Tips Tuesday: Encouraging Sustainable Behavior In, Away From the Workplace
How to Get a Green Team Started in Four Steps
Green Team volunteers are any employee within the company who share a vision to develop a more sustainable workplace. By soliciting volunteers from various departments, green team activities are linked to corporate sustainability objectives from a cross-functional perspective.
1. Establish top management support to facilitate decision making, perhaps by including a member of the executive staff on the green team. This provides management perspective on actionable plans and sets expectations for team direction of and potential funding.
2. Limit the team’s size, while including members from various departments, (such as sales, operations, etc.) to relay the cross functional impact and purpose, size limitation with balanced representation promotes efficiency.
3. Create an environment of creativity. An open forum fosters creativity and your volunteers’ best efforts to promote cost savings while simultaneously saving the earth’s resources.
4. Determine your company's goals given the resources at hand. Should you start with the basics, such as recycling programs or employee awareness? Can the company look further down the road and green its facilities or operations or its product/services?
Source: The City of Plano, Texas