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Permaculture at the factory: a CSR initiative by Bong

Zoom on our permaculture project at Bong Retail Solutions

In 2020, after defining its ambitious CSR policy, Bong launched its permaculture project to develop the green spaces around its French factory, located in Évreux, Normandy. After planting numerous fruit trees to create a garden forest, our employees teamed up to create a corporate vegetable garden.

What is permaculture?

Permaculture is often mistakenly associated with just another gardening practice. But it’s much more than that!

Permaculture is an approach, a philosophy, a science and an art of designing harmonious, sustainable and resilient ecosystems using nature as a model. Permaculture practices aim to create systems that are both labour- and energy-efficient and highly productive.

In short, permaculture proposes working with, rather than against, nature. We take our inspiration from the way nature works, to produce more thoughtfully while preserving biodiversity.

It brings together an ethic, a set of principles and methodological tools that can be applied to gardens, towns, businesses and so on.

The aim is to take care of nature and people, and to share resources fairly.

Our partnership with the 'Ferme des Gobettes'

Our team works hand in hand with Elsa and Thibault who are at the origin of this organic market garden farm located in Eure, in Normandy. They grow more than 200 varieties of fruits and vegetables, sold locally.

With their partner Charlotte, these 3 young market gardeners promote the values that we wanted to develop with our project: nontillage through the Market gardening on Living Soil (MSV) technique, the preservation of biodiversity, the will for everyone to have access to healthy food.

With the help of young market gardeners from the ‘Ferme des Gobettes’ who share the same values of protecting biodiversity, Bong has created a vegetable garden to provide its employees with fresh vegetables and fruits.

Specialized in market gardening using living soil, our partners teach Bong volunteers the techniques they have tested and approved on their own farm to grow vegetables while preserving and even improving the richness and biodiversity of the soil.

A corporate vegetable garden to learn, share as a team and raise awareness

This permaculture project alone brings together several goals:

  • Offering employees fun and meaningful activities
  • Experience new things with colleagues, meet new people and exchange ideas between departments that don't often get together
  • Raise awareness of the need to protect the environment and biodiversity
  • Provide a more pleasant working environment
  • Learn how to grow healthy vegetables
  • Develop the site so that it embodies the ecological transition that the plant is implementing

In 2023, we created a genuine company vegetable garden capable of supplying employees with vegetables. It proves that gardening with colleagues produces much more than a good crop. It is also an opportunity to interact with employees whom we rarely meet at work, raise awareness about the preservation of biodiversity and healthy food, having an outdoors leisure activity, developing a stronger sense of belonging to the company, creating connections, training about permaculture and agroecology…

– Judith Lothon, CSR Manager

The enthusiasm of the employees for this project demonstrates the importance of such initiatives in strengthening team cohesion, promoting health and well-being at work, and raising awareness of environmental protection. Bong is thus continuing its commitment to corporate social responsibility and sustainable development, while creating a positive impact for its employees and the local community.

Find out more about our environmental approach

Promoting healthy eating among our employees: our harvests in pictures

In 2023, the first year with a substantial vegetable garden, the project was a real success among the Bong teams. We harvested tomatoes of all colours and sizes, multicoloured squash, green and yellow courgettes, beetroot, beans, potatoes, lettuce… Growing our own vegetables and fruits are a great source of pride! Our employees can even enjoy a cherry tomato upon arriving at the workplace or distribute the strawberry harvest to colleagues.

The permaculture adventure continues in 2024!

After a very successful harvest in 2023 and with the help of our enthusiastic collaborators, we continue to develop our corporate garden in 2024. Always accompanied by our partner, our team of volunteers has once again cleaned the garden for new plantings, planted vegetables and fruits, and sown seeds and flowers.

This year, the Bong garden has also taken on another dimension with the construction of a greenhouse. Some employees from different departments took up DIY for several hours, giving us the opportunity to grow new vegetables that are less resistant to bad weather. This greenhouse will allow us to extend the tomato harvesting period until autumn and to plant vegetables like peppers and eggplants. The greenhouse will also provide us shelter when the Normandy rain joins our sessions.

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