GTA environmental organization
Partners in Project Green (PPG) has recognized four Toronto-area companies for engaging employees in reducing their "green bottom line."
PPG, a network of businesses that came together in 2009, has a mandate to promotes sustainable business practices in the Pearson airport area. The goal is to create an internationally recognized eco-business zone in Southern Ontario (read
Yonge's earlier article on PPG
here) .
"One of the ways we encourage and acknowledge the efforts of companies we work with is through our annual Sustainability Awards," says Jennifer Taves, project manager with Partners in Project Green.
"This year's category was Employee Engagement in Sustainability, meaning that the organizations we were acknowledging were those that mobilized employees and showed how that could contribute to reducing costs and improved environmental performance within an organization."
This year's winners—The Scarborough Town Centre, Rockwell, and Menke—were selected by a jury of their peers that included the previous years' recipients.
The fourth award was the People Power Challenge (
Yonge's article on the challenge is
here), a year-long contest that encourages employees of GTA businesses to get active in greening their own organization. Broan NuTone, a company that specializes in residential ventilation products, "swept the competition" in all three of this year's categories: energy, water and waste, says Taves. At their Mississauga HQ, Broan NuTone solicited and implemented green initiatives from employees and offered a significant amount of sustainability training.
The next People Power Challenge starts November 1. The three sub-challenges for this round are green procurement, green building and transportation.
"Braun NuTone set the bar high," says Taves, "but this year we're creating different categories for smaller organizations and allowing organizations to participate in as few or as many of the challenges as they want. So it's wide open."
Writer: Katia Snukal
Source: Jennifer Taves, Project Manager, Partners in Project Green