Welcome back to our green enterprise checklist for retailers. In my previous posts, I described how to create a vision for sustainability and how to evaluate your operations, merchandise, supplies, advertising and marketing. The final area on our checklist is to evaluate your people.
Your People
Employees must be trained to understand the corporate green vision, so they can share with customers what the company is doing as an organization to support a sustainable environment. Promote buy-in from front-line staff through an incentive program or company-wide recognition for their green initiatives around the following areas:
- Low-carbon transportation:
- Encourage staff to use public transit or carpool by offering subsidies.
- The City of Calgary found that driving 15 km a week less saves about 340 pounds of CO2 per year.
- Reduce, reuse, recycle:
- Cut printing and paper costs substantially by setting all internal printers to default to double-sided printing.
- Eliminate disposable cups in the lunchroom in favor of personalized mugs and glassware.
- Community activities:
- Sponsor a tree-planting program or municipal gardening initiative and encourage staff to participate.
- Recognize staff efforts at company meetings or through internal communications vehicles like blogs, websites or newsletters.
This concludes our this series of posts for retailers. If you missed any of the earlier posts in the series, you can find them here:
The Green Retail Checklist
Step 1: Create the vision
Step 2: Evaluate your operations
Step 3: Evaluate your merchandise
Step 4: Evaluate your supplies
Step 5: Evaluate your Advertising and Marketing
Step 6: Evaluate your People
