As Koala Eco has grown as a company, and our products have continued to receive such a great reception, we’ve also been thinking deeply—as individuals and within the Koala Eco team—about what being in or close to nature means for us in our daily lives. And we’ve all agreed there’s no doubt that that connection to nature makes us feel so much better in a variety of ways. 

Calmer. Happier. More at peace with the world, and yet also more alert and alive. More connected to and appreciative of the places we live, the people we love.  

So we’ve adopted a new practice at Koala Eco: encouraging and compensating our team members to spend an hour a week in nature as part of their working day. Actively setting aside time to do something connected to the natural world that feels particularly healing and is not about routine things like exercise. 

An hour to go on a bush walk with kids…to sit on a wall and dangle legs in the ocean, to watch dolphins, explore up close the bark on a eucalyptus tree, to plunge into an ocean pool, to visit the Botanical Gardens on a glorious sunny day, spend an hour examining plants and making botanical drawings a bit like the Koala Eco labels. 

For us, these paid hours are a small but significant way of affirming that nature doesn’t just give us powerful cleansers and antiseptics from botanical sources, but is also a means of deepening and enriching our lives, and promoting a happy and healthy workplace. We believe every hour spent in nature pays it forward in so many positive ways: emotionally, socially and environmentally. At Koala Eco, we think that’s doing some of the most important work of all.