At Happydesigner, we’re all about children’s book illustration. We eat, live and breathe books – well, we don’t eat them, but some of them smell really nice (especially when they are new!).
But actually, this isn’t quite true; we’re not ‘all’ about children’s books. There’s a lot more to Happydesigner, and one of the most important things about us and our team is the values we hold dear.
We have a whole page on this website devoted to our passion for looking after the environment because we think as people and as a business, we have a duty of care.
Last year, Cop26 brought together nations from across the world to talk about climate change, how to limit the degrees by which the planet is heating up, and about ways to move to net-zero.
Politicians will make the big decision and take the big steps (we hope). We can make smaller decisions and take small steps, but together, they all add up to a bigger whole.
So what do we do here at Happydesigner?
Let’s talk about trees. We love trees, and without trees, the world would, let’s be honest, be a much poorer place. Plus, trees are what goes into making paper in books, so we have a vested interest in them.
One way we support tree planting is through Ecologi, a great organisation dedicated to worldwide climate projects and UK deforestation schemes. Our subscription to this organisation is used to help offset the carbon we use, so we are fast moving towards being carbon neutral.
You can check out how we are doing on our Ecologi page. We’re chuffed that in the ten months since we signed up, we have reduced carbon output by 28.58 tonnes and planted 774 trees in our forest. Oh wow!
We have also planted many trees through the National Trust and continue to support them every year in their quest to maintain the beautiful UK countryside.
Reduce, reuse and recycle is our mantra. We used to get through reams of paper, which we shredded and couldn’t (because of local rules here in Herefordshire) put out for recycling. We weren’t happy with this, so we invested in some very high tech equipment, and now all Sarah-Leigh’s drawings are done using a pretty snazzy screen and some very clever software. This means the amount of paper we use has dropped massively.
We are always looking at ways we can reduce our carbon footprint and hope to make more changes in 2022. We’ll keep you posted… If you have any ideas that you’ve implemented, either at home or at work, we’d love to hear about them and take some tips.
In the meantime, back to the books: if you have written a children’s book and want some superb illustrations to go alongside it, why not get in touch with the team here at Happydesigner? We’d love to hear from you.
Written by Jo Smyth (www.wordworker.co.uk)
