Greening Activities

As discussed within the Guide: ‘Using this Guide’, Influencing Occupant Behavior, site green teams can make a major difference in the impact of the site on the local community, as well as in the lives and health of site staff by implementing greening activities. Effective and highly integrated site Green Teams can, through careful planning, communication, and management, undertake many activities throughout the year that implement lasting change and demonstrate environmental responsibility to community. Newly formed teams should carefully select and implement a few greening activities in their first year to ensure a foundation of success. The team can build upon those successes to implement more and increasingly comprehensive activities.

Sites can categorize greening activities in many ways. One of the most successful ways is to organize them by type (Figure 7):

Personal: Typically the easiest to implement, personal commitments to take action and lead by example can be made by every member of a site Green Team.
Social: The most visible and best ways to generate interest in a site Green Team are events, meetings, and celebrations to raise awareness of specific environmental concerns or to increase behavior change that can support the Green Team’s mission and company sustainability goals.
Structural: Changes to policies and the physical environment, through signage or modifications of systems (equipment or operations), can be an extremely effective way to increase environmental performance.

Figure 7: Each greening activity can be organized into one of three types

For more information on the definitions of Personal, Social, and Structural greening activities and how they can help create positive behavior changes in personnel, refer to the Guide: ‘Using this Guide’, Influencing Occupant Behavior. To prioritize greening activities, green teams should compare the unique content of each type of activity with the site’s context to identify which greening activities have the best chances to achieve site greening goals. Teams can create meaningful implementation plans by understanding the site’s environmental context, such as the existing condition of facilities, the local environmental and political challenges in the community, and company sustainability commitments. The following sections offer a series of questions and examples to help teams identify which activities to implement.

While not necessarily true for implementation of all greening activities, generally the level of outreach, stakeholder engagement, labor, budget, time, and experience required increases from personal to social to structural. Accordingly, the context questions addressed within these sections (personal, social, structural) build on each other; social builds on personal, structural builds on social. Additionally, consider how each greening activity will either be an internal or external outreach activity. Generally, internal site activities require less formality and approval in order to be implemented, whereas external events may be more challenging, but ultimately advance top-level goals for the company and provide site more visibly.

Personal

Personal greening activities can be powerful ways to connect with each person on the green team. Activities will be unique to each individual, offering visible opportunities for every member of the green team to lead by example, according to personal beliefs and backgrounds. This connection to foundational beliefs is key to success.

Step 1: Review the definition of personal greening activities. Review the Guide: ‘Using this Guide’, Influencing Occupant Behavior, Personal as a group and discuss its content during one of the first green team meetings.

Step 2: Understand your personal context. Ask yourself the following questions to help identify personal beliefs that are aligned with site’s characteristics, to assist in selecting a personal greening activity:

Is there an environmental issue that you believe in deeply and have committed your time to addressing in the past?
Is there an environmental issue in your community that you want to address?
Is there a favorite outdoor activity that you want to engage others in participating through the protection of the natural environment?
Are there inefficiencies at the site that can be addressed through changes in individual behavior that you want to lead?
Do you have a role model who implements simple greening activities that you try to follow?

Step 3: Identify personal greening activities. The Guide contains a number of suggestions for personal greening activities that can be found in each strategy under the section entitled Staff Engagement, found at the end of each chapter. Explore the website ‘A Billion Acts of Green’ and the GDI Shared Resources Library ‘Personal Greening Activities’ folder to identify small but impactful behavior change opportunities. Use site characteristics to determine which actions resonate with the team, offer the biggest opportunities for improvement, and best demonstrate the team’s personal commitment to environmental stewardship in the community.

Step 4: Take a green pledge. One way to promote personal greening activities is to take a green pledge and to circulate it for others to see (Figure 8). Some green team members may elect to keep their pledges private, but a public display of pledges within the site promotes discussion among coworkers and encourages others.

Figure 8: Take a personal pledge and display it within your workspace

Step 5: Make personal commitments part of every meeting. Ask each green team member to take turns beginning the meeting by discussing a positive behavior change that they have implemented, to inspire others.

Social

Step 1: Review the definition of social greening activities. Review the Guide: ‘Using this Guide’, Influencing Occupant Behavior, Social as a group and discuss its content during one of the first green team meetings.

Step 2: Understand your social context. Every site has a few leaders who know how to connect people to each other through effective planning and networking. Identify and engage these leaders. Additionally, green teams can use existing events, festivals, or other opportunities to help engage staff in, and implement, greening activities. Finally, connect with your Public Affairs office at site regarding the current political and economic climate in the community to determine if there are opportunities that the site Green Team can help facilitate. Also check with information technology officers to see if there are technologies and ideas related to greening that would be an interesting way to facilitate interactions with the local community.

