This Brown Bag has gone green! In 2018, it’s our goal to leave our office and our city better than we found it, and we’ve done a pretty great job this month. In honor of Earth Day, Brown Bag dedicated the entire month of April to encourage our team members to start going green both in the office and at home.
We kicked off our “Green” month by volunteering with Chattahoochee Riverkeepers’ Annual Sweep the Hooch event, where we helped break the record with 960 volunteers who pulled more than 21 tons of trash from the Chattahoochee River! Talk about a clean sweep.
To keep the green spirit alive, we used the week leading up to Earth Day to educate our co-workers about composting, zero waste DIY products, thinking twice about printing, conserving energy and eliminating plastic bottle waste. We even helped out by providing each and every Bagger with their own Hydro Flask!
This year (and in years to come) we hope to reduce, reuse and recycle to ultimately lower our carbon footprint. To do this, we’ll educate our fellow coworkers and implement eco-friendly office improvements.
1. Determining our Carbon Footprint: In order to measure our success, we determined our carbon footprint by researching relevant questions from online quizzes and distributed the quiz to the company.
2. Recycling bins: We coordinated with our building to place 10 new recycling bins throughout our office. Now there’s no excuse for recyclables from our office to go to the landfill. Talk about a sparkling water obsession!
3. Farmer’s Market Lunch Series: We’re inviting a local farmer to educate our company about the importance of sustainable foods and buying from local farms. Since it’s a lunch series, we’re serving some delicious food to put a little taste of local goodness in people’s mouths. And it gets even better. To avoid the use of plastic bags, we’re distributing custom Brown Bag reusable bags to the company. If you see someone with our reusable bag at a local farmer’s market, then our job is done.
4. Item Swap/Donation Day: Time to clean and organize your house? We’re organizing an item swap/donation day at the office. We’re encouraging our teammates to bring in items they want to swap. Whatever items are left will be donated to Second Life, a thrift store benefiting homeless pets in the Atlanta area.
5. Telecommuting: Over an average week, our employees drive 1,000 more miles than the width of the United States. In addition to composting to offset miles of driving, we are encouraging employees to telecommute this summer. This not only reduces emissions, decreases traffic and lowers the usage of fossil fuels, but it also reduces energy used in the office and increases company morale. Because who doesn’t love to work from home every once in a while?
6. Composting: In an effort to create a waste-free office, we’ve started composting with CompostNow. And it couldn’t be easier! Compost Now provided us with a step can to fill up with leftover foods, paper towels, pizza boxes and more. They stop by the office once a week to take our composting away. Afterwards, our scraps are transformed into compost (AKA super-powered dirt) for local gardens and farms. Compost Now will even help us determine how many cars our composting has taken off the road! In fact, every 100 lbs. collected prevents enough methane from entering the atmosphere to offset 568 miles of driving—almost a full day of Bagger commuting.
7. Sustainable Foods Lunch Series: Brown Baggers love to eat, so we’re showing them how to create a sustainable (and delicious) dish. This lunch series will continue our conversation from our farmer’s market lunch series and drive home the importance of sustainable foods.
What do you think we should do next? Has your organization responded to a Green challenge? We’d love to hear. We also invite you to see these initiatives in action and join us on our journey by following Brown Bag Marketing’s social media profiles.
