Serpact and our green experience

Our 15 steps to environmental, social and corporate responsibility 

In recent years, business circles have increasingly discussed ESG – ecological, social and corporate responsible management.

The concept of ESG is to transform businesses into sustainable ones to be successful and stable in the long term. For this purpose, they should observe measures in three main aspects:

• Environmental responsibility
• Social responsibility
• Corporate responsibility

Environmental responsibility generally includes measures against climate change, reduction of harmful emissions, reduction of generated waste, and care for water and natural resources.

Social responsibility examines relationships with employees, suppliers, customers, community, paying attention to the care of employees’ health, the safety of the working environment, etc.

Corporate responsibility includes intelligent and transparent management, integrity in management decisions, and following transparent accounting methods.

As Yvon Chouinard shares in his book “The Responsible Company”, no company is completely responsible and green in all aspects of ESG.

But we believe that every company can start at its own pace to prepare and follow strategic plans to do less harm to the environment, improving the sustainability of its business.

For the past 2 years, with small steps, Serpact has managed to reduce its environmental footprint and ensure a good working environment and an intelligent management approach.

Even more significant for our team is that we do it not under pressure to follow European directives but because of our strong team and personal sense of responsibility.

ESG initiatives in our office

• In our office, we collect paper, plastic, and glass separately. For the convenience of colleagues, we have small three-sector containers, which responsible colleagues periodically empty and take to a nearby container of the recycling company in Svilengrad.

• We choose suppliers of recycled paper for the printers so that only the most necessary documents are printed.

• We have reduced plastic water bottles to a minimum by using a water purification system. The system has a compact size, suitable for any type of office. It easily mounts to a faucet and filters microplastics in tap water down to 0.2 microns in size. Through its filter, we also use water for the coffee machine.

• The coffee machine in our office has eco-doses – paper bags with aromatic coffee with different flavors. After use, we collect the doses and distribute them to colleagues who wish to compost. That way, both the paper and the coffee grounds can decompose in the soil instead of filling up the trash cans.

• The container in which we collect the coffee doses was specially made for our office by a lady from a local community, “Buy a gift from mothers of disabled children.” The beautiful decoupage makes us happy every morning, and we also feel the warmth that we have made people in need happy.

• We use low-toxic cleaners and disinfectants to reduce the use of chemicals in the office and maintain a healthy work environment.

• We also reduced the light pollution in the office by equipping it with LED lamps – with lower energy consumption, minimal maintenance costs, with a longer life. Their advantage is that they are made from recyclable materials and do not contain polluting elements such as mercury.

• We actively encourage the use of digital notebooks instead of paper ones.

• We choose responsible suppliers of eco office materials in our assortment. We use recycled seed paper pencils from a local small business. We are about to renew the advertising materials with eco pens, eco notebooks, and eco folders.

• Our business cards are digital – instead of ordering paper business cards in a new edition every year, we focused on their digital counterpart – plastic with a long life and integrated NFC technology.

ESG initiatives during SERP Conf. 2022:

• We recycled all plastic bottles after the event.
• We delivered fruit without excess packaging in beautiful reusable panners.
• We chose catering for lunch without disposable utensils and disposable tableware.
• The team decided unanimously and donated the amount of the purchased tickets for the specialized workshops during the conference for the cause of the NGO “Operation: Teddy Bear”. Congratulations also to the speakers at the workshops who accepted the offer and stepped in with more donations.

ESG initiatives during SERP Acad. 2023:  

• We supplied water in glass bottles instead of plastic;
• All exam session materials are digital, saving unnecessary printing of materials.

For our company, these are small but valuable steps towards a responsible attitude towards nature.

Thanks to the meritocratic management principle, all proposals are accepted by management, encouraging the search for new sustainable ideas.

Because we believe that we must create value for all stakeholders – employees, customers, the environment and society.

After preparing this short audit of what we’re doing so far in our team (we audited ourselves), we planned the next steps to take along the way this year. Together!

For inspiration, we share a quote from the book “The Responsible Company” by Yvon Chouinard:

“Making a bad product means doing bad business. In the coming decades, when consumers will become more demanding, resources – scarcer and more expensive, investors – more demanding, every company will face competitors who have already adopted all elements of production responsibility.”