[Peter Ellse speaking]
Nature conservation and improvement in the area has always been at the heart of Cosy. We started as an outdoor school supplier and we're here to get kids outside and active in nature and so a lot of our products are made for that purpose to encourage teachers to get children outside and we started that 15 years ago. Cosy have a foundation, and the foundation is involved in getting children outside and active as well. We have a camping farm in Derbyshire.
[Laila Riggott begins speaking]
So we take every year about 300 children from Derby and Derbyshire out into the countryside, where they camp quite literally in a field. The first thing they do when they get there is we take them all down to to a mill where they get to paddle in a stream and have a big water fight. This is something that many of those children have never experienced before. We go on many walks, go to Dovedale and they see things that they haven't seen. We have children asking 'what's that over there?' And it's a sheep or a cow and it's some things that we might take for granted and others don't actually see even though it's right on their doorstep.
[Peter Ellse begins speaking]
Another aspect for us is the local supply base. We try to have things that are low carbon and close to us. Half of the business is supplied by companies here in the UK and the other half is is in Europe so not very far away. And then we work with a lot of natural suppliers bringing children products that are quite close to nature so they get a very good proximity and handle on things that were branches and trees and slices of wood and things like that. Another aspect of the supply base is our circular supply base. So we have a lot of people that bring us tires or barrels that we convert safely, that waste, to be able to be used in schools as play materials. And that's around about 17% of the resources we supply.
We also give everyone here at cosy, there are 130 people, three days to volunteer. And with that voluntary time we organise it for people because people have never got time to volunteer themselves or work out what to do. So the average time in a company, if they give volunteering days, is about a 40% take up. We are proud to get 100% take up of ours because we organise those days. We close the firm and go and do things.
[Laila Riggott begins speaking]
So a lot of the volunteering opportunities that we offer here at Cosy sees people go out into nature into into fields into schools and they support and they help make the environment better for many different settings. And what we found on the back of that is it's a win-win situation for us and for the settings that they go in and support and help. And that's because we find that getting people outside, getting people talking to each other, maybe mixing with people from a different department that they wouldn't normally get to speak to, it makes a real difference to their well-being. but also to the well-being of the company. We have people who are loyal, people who are happy, people who want to do more. It's a win-win.
[Peter Ellse begins speaking]
Living animals is a big part of biodiversity and we think that natural rhythm of living animals really relaxes people and makes people a better place to work and less like a workplace. So here we have three goats here on site. So the first thing you see when you arrive is the goats. And we also have 120,000 bees and we have trained goat herders and trained beekeepers here at Cosy to allow us to do those things successfully and it works really well. Work that we've undertaken to support nature locally, regionally and globally. We have worked on all three of those levels. So firstly, locally we plant trees here for Derbyshire and we have a tree nursery with 800 trees, little saplings like this, so it's not much carbon to claim as such but it's a really good thing to do. And then we grow them up to about this height and then we send them out to schools in Derbyshire. So last year, we sent them out to Buxton, we sent 600 schools out to them to create a woodland for them is the first thing.
The second part of that working out of here is that we also, on site here, we've got everyone that's got a car that's relating to the company's EV. We use the solar, we've converted all the lights, done all the basic things that you do for scope one, scope two to make that work. And then working out of the area from here, we have a map of the whole area of of around Cosy, five miles, and we look for every village and every hamlet and try and place some grassroots investment in that. So we sponsor 10 football teams for example, locally. That's all about getting children out outside and active and that really works well. And then we know further a field there's maybe greater need than there is in the UK. And so we're also involved in digging wells in Pakistan. We funded 10 wells in Pakistan this year in a place called Sindh, which is, you know, as as hot as the Sahara. It runs the latitude like that. And so it's a quite a basic investment in partnership with someone allows us to put wells into villages and reduce women and children's travel time to get the water by 2 hours. Given that time then to make a better life for themselves. So we really believe in that stuff and it really works for us.
I would say that there are plenty of partners in nature in Derbyshire. the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, the University Business School, the Chamber of Commerce, Marketing Derby, all are full of people that help with these kind of things. And then I would point you towards the Kings Award for sustainability. There are many sustainability winners in Derbyshire. The county is one of the largest collection of sustainability winners in the country. And so go and have a look at those and talk to those people because people are very free with their encouragement and advice and together we'll be able to create something.
If I were to offer my advice to peers and our community, I would say that start small. I would say don't be overwhelmed by nature, don't consider it to be not part of your business. It's very easy to open the door to it, have it as part of it. Lots of people have lots of ideas about this. Everyone in every company I ever spoke to has got something that they're doing. It's often things that can give you energy or ideas and you can start small. And celebrate in your company, the people that are doing things. Look for it and celebrate it. And together we can.
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