Happy Earth Day from Agency Guacamole! 🌎
With this year’s Earth Day lining up with our five year anniversary, we’ve spent this month doing some reflecting on the environmental implications of our business.
We, as an agency and individuals, are cognizant of the impacts everyone has on our planet, and have strived to do our part to work in ways that are eco-friendly—sensitive to our environment, waste-conscious and green-forward.
Current Wins
Over the past five years in business, we’ve aimed to think and act sustainability in a few of the following areas:
Mailers
Influencer mailers are a large aspect of our agency—with our warehouse continuously expanding to handle large volumes of sampling programs, PR mailers, editor gifting programs, etc.—we’ve made changes in the ways we execute our ongoing rounds of mailing.
We prioritize and recommend to our clients eco-friendly packaging like recycled/recyclable cardboard, paper mailer boxes and biodegradable packing peanuts.
Eventing
An Agency Guacamole event is always one to remember, (not bragging, just true 😉) but they’re not without their own environmental impact. Events take a lot of hard work from many parties, and we’ve always made sure to plan out how we can produce our events in eco-friendly ways.
We’ll donate leftover products to local social organizations/non-profits, and try to repurpose temporary event build-out materials for long-term use to prevent them from going to the landfill.
But there’s always an opportunity to take it to the next level.
We know that we can do more as our agency continues to evolve, so we’ve come up with five goals we want to incorporate into our work in the next five years of business.
Five Goals for Five Years
1.Remaining Carbon Neutral
While there are always going to be an aspect of our agency that we cannot immediately change, we can try to offset our impacts. With CarbonFund.Org we will be able to calculate our businesses’ carbon footprint at the end of each year and offset our impact through its various donation partners. This will directly give back to organizations fighting climate change, deforestation and more to ensure that we are giving back to our planet in ways that we can.
2. INCREASE Eco-FriendlINESS OF EDITOR/INFLUENCER Mailers
While we’ve already implemented eco-friendly aspects to our mailers, we feel we can do more, from materials used in packing to the paper on which we print marketing collateral. Over the next five years, we want to increase the eco-friendliness of everything connected to our mailer/sampler services, including working with our shipping partners, to ensure we’re keeping our planet in mind.
3. Evolving Office Environment & SINGLE-USE PLASTICS
With COVID-19 altering the workplace for industries everywhere, our office here in Los Angeles has seen come changes, too. While we have been fortunate to expand our space this year, we’re still mindful of the way a global pandemic has affected in-person environments. In addition to operating with a flexible office schedule to help reduce daily vehicle emissions and waste, we are extremely conscious of single-use plastics and materials, and recycle everything that’s recyclable.
4. Team Building & Volunteering
It’s a tradition here at Agency Guacamole to spend every December doing weekly team building activities in the spirit of the holidays and another year of hard work. Part of this team building moment is when the whole team goes to volunteer with Westside Food Bank, an amazing organization local to our neighborhood. In the next five years, we’d love to add to this list other local organizations we can contribute our energy to, such as providing beach clean ups and participating in activities that will positively impact different physical areas of Los Angeles.
5. PRIORITIZING Eco-FRIENDLY Event PARTNERS
We are a full-service agency, meaning, for example, when we put on an event we oversee everything from the venue to catering to gift bags—basically everything that goes into an experience we’re building out on behalf of a brand. Being in control of all elements of our events, such as the food and drinks served to the physical space, gives us the ability to choose local partners with reusable, eco-friendly packaging and processes. As events come back in a post-COVID world, we want to prioritize eco-conscious event vendors/partners in an effort to make our events as planet-friendly as possible.
Here’s to the Future
We’re so proud to see where we’ve come and what we’ve accomplished in five years—in general but especially as it relates to making a positive impact on the environment. And we look forward to doing more in the future.
Do you have any ideas we can incorporate into our business? Tell us in the comments! 💚
Cover photo courtesy of Mark Esguerra