Ashurst Perkins Coie Grows

by Lucy McLean, Sustainability Impact Manager, Ashurst Perkins Coie.

In 2025, Ashurst Perkins Coie teamed up with Local Origin, a Community Interest Company, to set up an on-site composting and urban farming programme. The concept is simple. Food waste from the firm’s commercial kitchen is sorted and diverted to a composter in the basement.

The same space also houses growing shelves that produce fresh microgreens, herbs, and mushrooms, which the catering team then incorporates into staff lunches. Getting the programme off the ground has been a team effort. Local Origin and the firm’s sustainability team worked alongside Workman (the building management company), the Workplace team and the firm’s caterers, Vacherin.

This collaboration across functions and suppliers has brought a previously unused space to life. Perhaps most crucially, the initiative has driven significant engagement around the issue of food waste. Staff have toured the space in small groups, tasted dishes made with home-grown produce, and joined workshops to sow their own microgreens. In addition, Local Origin’s quarterly reports support the firm’s drive for more accurate and transparent sustainability data.

Looking ahead, the team aims to expand composting capacity to be able to take in more food waste and grow more produce. There will be a focus on aligning produce with the catering team’s requirements, and on working towards composting certification, with the goal of creating a business model that can be replicated across other offices and sites. The pilot has already proved an exciting collaboration, showing how circular economy principles can deliver real environmental benefits to everyday office life – starting right beneath our feet.