{"id":81232,"date":"2025-03-04T17:03:47","date_gmt":"2025-03-04T17:03:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sykescottages.co.uk\/blog\/?p=81232"},"modified":"2025-03-04T17:03:47","modified_gmt":"2025-03-04T17:03:47","slug":"single-use-plastic-free-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sykescottages.co.uk\/blog\/single-use-plastic-free-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Journey Towards a Single-Use Plastic Free Office Space"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here at Sykes Holiday Cottages, we are committed to reducing our environmental impact. One of our key impact missions is to reduce and remove single-use plastics from our office spaces.<\/p>\n<p>In 2024 we made great strides in our journey to become a single-use plastic free business! From plastic audits and changes at head office to partnerships; we&#8217;re committed to our pledge.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Read on to learn more about how we&#8217;re making this happen&#8230;<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>Understanding Our Plastic Use<\/h2>\n<p>Before we could begin, we had to understand our plastic use. To take action, we researched how other organisations have successfully created single-use plastic-free office spaces; this inspired us to conduct a plastic audit. The plastic audit enabled us to understand the scale of the issue in our offices. This involved collecting, separating and counting all plastic waste to identify which single-use plastic items were most commonly used.<\/p>\n<p>Our findings revealed that the greatest contributors to our single-use plastic waste were:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Drinks bottles<\/li>\n<li>Food containers<\/li>\n<li>Soft plastics such as crisp packets<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-81234 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sykescottages.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Plastic-Audit.jpg\" alt=\"Sykes Plastic Audit\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>Making it Happen<\/h2>\n<p>Learning from the results of the plastic audit, we started to make a change by removing the following from Head Office:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Disposable coffee cups (we used up to 1,000 per week prior!)<\/li>\n<li>Blue roll for cleaning work surfaces<\/li>\n<li>Washing up liquid<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We&#8217;ve replaced disposable coffee cups with reusable ceramic mugs, blue rolls with a 100% plastic and chemical-free compostable alternative and disposable washing-up liquid bottles with refillable options.<\/p>\n<p>To keep working towards a positive change, we are working with <a href=\"https:\/\/sustainablecheshire.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Sustainable Cheshire<\/a> to develop practical solutions to support us in reducing our office waste and our employees in reducing their single-use plastic waste. We&#8217;re proud to be the Business Ambassador for their Plastic Free Chester Taskforce <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sas.org.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Surfers Against Sewage<\/a> Champions, which sees us join other like-minded businesses taking action to protect our seas, oceans, and wildlife.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>What&#8217;s Next?<\/h2>\n<p>We will continue our journey to remove more single-use plastics across our offices and introduce practical solutions that are better for our planet. We hope our employees will be inspired to look for ways to reduce their single-use plastic waste at home and that we can encourage other businesses to reduce their environmental impact!<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-81235 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sykescottages.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Sykes-Million-Mile-Clean.jpg\" alt=\"Sykes Million Mile Clean\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>If this insight has left you wanting to learn more about Sykes Holiday Cottages&#8217; commitment to the planet, check out our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sykescottages.co.uk\/blog\/category\/impact\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Impact section<\/a> or learn more in our latest <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sykescottages.co.uk\/blog\/impact-report-2023\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Impact report<\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here at Sykes Holiday Cottages, we are committed to reducing our environmental impact. One of our key impact missions is to reduce and remove single-use plastics from our office spaces. In 2024 we made great strides in our journey to become a single-use plastic free business! From plastic audits and changes at head office to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":177,"featured_media":64551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20262],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-impact"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sykescottages.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sykescottages.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sykescottages.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sykescottages.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/177"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sykescottages.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sykescottages.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sykescottages.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sykescottages.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sykescottages.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sykescottages.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}