Posted by: Will – Priority Juggler on July 28th, 2008

We were surprised and delighted a couple of weeks ago to learn via email that we’d been nominated for the IMRG’s Online Green Awards (affectionately known as the OLGAs), in the small retailers category.  So surprised in fact that my first response to the email was to ask Sam if he thought this might be some elaborate phishing scam.  A bit of double checking later and we soon found out that, nope, we really were nominated. Hooray!

Looking at the list of nominees across the categories, we found we were in good company; nominees included eBay, Dixons, Ocado, Marks & Spencer and the Royal Mail - I haven’t added links as I reckon you’ve probably heard of them :).  Of the slightly less titanic organisations nominated there were some great businesses we’d heard of, such as Ethical Superstore, and some great businesses we hadn’t heard of (sorry!), such as Celtic Sheepskin, Tangkoko and Digital Direct.  I can’t include all nominees here, but you can see the full list, including Arena Flowers, here.

Sam and I attended on behalf of Arena.  If you’ve read Sam’s previous posts, you’ll know that he and his team are in charge of almost everything you experience online and offline when interacting with Flowers HQ (and you may also remember that he recently became the proud father of a new baby boy).

The awards ceremony was held at the Kensington Roof Gardens, in London - believe it or not, in these sumptuous, skyline gardens there are 1.5 acres of greenery, spread across three differently themed gardens, including (the pictured) flamingos. Amazing. Sam and I found this rather unfamiliar territory as, in order to keep our costs down and our efficiency up, Flowers HQ is sensibly based in West London near all kinds of highly optimised transport and business links and absolutely nowhere near any roof gardens or flamingos.  But we don’t care - our designer flowers beat all comers. :)

Right. This post is getting too long.  So, as we say in our meetings when someone goes on a bit: “Skip to the end!”. Two things left to say:

1. The IMRG’s findings (supported by numerous seasoned academics) were pretty interesting. The crux?

“The carbon emission of each item bought online and delivered to a customer is 132 grams of C02. Twenty-seven items need to be bought on a dedicated car journey to the shops to achieve the same level of efficiency. Nine purchases need to be made to be as green as shopping online on a bus journey.”

Dr Julia Edwards from Heriot-Watt university was assiduous in calling out that a number of caveats apply to this (or any other) model.  It nonetheless seems pretty clear that, whilst it’s hard intuitively to understand the environmental benefits of the white van man or the massive double decker Royal Mail juggernaut steaming down the motorway, in many ways they and the system they are part of can be far more efficient than us as individuals driving to the shops as to pick up items ourselves.  Read more here.

2. Arena won! Hooray!  Of course, showing off is a not terribly British, but, because this award shows how great our customers are we’ll share a couple of pics.  We’re trying to be green (we have a lot still to do on that front) and we obsess about how we can surprise and delight our customers every time they order. Business types tell us not bother about that and to just make more money.  Winning an award like this, and seeing orders coming in, makes us happy, as it proves our customers are buying into Arena not just with their heads but with their wallets.  Thank you to all our loyal customers. As they say, this one’s for you!

Sam, already used to cradling the Arena Flowers websites in his hands, is gentle with Arena’s cherished award.

If only the IMRG had told us the yellow blob on our name badges indicated we’d won an award (click to enlarge), we’d have been a lot more relaxed throughout proceedings!

Finally, thanks very much to the IMRG for such a fun day.

PS Sam and I couldn’t work out why the flamingos don’t fly away from the roof gardens (if you know, please let us know - are they scared of heights or is life just too good up there?!).

Similar posts: If you enjoyed this post, you can read a number of others talking about ethical initiatives in our ethical and environmental posts category.

 

Filed under: Customers, Ethics & Environment, Floristry, Flowers, General, Mega Days on July 28th, 2008

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