Inside EnviroCentre’s Green Team

Green Teams are one of the most effective ways for businesses to embed sustainability into their day to day. No matter what the scope of your organization is, a green team or sustainability committee not only gets employees involved in thinking about the environment in the workplace, but also helps find solutions and take action.

No matter what the scope of your organization is, a Green Team or Sustainability Committee not only gets employees involved in thinking about the environment in the workplace, but also helps find solutions and take action.

Even us environmentally minded folks at EnviroCentre need a Green Team to help keep us on track with our sustainability goals, so we thought we would share how we do things in hopes it will inspire you to set up or bring new ideas to your workplace.

The Basics

A Green Team is a group of employees who meet regularly during workhours to identify and implement sustainable practices within their workplace. The group can be as formal or informal as you like depending on your workplace culture.

The purpose of a Green Team can be as ambitious as the group wants it to be. Usually, Green Teams start by focusing on greening their office’s operations by reducing waste and use of single use plastics, composting food waste, and ensuring that recyclables are not ending up in the garbage. But Green Teams can also choose to do more – they can decide to look at ways of increasing the energy efficiency of their workplace, encourage positive environmental behaviours in their coworkers, raise sustainability awareness, and more!

EnviroCentre’s Green Team

EnviroCentre’s Green Team consists of 6 staff members who commit to being part of the team for at least a year. We meet monthly for an hour to half an hour and weekly tasks are assigned to Green Team members. We keep the weekly task schedule on a whiteboard in our kitchen as a reminder and to keep each other accountable.

EnviroCentre’s Green Team composting schedule.

Here are the 5 key things EnviroCentre’s Green Team does to promote workplace sustainability

1.

Weigh our garbage, recycling, and food waste. This is far less icky than it sounds – all you need is an electric scale stored somewhere convenient and a good pair of work gloves. By tracking these numbers we are able to establish how much garbage, plastic, and cardboard we are producing and set reasonable, measurable reduction goals.

2.

Carry out quarterly travel surveys to track how EnviroCentre employees are getting to and from work. This is also really simple – every 3 months we send out a questionnaire asking staff to mark their mode of transport for that week.

3.

Pull the data we collect into a yearly sustainability report that is included in our organization’s annual reporting. At EnviroCentre we report on our energy usage, travel, garbage, recycling, and compost.

4.

Help EnviroCentre maintain a green procurement policy. This includes making sure we are purchasing only what we need, and that we are buying the most environmentally friendly version of items, from dish soap to printer paper, stationery to office furniture.

5.

Celebrate our successes! Sharing victories with coworkers is really important to keep people excited and to remind ourselves that our actions do make a difference.

Green Teams are such a great way to bring sustainable practices into your workplace!


Are you or do you work for a business looking to be more sustainable? Check out Carbon 613, EnviroCentre’s program offering sustainability solutions for local businesses and organizations.