As our amphibian friend Kermit the Frog says, “It’s not easy being green"—and that’s particularly true for businesses! Since spring of 2014, our cross-departmental, volunteer-based Mountain Rose Herbs Green Team has helped our management team look at all aspects of our business operations through a sustainability lens. Recently, we received the honor of being featured in international corporate sustainability consultant Nikki Pava's guide to building successful workplace sustainability teams, so we thought we'd share some of the strategies that have helped us cultivate a culture of environmental responsibility across our organization. For those interested in building a green advocacy team in their own place of work, we hope these ideas can inspire and guide you!
While goals will vary for different organizations, the ways in which our Green Team promotes environmentally and socially conscious operating practices include:
While specific projects may have end dates, a green team should stay connected and active throughout the year in order to effect and sustain positive organizational change. Our Green Team meets once a month to share recent sustainability wins from each department, update Team members about upcoming sustainability projects, and present proposals to upper management. Team members then disperse to share what they've learned with their coworkers across the organization, collecting employee feedback and buy-in to support the new initiatives in the process.
For those just getting started with a green team, determining first steps can be intimidating. The Mountain Rose Herbs Green Team is fortunate to have long enjoyed the enthusiastic support of our owners, executive team, and much of our staff, as well as the guidance of a dedicated Director of Sustainability. In organizations where the benefits of sustainable work practices are less well-known, however, it can be good to start small and build trust and support from there.
One simple, low-cost strategy is to encourage practices that reduce waste and resource usage at work, track the results of your educational campaign over time, and then share your successes with upper management. For example, encouraging employees to bring their own cutlery to lunch can mean considerable savings for companies that provide disposable utensils. Tangible "wins" can help demonstrate your green team's usefulness and build confidence in its ability to follow through on bigger projects down the line.
Monetary impacts aside, simply being able to provide a measurement of waste or pollution reduction may be seen as a valuable contribution, as this information can be shared by your organization's public relations team to attract customers and clients wishing to support businesses with integrity. On-site pollution reduction can also be translated into better health outcomes for employees, contributing to higher productivity and workplace morale.
Communication is one of the Green Team's most important functions. Creating positive and lasting organizational change requires getting lots of coworkers on board, so it's critical that the actions formulated during Green Team meetings be made visible, accessible, and relatable to employees across the entire company.
In an organization like ours, where staff members work different shifts, in several different buildings, with differing levels of access to digital workplace communications, reaching everyone can be quite a challenge! To overcome this fragmentation, our Green Team communicates through a range of digital and print media, including:
Want more green team insights from forward-thinking companies? Author Nikki Pava's recently published book, Green Wisdom: A Guide for Anyone to Start, Engage and Energize a Sustainability Team, offers a wide array of inspiring stories and practical strategies from innovative businesses that span sizes, sectors, and nations. Nikki's work takes you behind the green scenes of companies ranging from Badger Balm to Alaska Airlines, from Dr. Bronner's to Salesforce. The book features a foreword from Christiana Figueres, who helped draft the Paris Climate Agreement and has passionately advocated for world climate change activism.
While communicating with our Director of Sustainability during the writing process, Nikki shared her thoughts about the work happening here at Mountain Rose Herbs:
“Thanks again for your stories and lessons that you shared with me. Your Free Herbalism Project is one of my favorite initiatives to share with other business leaders as a way to connect with the local community. My hope is that other sustainability professionals will use the examples from Green Wisdom and integrate them into their own businesses!”
We share Nikki's hope, and we encourage you to take advantage of this excellent resource to help advance green goals in your own workplace!
You may also enjoy:
Topics: Inside Mountain Rose Herbs, Sustainability
Alyssa leads Mountain Rose Herbs’ talented HR team as HR Director. She has more than 20 years of experience in both leadership and support roles in sustainability and people operations. Fostering positive company culture through authentic connections and employee engagement programs gives Alyssa a sense of pride in the workplace. Growing up in an income-sharing, egalitarian community in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, she’s a farm girl at heart. She received her bachelor's degree in Environmental Sociology and is always looking to expand her HR knowledge and skillset. In her off time, she enjoys gardening, reading, cooking spicy foods, and hiking with her husband, kiddos, and brindle pup named Kiwi.
