Feeling tired of being in a company that doesn’t align with your sustainability values? Instead of changing companies, why don’t you change your business’ sustainability strategies instead? Green teams are mushrooming in all sorts of businesses and more and more companies are hiring chief sustainability officers.
Don’t waste your time searching for a new job. Rather, start working towards transforming into a zero-waste company. In a way, working at a not-so-sustainable company is like being on the frontline of climate action, with the possibility to move fast if provided with the right business sustainability strategies and motivation. It can begin today.
How do you start a sustainable action team?
Step 1: Prepare your first moves
Find partners passionate about sustainability in your company. Prepare the first meeting together and get a feel of the room. What kind of climate action is favoured by the majority? What sustainable solutions are most important to the people there? It is important to build corporate sustainability from the ground up.
Set clear outcomes for this first meeting. It is important that people feel things are moving forward in terms of business sustainability strategies. This first meeting should allow you to assign key roles such as a team leader, a treasurer (if you already have a budget) and assess involvement. How many people will be involved and at what levels can they contribute to this sustainability journey? It may also be productive to gauge whether there is interest in hiring a chief sustainability officer for your business if you do not already have one. This meeting should also let people express the reasons why they want to get involved. In our experience, building a climate action plan from the bottom up has a much better chance of survival.
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Step 2: Follow up with action
You have a team, you have an idea, all that is left to do is execute. Go from easy to hard, and don’t set your expectations of sustainable business and a sustainable workplace too high. By now, at least one member of the management team should be in the know and can start providing the institutional support you need to implement these sustainable solutions.
No need to envision a grand business sustainability strategy to upend the entirety of the company at once. Radical change comes with preparation, gathering momentum, and support. That said, it is important to understand how to avoid greenwashing. Your initiatives become greenwashing only if your desire for climate action dies off before it has had the chance to make a real impact and you do not follow through with your climate action plan.
Some change is better than no change. When using Plan A, we are committed to making your corporate sustainability journey a prolonged effort that has tangible results at all levels of the company. Consider recommending us to your green team, chief sustainability officer, or general management to help you craft the most effective business sustainability strategy to transform the company from within.
Step 3: Flexible like a bamboo, strong like an oak
Keep growing and fostering a sustainable workplace. Increase your visibility during your first corporate sustainability initiatives by using these recycling posters we’ve designed.
Although the final climate action plan of the team should be stated (and written down) from the get-go, a movement needs to leave space for growth. Diversifying sustainable solutions and replacing the initial enthusiasts who have lost momentum are among the difficult decisions that the team leader or chief sustainability officer will have to make. Thankfully, as your group grows and achieves significant, positive, and sustainable change there will be more room to expand and more roles to fill.
As you begin to positively impact your team and company at large and reduce your corporate carbon footprint, you should see an incremental interest in sustainability. Green teams within companies can usually get some time and some budget to implement their sustainable solutions and grow beyond their usual role. If you need help with specific strategies, send us a message at [email protected] and let’s talk about it!
The sustainable ambassador
We work to provide you with the tools to create, present and implement sustainable solutions within your company. First, we encourage you to explore our Academy. It’s full of resources to understand the current climate crisis and the case for sustainability. Moreover, we can provide you with deliverables and data to back up your mission – and make management listen to your argument for exploring and implementing these business sustainability strategies.
We have all felt the power of the change environmentalism is going through. We are now millions in the streets fighting against climate change. Let’s translate this mobilisation into tangible climate action by infiltrating the most significant vehicles of carbon emissions, businesses. Sustainability starts with you.