The following questions may help uncover key opportunities for social greening activities:

What were elements of past site events that caused them to be well attended?
What local festivals and celebrations garner the most excitement and participation?
Who organizes the most successful social interactions at your site?
Are there local environmental issues that the community rallies around, such as clean-up events; tree-plantings; or endangered species breeding, migration, and protection activities?
What are the main sources of information that site personnel read regularly related to environmental concerns?
What protocols for planning and running events must be followed in order to use needed site facilities or other resources?

Step 3: Identify meaningful social greening activities. The Guide contains a number of suggestions for Social Greening Activities that can be found in each strategy entitled ‘Staff Engagement’ at the end of each chapter. Connect to major environmental observances with activities such as convening a panel discussion of experts, having a brown bag ‘lunch and learn’ with an international expert, holding an educational community event on the observance date, or writing an article for the local paper about how the site is supporting or leading environmental stewardship.

Step 4: Plan and promote your events. Use the Event Planning Guidance, which contains a number of tips and best practices for planning a sustainable event or activity. Consider using the signage to create awareness of, and increase attendance at, green team events.

Structural

Structural changes are perhaps the most effective and challenging greening activities that a site Green Team may elect to implement. Structural changes might involve working with site management to implement a policy change; with your facilities team to make system upgrades or changes to the physical environment; or with the procurement to suggest changes to procurement practices. Whatever structural greening activities a site Green Team elects to implement, care should be taken to involve and communicate with key stakeholders so that changes are effective and implemented smoothly.

Step 1: Review the definition of structural greening activities. Review the Guide: ‘Using this Guide’, Influencing Occupant Behavior, Structural as a group and discuss its content during one of the first meetings of the site Green Team.

Step 2: Compare site’s policies with other sites to identify potential opportunities. Record key findings so that deficiencies can be addressed before engaging in more complex, but aligned, greening activities.

Step 3: Determine the unique structural context of your site. Read the introductions to each of the chapters in the Guide and discuss them at a regular green team meeting . Next, compile a list of all the common characteristics that makes your site unique, to help the team identify a focus area for structural changes. Keep these notes handy for use in selecting strategies from the Guide as part of your implementation plan. The questions in Figure 10 are excerpted from the chapter introductions to the Guide to help decipher key pieces of contextual information that will assist in identifying structural greening activities: Figure 10: Answer these questions to help your team select appropriate greening activities

Step 4: Record the results of your assessment. Compile a list of all the questions to which you responded “yes” to categorize the common characteristics that make your site unique, in order to identify a focus area for structural changes. Additionally, keep track of other key structural contextual information that may not have been covered in the Guide, but which may help the team select structural greening activities.

Step 5: Review utility data. If possible, review site’s performance for buildings to understand how site is tracking toward the corporate goals, and how energy and water usage trending compares year after year. If a building at site has not met one or more of the targets, prioritize greening activities accordingly. The building report may also be able to benchmark buildings (in both usage per FTE and usage per square meter), against buildings of the same type at other sites in the same climate region.

Step 6: Identify meaningful structural greening activities. Use the characteristics specific to site to determine the strategies that offer the biggest opportunities for improvement, and that best demonstrate to the local community the shared commitment to environmental stewardship.

Creating a basic green (environmental) policy This document contains a standard policy template that can be used by teams.
An audit should always be the first step to establish baseline conditions against which to measure improvements. From the shortlist of audits and strategies, catalog the time, benefit, investment, and team members required to rank the strategies listed according to which ones will make the most impact and are most feasible at your post. Refer to the Guide: ‘Using this Guide’, Strategies for more information.

If your team wishes to pursue a strategy not found in the Creating a basic green (environmental) policy: or the Guide, ensure that proper research for feasibility, benefit, investment, time, and level of difficulty is performed. Involve subject matter experts to aid in the research and assessment so that teams fully understand what is required to achieve success.

Develop an Implementation Plan

After your team has completed their review of personal, social, and structural context, assessed the capability and resources required for each greening activity, and created a prioritized list of all proposed greening activities, it is time to develop an implementation plan. The purpose of the implementation plan is to help teams detail an approach to greening activities that accurately represents what can be achieved and aligns them with Green Team’s mission and corporate goals to maximize return on investment.

