The Living Planet @ Work team has been busy this past month planning and hosting a number of exciting events! With so many environmentally-geared initiatives in April, it can be hard to keep track of what’s what, or find time to participate in something that is well recognized and contributes in a meaningful way to the discussion of sustainability. Amidst a busy year, our team still found time to promote environmental sustainability in our community.
WWF Earth Hour 2015
Earth Hour is an annual WWF event promoting energy conservation where people are encouraged to turn off their lights and electronics for one hour at 8:30PM on Saturday March 28th. Since Earth Hour took place on a Saturday, we decided to participate in the office by hosting our own Earth Hour event, which included playing a game of “Bingo in the Dark” over lunch hour. In the day’s leading up to Earth Hour, employees were sent trivia questions and tips related to energy conservation to promote awareness and encourage everyone at Watters Environmental to learn about ways they can take action to save energy. Though many may criticize the merits of such an event, the principal notion behind the gesture remains clear to us: small efforts, when combined on a global scale, can be a major force for positive change.
City of Vaughan’s 20 Minute Makeover
On April 17th, Watters Environmental participated in the Vaughan 20 Minute Makeover and cleaned up the area around our office in order to beautify our neighbourhood and help the local ecology. The City of Vaughan equipped us with the bags and gloves, and we took to the streets on a beautiful spring afternoon and collected 10 bags of garbage (not to mention an empty propane tank and half a car’s worth of parts!). Watters Environmental has participated in this event annually since 2011, and although we recognize it may be only a small gesture in the grand scheme of things, we love that it provides an opportunity for us to give back to our local community, and help our local environment too!
Earth Day Potluck
On Wednesday April 22nd we celebrated Earth Day by hosting a ‘green-themed’ Earth Day Potluck (the colour that is!). Thankfully we had a lot more healthy green fruits and vegetables than food colouring. Our green potluck menu consisted of vegetable curry, authentic South Asian Paneer, guacamole, seaweed salad, broccoli salad, earth patterned cupcakes with cloud icing, and green fruit galore.
Our team also took the opportunity to present the results of our first ever sustainability reporting efforts during the potluck. This month especially can easily become a time of endless lecturing and guilt-tripping on environmental ‘wrong-doings’. Instead, we wanted to shift the focus a bit and highlight our previous fiscal year’s environmental performance, discuss our current benchmarks and areas of improvement, and plan our next steps forward. In the coming months, we’ll begin collecting data for our 2nd Annual Sustainability Report, to be issued early next year. If you haven’t already, you can check out our 2013-2014 Sustainability Report, Making Ripples, here!
WWF CN Tower Stair Climb
Our team trained long and hard (or at least hard!) for the WWF’s 25th Anniversary CN Tower Stair Climb and succeeded in raising $1,640 in donations for the cause. On Sunday April 26th, five members of the Living Planet @ Work team climbed all 1,776 steps and 144 flights of stairs in order to raise awareness and contributions for endangered animals, helping to conserve them and their habitats.
With this busy month almost behind us, we’re looking forward to some new challenges, a bit of sun, and finding new ways of engaging our staff in sustainability initiatives here at Watters Environmental.
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