Our wildlife garden - valuable for mental health
As we consider the importance of mental health, particularly as we recognise Mental Health Awareness Week, our wildlife garden taken on even greater importance.
You wouldn’t expect to associate words like greenery, wildlife and horticulture with a steel-making and engineering plant, but they certainly sum-up elements of our Brightside Lane site.
Some years ago, we took the steps of creating a dedicated garden in the midst of our 64 acre site to help create a wildlife haven for the city and a relaxing space that our employees can all go and enjoy, complete with seating, walkways, ponds, a giant chess set and sculpture.
It is now a beautiful, mature green space, with resident ducks and fish enjoying the ponds, numerous bird species making homes in the nest boxes that we have installed and a wide variety of insect life thriving on the seasonal blossoms and flowers which grow in the garden.
We also have kestrels nesting on an adjacent building, a fox who regularly visits the site and Otters and Kingfishers have been seen by The River Don, which passes through our plant.
Alongside our work towards supporting the Government’s zero carbon agenda, we try to be as ecologically minded as possible, with more than 99 per cent of our waste recycled and diverted from landfill and a greener steel approach, whereby we manufacture every product from scrap metal.
It’s clear to us that we have a responsibility to help to maintain a strong ecosystem alongside our day-to-day work and we continue to look at new ways that we can ‘green-up’ our site, for the benefit of wildlife and for the mental wellbeing of our employees and other site visitors.
We encourage our employees to use the wildlife garden as much as they can and take time out to simply enjoy the environment, away from the demands of the working day.