By creating an implementation plan, your green team will demonstrate to your site management that you understand the scope and scale of efforts required to help site achieve performance improvements. A clear and concise implementation plan will allow the green team to stay focused on shared goals and to apply the changes needed to achieve those goals. As a best practice, perform this task annually to align with annual budget requests and the fiscal year cycle. An annual implementation plan allows teams to be well positioned to procure necessary funds and to adjust to rotations of staff who join and depart the green team.

Consider creating a “greening corner” in a high traffic area to promote greening activities

Step 1: Identify site Green Team sustainability goals. . When selecting goals, reference the information gleaned from the review of personal, social, and structural context exercises so that the goals support the most pressing performance issues at site and the greatest opportunities within the local community. Goals should identify the current baseline and performance targets, align with corporate goals, and serve as indicators of success.

Example of site Green Team Sustainability Goals

Engage 80% or more of staff in making a personal green pledge
Implement one internal and one external social event
Gain participation from Public Affairs to help communicate results
Reduce potable water consumption intensity by 20% by 2025 using a 2020 baseline
Reduce waste by 10% year-over-year from the outcome of the waste audit conducted in 2023
Reduce post energy loads by 5% through behavior change

Step 2: Prioritize and select personal, social, and structural greening activities. Using the goals identified in Step 1 and the list of greening activities catalogued by the team, begin to prioritize implementation of activities. By focusing on top priorities, the team can leverage its full expertise, time, and commitment. Resist the urge to implement activities that require more resources than the team has available, and consider identifying ‘low hanging fruit’ that will allow the team to gain early success or maintain momentum during staff rotations or during times of limited green team resource availability. The implementation plan should clearly state the specific time and resource needs, identify funding sources, and assist in prioritizing greening activities implementation. Complete the input fields with specific quantities (Figure 13) and then go back through and prioritize greening activities implementation. Figure 13: An implementation plan should be prioritized based on your team’s available resources

Step 3: Backcheck implementation plan with resources. Assess the time commitment needed for greening activity success, and determine if you need additional resources. Consider recruiting additional members, as necessary. Defer activities that cannot be properly supported.

Step 4: Formalize approach to implementing each greening activity by creating a more detailed plan. This plan should allow your team to create a common understanding of what it will take to implement the activity, and the compiled information can be used to acquire formal approval and/or funding for the activity. The plan establishes a common understanding of why the activity is important, how it can improve site performance, what personnel/resources are required, results that will be generated, and what managers who approve the request can expect.

Step 5: Develop a communication plan for each greening activity. There are two components for a communications plan, internal and external.

Internal: Before beginning any greening activity, it is important to consider how to communicate the activity to site personnel who may be impacted by it. An important feature of successful communications that enable further green team activities is making personal connections with site personnel who can make a difference. Keeping personnel informed and engaged goes a long way toward creating an atmosphere of green innovation. Internal assets that may be utilized to communicate to internal site audiences include e-mail, newsletters, management notices, flyers, phone calls, events, briefing checklists, info-memos.
External: Communicating your green team activities externally helps further community engagement. Work with your Public Affairs, Public Diplomacy and ESTH officers to see how your operations and events align with broader goals, and how you can showcase your efforts in a site-wide campaign.

Determine when to communicate internally and/or externally based on the content of the message and the desired outcome of the communication. Generally, you want to communicate all stories internally to help inform site, regional directors, business leadership, and other stakeholders. A more complex decision is whether to also communicate stories externally. Below are a few questions to ask your team to help identify whether the story should be communicated externally.

Does the story support site’s community goals?

Does the story fit into your site’s broader policy and engagement goals? Discuss with relevant officers when it’s best to communicate your message so that it aligns with others that are planned.
Does the story contain sensitive information that represents a security issue? If so, discuss the story with your security officer to ensure that sensitive information is not shared externally.
Can a target audience be defined? Every communication should have a target audience – consider whom you want to reach with your story and how you can do so.

Consider the use of the following tools when trying to communicate significant activities:

Signage could be used as part of engagement strategies, to call attention to a new site policy, or provide green facts to personnel.
How to Organize a Green Event: Tips for Sustainable Planning – Guidebook Content Hub Information for the announcement, kickoff, or communication of greening activities. This could be used in a presentation, or the contents could be transferred to an email format.

Step 6: Implement and measure each greening activity. As there are multiple types of activities (personal, social, and structural), and hundreds of options contained within the Guide, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to implementation. Take advantage of all available tools to assist with implementing your team’s plan and tracking progress.

Step 7: Complete a Final Greening Activity Report. Be sure to close out the activity by completing the report and providing it to site managers who approved the activity.