Responsibility is one of our core values. Our Marketing Executive, Peter Rockhill, shares what that means to him.
Here’s what really gets me: that empty drinks can lying in the street. Kicked to the curb, a few feet shy of a bin. Or worse, down a leafy country lane, lobbed into the undergrowth. It’s often a well-known energy drink brand – let’s just say that to me, it’s like a red rag to a bull.
That’s because I don’t understand the mindset of people whose reaction to a place, whatever its measure of beauty, is to drop rubbish that isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. I have a theory that this is down to a person’s inner refusal to take responsibility in their own life. This refusal says: if there are no direct consequences, why should I bother?
So I’ve made a habit of redressing the balance. When I’m walking, I pick up that can, drop it in the nearest recycling bin. More like a drop in the ocean you might argue, but I believe that everything starts small, one tin at a time. We can take responsibility where others have chosen not to.
And let’s build it into our working day. My colleague Ed Beck has found a smart way to do this. He manages JPC by Samsic’s cleaning and waste services at a high profile (and I mean skyscraper-high) office block in the City. His team uses the “Don’t Waste” app, which tracks data about the different streams of waste that a site generates. Then it uses that data to build a customised waste strategy, so that no useful opportunity is thrown away.
Others around me are shouldering responsibility for those shadow sides of life that we might pretend don’t exist. Mental health struggles, for example. Samsic’s Mental Health Champion Leisa Curry turned painful life experiences into an opportunity to help others deal with theirs, especially during the Covid crisis. Or I could mention the work of Samsic’s charity partner, The Rainbow Trust, supporting the families of children with life-limiting illness.
We don’t need to take responsibility for causes too enormous to contemplate. It’s just about doing what we can, which usually involves something or somebody right in front of us. And that’s one less can kicked down the road.
