How can a few fruit rinds and coffee grounds make a difference?

One coworking space is piloting a program with food waste as a way to make a social impact.

WeWork is an international corporation that focuses on coworking spaces, valued at roughly $20 billion dollars. (Full disclosure: Green Philly is HQ’d at the 1601 Market WeWork.) When I read an article in Technical.ly Philly that they were offering 3 free months of coworking spaces to entrepreneurs, I decided to take a risk and joined WeWork. Almost two years later, I’ve loved my experience here.

Although WeWork is headquartered in Manhattan, they’ve empowered staff members to volunteer or give back in their own communities in their own ways. One example may be to bridge the gap of nonprofits and for profits. By providing the connection of human capital; for-profit WeWork community members can help non-profits where they need it the most. Another way is to provide space for meetups and charitable events.

WeWork Philly focuses on Social Impact

Steven Dorcelien, Social Impact Lead for WeWork Philadelphia, was interested in a sustainable initiative for WeWork. When he approached me with ways to make a sustainable impact, we talked about food waste and composting was one of the easiest targets. Every day, coffee grounds and fruit from fruit water are discarded into landfills, where they create methane gas, which is 80 times more harmful to our environment than CO2 emissions.

WeWork is working on a back-of-house composting trial with David Bloovman of Circle Compost. While it’s beginning with only a 5-gallon bucket, the initiative will save 30 pounds of waste each week, or 23.5 lbs of CO2 from entering the atmosphere. In one year, simply composting fruit and coffee grounds will save over 2000 pounds of CO2 into our air. Just imagine if the program expands: with 2000 local members, WeWork goes through quite a few fruit water and coffee each day.

Why should your company focus on social impact?

Regardless of their good work, WeWork isn’t innovating social impact for business.

There are plenty of stats that share how millennials are looking to work with companies that are focused on social impact, too. Social missions tend to attract customers and build employee retention, too. And as companies do good, they also tend to attract visibility and PR on the backend, too.

Find out more about how your company can make a social impact by joining a panel at WeWork on Tuesday,  July 17th at WeWork 1601. (Hint, I’ll be speaking!) Register here and find all the deets.

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Julie Hancher is Editor-in-Chief of Green Philly, sharing her expertise of all things sustainable in the city of brotherly love. She enjoys long walks in the park with local beer and greening her travels, cooking & cat, Sir Floofus Drake. View all posts by Julie Hancher