Green showcase: Counselling in the Community

Stuart Hutton-Brown
Chief executive, Counselling in the Community

About us

We’re a charity offering adult and young persons counselling services to the Blackpool and the Fylde area.

Our team of more than 40 volunteers delivered more than 6,000 hours of counselling last year and we have closed more than 1,000 cases since launching five years ago.

We’re also proud to be a finalist in the Health and Wellbeing Category at the Red Rose Awards.

What we’ve achieved

Our line of work could generate a lot of paperwork, but by digitising our processes we’ve cut our paper use by 80 per cent.

We’ve switched to cartridge-less printers which means we’re not sending the empty ones to landfill, and we’ve installed infrared panel heaters which use less energy and save us money.

My own humble contribution is taking our leftover coffee grounds home for compost.

The rewards

Firstly, cutting our energy costs means there’ll never be a time we can’t afford to put the heating on.

Secondly, when people see us I want them to know that not only will we do right by them, but also by the planet.

And thirdly, while we’re relatively small now, when we grow these initiatives will help keep our environmental impact small.