Green Team Toolkit

Introduction

The creation of Green Teams is an opportunity for organizations to champion the new era of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) standards. They foster, facilitate, and inspire change that supports the sustainable performance goals, established by federal, local, and company mandates. These teams enroll co-workers to support the organization and staff at various sites and facilities in order to make sustainable transitions as easy as possible.  

“At the foundation of capitalism is the process of constant reinvention – how companies must continually evolve as the world around them changes or risk being replaced by new competitors.”

– Larry Fink, BlackRock CEO

Generating and managing change isn’t easy, which is why the Green Team Toolkit was developed. The Toolkit works in concert with and is a companion to the Guide to Sustainability: Strategy Library (referenced in this document as the Guide). The Guide serves as a textbook, while the Toolkit serves as a workbook and toolbox containing a number of templates that are easy for Green Teams to use in implementing greening activities.

The tools were developed to provide additional guidance, reduce duplicative efforts, increase environmental impact, and assist in behavior change activities that are needed to achieve sustainable performance goals. Thus, this Toolkit should help Green Teams to initiate and organize their team, manage their greening activities, and communicate results.

The steps identified within each section of the Toolkit serve as guidelines to help teams stay aligned with site management. Most of the steps were collected from successful Green Teams from the U.S. Department of State, and therefore serve as a best practice roadmap to successful selection and implementation of greening activities. However, each Green Team will have their own unique characteristics, experiences, and operations, so follow the course of action that works best for your team.

The tools are organized to include three key phases of team development: Organizing for Sustainability, Greening Activities, and Results (Figure 1). Each grouping of tools is divided into these key phases, as indicated by circles, with significant steps indicated by open circles, which also represent opportunities to brief post management.

Figure 1: Green Team development and implementation

Image Source: U.S. Department of State

Organizing for Sustainability

The first phase to developing an effective Green Team is building a solid team foundation. This involves gaining site management approval, recruiting team members with key skill sets, and defining team member roles and responsibilities. During the early stages of formation, teams should focus on developing a common understanding of the environmental opportunities and challenges of their post and establishing a vision and mission, as well as defining regular team meeting schedules and procedures. The tools associated with this phase are as follows:

Greening Activities

The second phase of Green Team development is focused on supporting the actions of greening activities: advocating and raising awareness of important sustainability issues, scheduling events and activities, developing a sustainability work plan, tracking actions and results, and keeping upper management informed. The focus of this phase is activating and motivating behavior change; reducing water, energy, and material impacts; and communicating, educating, and increasing awareness of sustainable performance goals, company policies, and best practices.

Greening Activities can be organized into three types: personal, social, and structural. The types generally track from easy and less impactful to harder and most impactful. Thus, guidance in this Toolkit helps teams identify quick wins through personal changes, create social events that raise awareness of environmental concerns and company goals, and implement structural changes to polices and the physical environment, all of which are needed to create a well-rounded, and successful green team implementation plan.

The tools associated with this phase are as follows:

Results

The third phase of green team development is focused on measuring and communicating results externally and internally by recording achievements resulting from greening activities. Examples of communications include briefing management, sharing greening success stories in a company forum, and celebrating accomplishments through social media. With upper management support, success stories can be submitted to be available for the public and senior leaders to learn about sites’ sustainability initiatives. Communicating demonstrated measurable results can help Green Teams establish credibility. Whether a smaller, self-identified success, such as hosting a sustainability training session, or the culmination of a larger initiative, communicating and rewarding positive measurable impacts help a team maintain momentum and garner additional support from their colleagues and management. Publicized positive results may also inspire Green Teams and champions at other sites to pursue excellence in their own sustainability work. The tools associated with this phase are as follows:

About

  • Introduction
  • Using This Guide
  • Organizing For Sustainability
  • Green Team
  • Occupant Behavior
  • Case Studies
  • Resources
  • Glossary

Impact Areas

  • Transportation
  • Site
  • Energy
  • Water
  • Materials
  • Indoor Environment
  • Residential