What we’ve learned creating iilo’s environmental policy

Why are policies important?

Because people want to work with, and support, organizations that are on the path to making genuine, positive environmental change. And no matter how big or small your business or organization is, every action you take to reduce your environmental footprint matters.

The collective impact of millions became obvious during COVID lockdowns, for example, when people were working virtually, millions of cars were off the roads, and the skies cleared in cities usually filled with smog. This gives us hope — the actions of many can make a difference, one step at a time.

Key takeaways

Here are some things we’ve learned from our small (and mighty!), virtual, service-based business that could help you create your own environmental policy.

Assess and identify where to make environmental improvements

At iilo, the foundation of our environmental policy is based on our business model of being a virtual-forever agency. Being virtual allows us to operate efficiently using virtual tools, limit the cost of travel to/from work, and eliminate the costs and emissions for meetings.

State what might seem obvious

We know there are things business owners do instinctively to help the planet that might seem too obvious to include in an environmental policy. At iilo, these are things like avoiding greenwashing and paying a living wage. We’ve realized that these things may not be obvious to everyone, so we’ve stated them in our policy.

Minimize our operational impact

While the iilo team is small and mighty, we all do what we can to reduce our consumption, reuse items, recycle paper, deal with electronics waste responsibly, and purchase products with an extended producer responsibility (EPR).

Establish processes to work in alignment with our values

As a creative services agency, we aim to inspire our clients to consider their environmental footprint with every project, and use our integrated approach to sustainable communications design, based on sustainable design principles. Integrating our values into our workflow is core to our environmental policy.

Assess & choose suppliers aligned with our values

Our environmental policy includes screening our suppliers and purchasing from values-aligned businesses who demonstrate positive social and/or environmental performance (e.g. LOCO BC, B Corp, 1% for the planet members).

Aim to reduce travel

We meet mostly virtually with our team and clients, which we find is as efficient as in-person meetings. If travel is required and a virtual meeting won’t work, we consider biking, taking public transport, carpooling, or offsetting our flights and travel.

Policies are living documents

iilo’s environmental policy isn’t perfect at this early stage, and that’s okay. It does the job of expressing our genuine intentions to be sustainable and is backed up by real action. We know our policy will grow and evolve over time as we continue to refine our business. It’s our practice to review our environmental policy annually, when we assess all of our key performance indicators as a business.

Share environmental impacts!

We were super proud to deliver our iilo year 1 benefit report recently, and the results of our environmental policy in action!

Are you inspired to collaborate and do work in a way that aligns with your own environmental policy? Let’s connect!