Coty: Leading the Way in Sustainability and Employee Engagement

Coty, a multinational beauty company headquartered in Wimbledon with around 400 staff, has now embedded sustainability practices across their business by engaging employees in the organisation to create sustainable solutions that benefit and motivate everyone who works there.

Sustainability is one of the six strategic pillars at Coty and a very visible example of this commitment is the new rooftop garden and terrace, designed and created by Coty’s own team earlier this year. The garden, which was named ‘FEAR-LEAVES-LY KIND’ after another of Coty’s brand values to be ‘Fearlessly kind’, is used to grow organic produce such as tomatoes and cucumbers along with herbs which employees can take home and cook with. Recipes are also now being created to give people culinary inspiration. The basis of the design was to not use new where possible – all the palettes used for planting in the garden were just upcycled.

Jodie Rae, UK Facilities Manager for Coty, comments:

The rooftop garden is a great area for the Coty team to be at one with nature and take some time from our busy day to enjoy the outside environment, which is also beneficial to employee mental health.” Jodie is one of a team of employee ‘Coty-vators’ that tend to the garden weekly.

In addition to this initiative, Coty is promoting sustainability and employee well-being throughout their business by placing a pledge tree on their 5th Floor. Employees make pledges regarding their own ability to support sustainable behaviours, and then hang them on the tree, to encourage their commitment to living more sustainably – e.g., cycling into work on a regular basis. Coty employees are also encouraged to keep clothes in circulation with a large clothes swap area within their office, including clothing, shoes, bags and cosmetics. Staff are encouraged to take part in community days and volunteer regularly with Sustainable Merton’s Community Fridge.

“It’s really important to us and our staff are hugely motivated by our sustainability commitments. We’re thrilled to have been nominated for the Community Award at the Merton Best Business Awards this year in reflection of everything we do to make Coty more sustainable” adds Jodie.

First Mile – Now Offering Salon Solutions!

As part of our partnership with First Mile, we are now offering business services through Recycle My Salon.

They’ve created a service whereby salons can recycle their hard-to-recycle items in an easy way – a stylish recycle box that sits in your salon. You can recycle human hair and/or aluminium salon products using this service.

You purchase a pack of 4 x recycle boxes from Recycle My Salon and First Mile will deliver them the next working day. You then fill the recycle box with anything from the list below and let them know when it’s ready to collect, either via their website or by scanning the QR code on the recycle box. First Mile arranges the collection of the box the next working day, from inside the salon, and take it back to our facility for processing.

To sign up for these services please click here.

Items that can be recycled:

  • Human hair
  • Colour tubes
  • Foils
  • Aerosols (empty cans)
  • Cans
  • Any other aluminium products – foil takeaway containers, chocolate/sweet wrappers, foil lids etc can also go in here!

Ranger Impact Report Q2 2023

 

The Graph above illustrates the issues resolved in Q2 2023. During the summer months, our town ranger has seen an increase in fly tipping, graffiti, flyposting and other anti-social behaviour. By reporting anti-social issues through daily checks of the town centre, we tackle these issues by contacting the correct partners to deal with them leading to over 600 of these issues in the last quarter.

In addition to this, the Love Wimbledon team have been working hard to ensure the town was kept clean and maintained for a very busy summer. Including our successful summer events such as Big Screen Tennis on The Piazza, Friday Food & Play and our monthly markets. A total of 1,251m2 of pavement was cleaned over the course of three days in June.

Our Ranger reports around 250 issues a month to external partners such as First Mile, Veolia, Community Clean, Merton Council and Thames Water, ensuring they are resolved quickly and effectively.

You can report issues here:

Fly tipping

Litter/Weeds

Graffiti (in public areas)

Leaks

Streets and Pavements (Highways)

Traffic Lights

Bus Stops and Shelters

Rough sleepers

Sustainable September – Let us know your REUSE or REDUCE story

 

Let us know your REUSE or REDUCE story! 

This September Love Wimbledon is highlighting some of the things Wimbledon businesses are doing to reduce their impact on the earth. This is a part of a bigger celebration in the town centre including our first all sustainable market, fashion shows, tours and activities happening 18th-26th September. 

We want to know if your business is doing anything to reduce your impact on the environment (and better still saving money) that other businesses or customers would be interested in. So, if you have an engaging story about keeping stuff in circulation, please let us know at info@lovewimbledon.org.

Get in touch if you: 

  • Are a High Street business offering recycling or repairing services, maybe drop off points so textiles can be reused?
  • Have a good story about how your business has kept waste in circulation repurposing items for a new life from making beach bags out of banners to repurposing your business’s uniforms
  • Have reduced staff vehicle mileage in your company and if so how? 
  • Provide outstanding repair services keeping textiles or other items in circulation? 

So Wimbledon businesses, let us demonstrate what we do and learn from each other; REUSING and REDUCING to improve our impact on the environment.  

PS If you haven’t already signed up, we offer a subsidised waste service which includes FREE Electrical Waste reuse and recycling. 

 

Merton Best Business Awards Finalists 2023

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A huge congratulations to the Love Wimbledon businesses who are Merton Best finalists! We were delighted to sponsor the Business Innovation Award for this year awards.

