100% sustainable, and we're always open to suggestions!
Do you have employees? If so, do they appreciate the green components of your business?
Part of being a Growing City team member is having passion for sustainability and our community. We think it's essential that our employees care about composting as much as we do and that's part of our hiring process. All of our team members can talk about the importance of organics recycling and various aspects of sustainability with confidence - and that's definitely a part of what makes Growing City stand out from other waste management companies.
Cozy Bums
Can you provide a brief description of your business?
Cozy Bums, founded in 2007, is a family-run small business that retails modern cloth diapers both locally in Prince George, BC, as well as online across Canada (www.cozybums.ca). We ship thousands of cloth diapers every year to families in all provinces and territories, from large cities to the smallest hamlets! Our goal is to provide environmentally-conscious Canadian families with high-quality cloth diapers and exceptional, ongoing customer support while those diapers are in use. For our local customers, we offer cloth diaper information sessions, coined "Diaper Discovery Workshops" in our home-based store, where families can learn all about cloth diapering, have an opportunity to play around with a variety of different types of diaper, and even try them on their little ones!
How did you come to start your business?
Shortly after having my first child, I knew I wanted to find a way to work from home so that I could stay home to raise her. We had ordered a set of cloth diapers from an online company based out of Vancouver, hundreds of kilometers away, which was the nearest retailer for this brand. These diapers had exceeded my expectations in every way - they were amazing in their capacity to absorb just about anything my daughter could throw at them, they were clearly very well-made and durable, and as any hip parent would want, they were extremely cute and stylish! There were no diapers of this type to be found anywhere in Prince George at the time. I knew that it was just a matter of time before someone brought them to northern BC, and so why shouldn't it be me? I quickly had my mom (a web designer) whip me up a website and Cozy Bums was in business! Now, three years later, we sell more than ten different brands of cloth diaper, as well as many other baby items.
What kind of customers do you attract? Are they interested in the green components of your business?
I believe that more and more young families are becoming increasingly discerning about the products they use with their babies for health, environmental and economic reasons. Most commonly, our customers simply want to reduce the amount of waste they're creating. We also hear over and over from our customers that they are concerned about the potentially harmful chemicals found in disposable diapers that their babies are essentially wearing, day in, day out, for the better part of three years or more. Finally, many families are interested in cloth diapering because of the substantial savings. After the initial cost of the cloth diapers, the only ongoing cost is laundering, which amounts to roughly $300 for the three years! And with subsequent children, the same cloth diapers can be used. Watch the savings multiply as you do, as we say!
In additional to selling cloth diapers, are there other green components to your business?
Yes! We sell a variety of eco-friendly laundry detergents, cloth training pants and reusable baby wipes. We also carry a style of diaper called a "hybrid" diaper - essentially a cloth diaper with a disposable component that is compostable (biodegradable). Hybrid diapers are a great eco-friendly option for families on holiday or who otherwise do not have access to a washing machine. We also try to operate with as little environmental impact as we can. We use reused or recycled shipping materials whenever we can, on which we stamp a little plea to our customers to "Please keep this recycled packaging going!" All of our cloth diapering instructions are printed on eco-friendly paper.
Do you have employees? If so, do they appreciate the green components of your business?
Employees? Does unpaid husband labour count :)? Cozy Bums is a rapidly growing company, though, and we anticipate needing some extra help soon!
Other details: Cozy Bums is devoted to natural parenting and providing earth-friendly alternatives to disposable diapering, and we do so by retailing only high-quality products that we have used and loved ourselves. We spend a lot of time with parents, discussing their needs and helping them develop a diapering solution that will fit. We are a family-run show, and we want to help families reduce their environmental impact in a fun, convenient and affordable way!
