Marketing companies struggle when it comes to sustainability. It’s not that employees don’t love nature or care about humanity’s impact on the earth (trust me they do, probably a little too much) but they don’t necessarily have the highest ratings when it comes to implementing eco-friendly tactics around the office.
I have a personal theory about the role of a production sample and the time and materials that go into its creation, but there is another reason that marketers tend to fall short on sustainability. The giant disconnect about who’s the sustainability officer. (Or, what’s a sustainability officer?)
While some companies create entire departments based on the implementation and strict adherence to sustainable processes, many smaller companies don’t have the necessary resources and therefore are not sure about how to become a more sustainable business and what practices they should discontinue in favor of a little more ice for the polar bears and a little less guilt while printing full color.
While I am not trying to recommend practices, I will commend our new COO Andy Schultz as spearheading this shift for imagination. While I may still opt for the occasional single sided set of copies, Andy has made it a personal goal to push each and every imagination employee to recognize their personal role in office sustainability. So while his business card may say nothing about being green or cracking the whip on environmentally friendly practices, Andy recognizes that each and every employee must recognize their own role as a sustainability officer in the work place and monitor their own practices around the office.
So follow the charge, turn off your light, recycle your scraps, and vote YES to PDFs and NO to single sided copies!
It really is amazing how much difference can be made when big (and small) companies make a concerted effort to manage waste effectively. A major health corporation that I worked for in New York City was abysmal at this – and I believe the bigger the company, the bigger the effort has to be, exponentially. “Going Green” has been the subject of more and more business resource commercials, and it will not be long before this issue becomes absolutely paramount to sustaining business growth.