Sustainable Impact Award: Kindred

Team of the Year: Polka Theatre

Contribution of The Community: Coty UKI, Domestic & General

Business Innovation Award: Cuppa’ Chaii

Hospitality Business of the Year: Wafflemeister Wimbledon

Best in the Creative Sector: Polka Theatre, Wimbledon School of English

Best New Business: Bombay Delight, The Golf Groove

Best Independent Business: Fitness Space, Wimbledon School of English

Charity of the Year: Wimbledon Guild

Employer of the Year: Better Leisure, Domestic & General, Theo Paphitis Retail Group

Top Women in Business: Wimbledon School of English, Gina Conway Salon and Spa

Best in the Property Sector: Lewis & Co

Sport and Fitness Business of the Year: Better Leisure, Fitness Space

Best Customer Service of the Year: Fitness Space

 

To see the list of finalists for each award category, please visit mertonchamber.co.uk. Winners will be announced at an awards ceremony on Thursday 5 October.

Guides: Managing Energy in Your Workplace

 

We are currently collaborating with the Greater London Authority (GLA) to introduce the Business Climate Challenge an initiative focused on energy efficiency. The GLA has provided simple guides for businesses offering practical tips on managing energy use in your workplace:

 

The Mayor’s Business Climate Challenge (BCC) is an energy efficiency programme which supports businesses to reduce their energy consumption and to accelerate building decarbonisation efforts in London. Emissions from heating and powering London’s commercial buildings comprise around 18 per cent of the capital’s carbon footprint.

CEO Update – Get Set for Summer!

Big Screen Tennis on The Piazza

The sun is out, Wimbledon is buzzing ahead of tennis, and we have so many exciting things happening! We’ll be working hard for the rest of June to make the town look as pristine as possible as we get set for one of the most important times of the year for so many of our businesses.

 

 

The Golf Groove

There can’t be many towns in Britain that are seeing as many new businesses opening as Wimbledon has right now. We’ve just had the first two major new experiential businesses opening as part of Centre Court Shopping Centre’s redevelopment, with The Golf Groove and The Boardroom Climbing bringing something genuinely new and fun to the town. We are looking forward to welcoming several further new businesses this month too, including The Sushi Co, Tampopo, a major new street food restaurant, Bubboo, a new Asian grocery store and The Soke, a stunning wellness centre. We are also delighted to welcome another Head Office relocation into Wimbledon, with the arrival of Turkish confectioner, Kervan Gida, into Swan Court on Worple Road.

 

 

Friday Food & Play

All this activity is leading to the town centre staying really busy too. Our footfall counters are recording visitor levels every week that are now comparable to how they were before the pandemic, and we are almost 10% up on the amount of visitors so far this year as in 2022. We’ve got lots to offer everyone this summer too, with free Big Screen tennis, followed by our always popular Summer Sit-Out benches, plus the return of last year’s hugely popular Friday Food & Play for three weeks in August (Fridays 4, 11, 18 August).

We look forward to seeing you over the next few weeks, it’s going to be a lot of fun!

Ranger Impact Report – Q1 2023

 

Since January our Town Centre Ranger has been working hard with external partners to keep the town clean and maintained. The graph above illustrates the number of issues which have been resolved in Q1 2023, 868 – our highest quarter yet.

We had reported an increase in litter, fly-tipping, fly-posting and graffiti in the town centre to our external services which has led to a staggering 1000 issues resolved to date (January-April). With more work planned in preparation for the tennis and other summer events, our team is dedicated to keeping the town centre in top form.

 

Before and after graffiti removal

 

Our Ranger reports around 250 issues a month to external partners such as First Mile, Veolia, Community Clean, Merton Council and Thames Water, ensuring they are resolved quickly and effectively.

You can report issues here:

Fly tipping

Litter/Weeds

Graffiti (in public areas)

Leaks

Streets and Pavements (Highways)

Traffic Lights

Bus Stops and Shelters

Rough sleepers

Single-Use Plastic Ban

Is your business prepared for the Single-Use Plastic Ban?

In October a range of polluting plastics will be banned in England. Plastics take hundreds of years to break down and this is a step towards reducing the amount of plastic being created and ending up in landfill after one use.

According to estimates, England uses 2.7 billion items of single-use cutlery — most of which are plastic — and 721 million single-use plates per year, but only 10% are recycled. If 2.7 billion pieces of cutlery were lined up they would go round the world over eight and a half times (based on a 15cm piece of cutlery). Plastic cutlery, for instance, was in the top 15 most littered items in the country by count in 2020.

 

From October, businesses (including retailers, takeaways, food vendors and the hospitality industry) will not be able to package and serve ‘food to go’ with single-use plastic plates, trays, bowls, cutlery, balloon sticks, and certain types of polystyrene cups and food containers.

Please make sure your business is prepared.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/far-reaching-ban-on-single-use-plastics-in-england

 

Craig Hurring, CEO commented:

We stopped single-use plastic in our Markets in 2019 and many of our stallholders found it an easy and positive transition welcomed by customers. It is part of Love Wimbledon’s environmental commitment. If any businesses need any advice or help about sourcing then please do contact us and we can put you in touch with likeminded businesses.

 

Love Wimbledon’s Local Market Turns 10

Local Market on The Piazza 10th Anniversary

 

Love Wimbledon celebrated a milestone achievement as we marked 10 years of our Local Market on The Piazza on 1st-2nd April.

It was a special day for our new and long-standing stallholders, shining a light on the the creativity and diversity of local independent makers and producers. The day was a great success with live music, delicious themed treats, giveaways and a visit from the Mayor of Merton. A big thank you to local independent business Quality Stitch, who repurposed Love Wimbledon fabric to make beautiful buntings for the occasion.

Click here to read the stories behind the stalls with some of our amazing stallholders who have been part of the evolution of our market over the last 10 years.

 

From our very first market in 2013 with just 11 stalls, we have become such a popular market in south west London for both stallholders and visitors, and we now host 27 stalls each month.  Over those years, we have developed a wonderful sense of community with local residents becoming regulars for many of our stallholders and market.

– Tracy Francis, Piazza Manager