As our amphibian friend Kermit the Frog says, “It’s not easy being green"—and that’s particularly true for businesses! Since spring of 2014, our cross-departmental, volunteer-based Mountain Rose Herbs Green Team has helped our management team look at all aspects of our business operations through a sustainability lens. Recently, we received the honor of being featured in international corporate sustainability consultant Nikki Pava's guide to building successful workplace sustainability teams, so we thought we'd share some of the strategies that have helped us cultivate a culture of environmental responsibility across our organization. For those interested in building a green advocacy team in their own place of work, we hope these ideas can inspire and guide you!
While goals will vary for different organizations, the ways in which our Green Team promotes environmentally and socially conscious operating practices include:
While specific projects may have end dates, a green team should stay connected and active throughout the year in order to effect and sustain positive organizational change. Our Green Team meets once a month to share recent sustainability wins from each department, update Team members about upcoming sustainability projects, and present proposals to upper management. Team members then disperse to share what they've learned with their coworkers across the organization, collecting employee feedback and buy-in to support the new initiatives in the process.
For those just getting started with a green team, determining first steps can be intimidating. The Mountain Rose Herbs Green Team is fortunate to have long enjoyed the enthusiastic support of our owners, executive team, and much of our staff, as well as the guidance of a dedicated Director of Sustainability. In organizations where the benefits of sustainable work practices are less well-known, however, it can be good to start small and build trust and support from there.
One simple, low-cost strategy is to encourage practices that reduce waste and resource usage at work, track the results of your educational campaign over time, and then share your successes with upper management. For example, encouraging employees to bring their own cutlery to lunch can mean considerable savings for companies that provide disposable utensils. Tangible "wins" can help demonstrate your green team's usefulness and build confidence in its ability to follow through on bigger projects down the line.
Monetary impacts aside, simply being able to provide a measurement of waste or pollution reduction may be seen as a valuable contribution, as this information can be shared by your organization's public relations team to attract customers and clients wishing to support businesses with integrity. On-site pollution reduction can also be translated into better health outcomes for employees, contributing to higher productivity and workplace morale.
Communication is one of the Green Team's most important functions. Creating positive and lasting organizational change requires getting lots of coworkers on board, so it's critical that the actions formulated during Green Team meetings be made visible, accessible, and relatable to employees across the entire company.
In an organization like ours, where staff members work different shifts, in several different buildings, with differing levels of access to digital workplace communications, reaching everyone can be quite a challenge! To overcome this fragmentation, our Green Team communicates through a range of digital and print media, including:
Want more green team insights from forward-thinking companies? Author Nikki Pava's recently published book, Green Wisdom: A Guide for Anyone to Start, Engage and Energize a Sustainability Team, offers a wide array of inspiring stories and practical strategies from innovative businesses that span sizes, sectors, and nations. Nikki's work takes you behind the green scenes of companies ranging from Badger Balm to Alaska Airlines, from Dr. Bronner's to Salesforce. The book features a foreword from Christiana Figueres, who helped draft the Paris Climate Agreement and has passionately advocated for world climate change activism.
While communicating with our Director of Sustainability during the writing process, Nikki shared her thoughts about the work happening here at Mountain Rose Herbs:
“Thanks again for your stories and lessons that you shared with me. Your Free Herbalism Project is one of my favorite initiatives to share with other business leaders as a way to connect with the local community. My hope is that other sustainability professionals will use the examples from Green Wisdom and integrate them into their own businesses!”
We share Nikki's hope, and we encourage you to take advantage of this excellent resource to help advance green goals in your own workplace!
You may also enjoy:
Topics: Inside Mountain Rose Herbs, Sustainability
Alyssa leads Mountain Rose Herbs’ talented HR team as HR Director. She has more than 20 years of experience in both leadership and support roles in sustainability and people operations. Fostering positive company culture through authentic connections and employee engagement programs gives Alyssa a sense of pride in the workplace. Growing up in an income-sharing, egalitarian community in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, she’s a farm girl at heart. She received her bachelor's degree in Environmental Sociology and is always looking to expand her HR knowledge and skillset. In her off time, she enjoys gardening, reading, cooking spicy foods, and hiking with her husband, kiddos, and brindle pup named Kiwi.
