How Hive Legal turned its values into everyday culture
Most offices have a recycling bin. Fewer have a bee cake.
At Hive Legal, a Melbourne-based law firm and certified B Corp, the Threatened Species Bake Off - where the winning entry was bee-themed - is the kind of moment that tells you something has shifted: sustainability has stopped being a value statement on a wall and started showing up in the everyday choices people make without being asked - a culture where the better choice has simply become the normal one.
When values stay on paper
Sustainability can often feel too big or too abstract, particularly in a professional services business where the footprint is not always highly visible. That can make it easy to mean well and do little.
Hive Legal wanted something different. Not just an environmental sustainability policy, but an active sustainability program. Something their team could see, touch, and take part in every day. That is what EcoHive was built to be.
What they built
Launched in 2022, EcoHive is Hive Legal's internal sustainability program. The foundations are practical: multiple recycling streams with clear guidance on what goes where, reusable cups in the kitchen, paperless workflows and sustainable transport prompts.
Recycling bins might seem like a small place to start. But in an office, they are one of the few sustainability actions that every single person can see and take part in every day - which makes them a powerful on-ramp to broader culture change. Get the bins right, and you have something visible and shared to build from. EcoHive does exactly that.
Hive Legal has operated a hybrid model for more than 12 years, and that commitment to flexible work extends to sustainability too - including a monetary incentive for remote workers to make a sustainable change at home. Their team spent it on keep cups, battery charging docks for rechargeable batteries, and other sustainable home office improvements.
The program is coordinated by a four-person EcoHive committee – Stacy Otis, Operations Manager, Piper Blake, Lawyer, Christian Sella, Lawyer, and Adrian Faelli, Senior Associate. From there, it reaches everyone: quarterly newsletters, short tips at staff meetings, and every so often a film screening or themed bake-off that builds a personal connection to the topic - the kind that helps turn a program into a culture.
In Their Own Words
"EcoHive turns our values into practical action. It helps sustainability show up in the everyday choices we make as a firm, and demonstrates that small, consistent changes can have a meaningful impact over time." - Stacy Otis, Operations Manager, Hive Legal
When you know it is working
The moment Stacy points to is not a metric. It is when EcoHive stopped feeling like a project and started feeling like part of how Hive operates. People started naturally using all the recycling streams without being reminded. Ideas came forward unprompted. The 2040 film screening prompted real conversation. The bee cake won the bake-off. None of these are large things - but together, they mark the point where a program becomes a culture.
Why it matters beyond Hive Legal
B Corp certification asks businesses to prove their values show up in how they operate. For a professional services firm, EcoHive shows one way to meet this expectation: by creating something intentionally simple and built into the ordinary rhythm of the workplace.
Want to try something similar?
Stacy's advice: Start with what people already do every day. Remove friction rather than add complexity - make the better option the easier option, and people will use it. You do not need a perfect strategy or a large budget. Start small, be honest about what you can do, and keep improving.
EcoHive is replicable in almost any office-based business. Practical starting points include: improving recycling through clear guidance and dedicated streams, reducing single-use items by introducing reusable alternatives, using newsletters and staff meeting tips to build awareness, supporting more sustainable choices for hybrid or remote workers, and using creative initiatives - like a film screening or themed bake-off - to make environmental topics more engaging.
Explore More
Read more about Hive Legal's B Corp journey and ESG commitments at: www.hivelegal.com.au/our-initiatives
Are you a B Corp with a good news story? We'd love to hear from you too - get in touch at caroline@s360.solutions
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