Hey there! Welcome to my very first blog post! Get ready for blogs that’s all about me, my awesome products, and super useful tips to help you live a more sustainable lifestyle. In this post, I'll introduce myself and share the start of the story behind the creation of Green Planet.
For those that don't know me, I'm Maddy and i'm the founder of Green Planet Living. Until very recently (early August 2023) I have worked in the commercial office supplies industry since leaving school in summer 2012.
Over the years the need for the commercial office supplies to diversify has become more and more apparent, people just don't use stationery like they used to. There has also been a big push from consumers about wanting more environmentally friendly products. While I have always tried to push more sustainable products, in 2019 I decided to make it a key aim for myself in work. It was only when I really started looking into the products that I realised there is a real problem within the industry with greenwashing, new products which we are told are better for the environment but really there is nothing environmentally friendly about them, they have just used different packaging or something and then say it's good for the planet.
So I started looking for products that were not in our standard supplier ranges and towards the end of 2019 I stumbled across some seed paper, it sparked an idea in my head, truly sustainable stationery made from things like seed paper. I took it to my boss at the time as a way to diversify but was quickly turned away. Instead of giving up however I decided to roll with the idea myself.
I thought on the idea for a few weeks over the Christmas break and then at the start of 2020 I had a quick chat with Siobhan Stirling from Sharp Minds Communications and Emily Brown from Emily Brown Photography and gave them both an outline of my idea. They LOVED it to say the least, we decided we needed to look at it in more detail so penciled an evening into the diary in February where we could go over in more detail. This is where Green Planet was founded.
That evening with Siobhan and Emily was my how to start a business 101 course. They gave me a strategy, what I needed to research, told me how to get my message across, my route to market etc. Even now 3.5 years on I still look back at the Flipchart pages we created that night, there are still things on there I need to do, areas I need to work hard on - blog posts being a big one - and even though the business has evolved to include more than just stationery products the ideas we formed that night are just as relevant now as they were then.
Green Planet Living is still not my full time job, I have another job working from home 3 days a week. Running a business from home in your spare time isn't easy, but I know Green Planet has been set up with strong foundations to allow me to build it up sustainably so that one day it will hopefully be my full time job.
Check back in soon for our next post