I was working from home a couple of weeks ago and - BANG!
Some things fell through the letterbox. The post had arrived. I collected it, sorted through what was mine and Thibault’s, and sat back down to work.
Twenty minutes passed and then there was the sound of a van, followed by a knock on the door. Answering it, I took the delivery from the guy, shut the door and sat back down to work.
Where was I again…? Ah, yes, halfway through that paragraph…
Quarter of an hour passed and then another van, another knock on the door.
“Yes?”
Another delivery.
“Thanks.”
Off the van screeched. Right, back to work. Again.
Where the hell was I? Ah, yes, here….
Another van. Another knock on the door.
“Argh! What?!” “Delivery.” “Thanks!” I slammed the door.
Argh, why had I just been rude to the delivery driver? Sort yourself out Cari.
I sat back down to work. Where was I? I DON’T KNOW!
I stared at my laptop, trying to will myself to get into the flow again.
But I couldn’t. Something was nagging at me.
At lunchtime I set off to pick Gwen up from her morning nursery, still feeling disturbed. Something didn’t sit right. I looked up and down the streets as I was walking and I could see five separate delivery vans. I picked up Gwen from her first nursery and walked her to her afternoon nursery. Along the way, we had to skirt around a delivery van that was parked next to a junction, across the indentation in the pavement made for pushchairs and wheelchairs. After dropping Gwen off, I walked home and noticed a delivery van careering down the road in a 20mph zone.
This got me thinking: I grew up in a similar area to where we’re raising Gwen, but when I was little there was only the residents’ cars and the postman’s on the street. Now, just that morning, our one little household had brought four vans to the street. Our shopping habits had not only brought traffic to the street, but also quadrupled noise and air pollution, and I’d been disturbed during my working day four times.
We must change our shopping habits! I decided, determined to talk about this with Thibault tonight. But we are also running a business that buys into this system. We mainly use couriers to deliver our macarons, rather than Royal Mail, as they are financially more viable for our small business. However, this meant there is an extra van on each of our customers’ streets per macaron delivery: more traffic, more noise and more air pollution… So, we’ve made a decision! We’ll be posting with Royal Mail whenever we can from now on, ready for the Christmas orders. This is going to be expensive for our business as we’re still too small to open a business account, and we don’t want to pass on the full postage amount to our customers, but it sits better with us. Almost every street in Britain will be visited by Royal Mail every day anyway, so our macarons will just hop on for the ride. I know this is only a tiny drop in the ocean, but the ocean’s made of tiny droplets anyway, isn’t it?
So maybe this little step that’s been made by us this month can make our customers’ streets a tiny bit safer and more pleasant to live on and make our macarons an even greener choice. Let us know how you find the new delivery system!