Timberland Celebrates Earth Week with Daily Challenges for Employees
While global outdoor lifestyle brand Timberland has an ongoing commitment to protect the outdoors, Earth Day season brings with it a range of initiatives to engage employees in the company’s environmental agenda. This year, beyond hosting Earth Day service events worldwide for employee volunteers, Timberland’s global headquarters in Stratham, New Hampshire will launch its second annual Earth Week, April 17-21. This five day effort encourages employees to reduce their individual and collective environmental footprints.
”Every day of the week presents employees with a different opportunity to get involved, from learning about carbon emissions to recycling,” said Zack Angelini, Timberland’s environmental stewardship manager who planned this year’s Earth Week. “This year we’re looking to build on last year’s wins to engage even more employees.”
Stratham Earth Week kicks off on Monday with a voluntary “Trash Can Turn In,” which invites employees to turn in their personal desk trash can for a week. Last year 20 percent of employees participated in this challenge, which aims to make employees more mindful of what they throw away since they will have to leave their desks to discard items. On Tuesday, employees have the opportunity to test drive electric vehicles and learn about their benefits from local car dealers.
Wednesday brings back last year’s most provocative event, the “Dumpster Dive.” Employees will don Tyvek suits and sift through trash bags destined for the landfill to determine how much of the contents is actual trash, and what could be recycled or composted. “Last year’s results were very revealing,” says Zack. “We emptied and sorted 13 randomly selected bags and discovered that the equivalent of only four bags was actual trash. The remaining items could have been composted or recycled. We’ve taken steps in the past year to make recycling and composting easier for employees and I look forward to diving again to see our results.”
On Thursday, Timberland will host its annual “Greener Living Fair,” an employee favorite. At the fair, external vendors set up booths displaying products and services that can help employees live greener lives. These vendors include local growers of organic food, earth-conscious cleaning products, environmental agencies, and clean energy suppliers. Friday will wrap up the week with a team celebration, complete with locally sourced organic food.
“We live in an 'out of sight, out of mind' society where we have the luxury of not seeing the trash we generate pile up around us,” says Atlanta McIlwraith, Senior Manager of Community Engagement. “Earth Week’s daily challenges and topics bring to light some opportunities to renew our commitment to protect our shared planet. Ultimately, we all need to change our behaviors to become more sustainable and Earth Week is our way to support employees in beginning to make those changes.”
To learn more about Timberland’s commitment to the outdoors, visit: https://www.timberland.com/responsibility/outdoors.html
