Uniting Team Members to Clean Up the World’s Shorelines
Dell employees on almost every continent organized Shore Up events to collect plastics and other litter from local beaches, waterways and other areas.
The launch of Dell’s ocean-bound plastics packaging woke our team members to the threats facing our environment and our oceans in particular. One big threat to ocean ecosystems is the litter that finds its way into waterways and eventually out to sea. The problem starts on land, and our Planet employee resource group (ERG) wanted to do something about it.
Planet brings together more than 10,000 Dell team members who share a passion for sustainability topics. The ERG is organized into 62 chapters at various Dell locations around the world, so each chapter can work on local efforts that meet the needs of their location, team and community while complementing global sustainability initiatives. Their creative efforts have added electric vehicle charging stations, recycling centers, workplace gardens and even IoT-enabled beehives to Dell campuses worldwide. At the end of FY18, 97 percent of our Dell-operated facilities had at least one active sustainability initiative (Our 2020 Legacy of Good goal is 100 percent.).
Dell’s Thailand Planet chapter organized Run for the Ocean, a fun run and awareness event encouraging team members to run along Bang Saen beach collecting garbage, which was later recycled.
To support Dell’s work to reduce and recycle ocean-bound plastics, our Planet teams created Shore Up, a litter cleanup campaign along the world’s beaches, waterways and other natural areas. Planet asked its chapters and members to organize local cleanups beginning around Earth Day (April 22, 2017). Planet leaders developed a toolkit to help chapters plan and publicize their events.
Chapters put together more than 75 events around the world, in some cases extending their Shore Up projects into year-round programs and even inviting customers to join them. Some highlights from the events included:
- India had the largest Shore Up turnout of any country, with more than 2,000 team members from five cities volunteering over 5,000 hours during their 10 separate events.
- Planet Thailand organized Run for the Ocean, a fun run and awareness event encouraging team members to run along Bang Saen beach collecting garbage.
- The Australia-New Zealand team had more than 100 volunteers at six Shore Up events, complementing their ongoing cleanups in Waratah Park and support of local wildlife organizations.
- Team members in Utah cleaned up a stretch of the Jordan River near campus and removed invasive plants from the shoreline to prevent them from crowding out native species. The Massachusetts team once again joined the annual Charles River Cleanup, and the California chapter cleaned up the Santa Clara trail and creek running adjacent to the Dell campus.
- Planet Panama has a tradition of annual beach cleanups, and their team of 100 participants collected more than 1 ton of recycling materials from the beaches of Veracruz. Team members in Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica and Peru also participated in Shore Up, making it Dell Latin America’s first regional Planet event since Dell and EMC combined.
- Planet Casablanca in Morocco celebrated Earth Day with a beach cleanup at Ain Diab, and all plastics collected by the team were recovered by a local partner to be recycled. The team also held an Our Oceans, Our Future awareness campaign and photo contest for employees.
This story shares one example of how Dell is committed to driving human progress by putting our technology and expertise to work where it can do the most good for people and the planet.
