Join or create a work team focused on dreaming up and implementing schemes to reduce the impact your workplace has on the environment.

The dire need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and halt the progress of global warming has only crystallised in the mainstream consciousness in the past couple of years.

As a result, many workplaces have underdeveloped (or non-existent) environmental programs and limited staff understanding and awareness of environmental management. To rectify this lack, concerned and interested staff need to put up their hands to create and join committees, ideas groups, and Green Teams to focus on and implement pro-environmental change at work. While some of the initial actions available to workplaces are easily identified and common to many organisations (for example, reducing and recycling paper), the ongoing support and success of these programs relies on the enthusiasm and commitment of the people behind them.

Do it now!

The range of activities, goals and foci of a Green Team is unlimited, as almost every aspect of any organisation could be made more efficient in its use of environmental resources.

While the other actions mentioned in this section are a good starting point, they simply represent the low-hanging fruit most organizations could pick. That said, we need to be aware that even implementing these actions requires a team of informed, focused and dedicated individuals intent on making, tailoring and implementing them. Further analysis of your organisation's specific makeup will reveal a new and more appropriate list of actions to take as a next step.

Creating a Green Team - forming a group intended to evolve the organisation's environmental agendas and focused on implementing on-the-ground solutions to environmental problems is one of the few ways organisations improve their environmental performance.

In general, Green Teams design and implement a program that includes many of the following aims:

• To work with management to set goals of environmental improvement, along with incremental steps toward these goals

• To educate and raise staff awareness of the environmental impact of their workplace and the work done in it (eg include environmental component in staff induction process, internally brand sustainability programs,etc).

• To explore and develop sustainable alternatives to these environmental impacts (eg develop priorities list of sustainable initiatives and or behaviour changes)

• To engage staff in maintaining and improving these sustainable alternatives (eg track paper recycling program and tweak to customise and improve)

• To monitor and promote the status of and improvement in environmental goals (eg provide regular updates of progress and environmental benefits of the program, as well as highlighting non-environmental benefits)

Why this action is important

Offices, farms and factories consume by far the lion's share of resources in our society and are in desperate need of environmental improvement. By working to improve the environmental sustainability of our workplaces we take responsibility for the environmental quality of all aspects of our daily lives. By doing this, we are honourably trying to turn our society away from global warming, drought, and increased global misery toward a more sustainable and happy path.