Green Week
Green week activity across Informa
We launched our inaugural Green Week in 2009 with the idea of raising awareness around environmental concerns and tapping into our staff’s creativity and insight to drive environmental initiatives across the business. Our Green Week is structured around a main Group-wide event, The Green Games, with many of our offices also organising their own local activities.
We also seek to recognise those who have been constructively engaging with environmental issues throughout the year, both at work and at home / in the community. We have therefore launched 2 awards - “Informa’s Unsung Green Champion” and “Informa’s extra-curricular Green Champion”, announced during the week.
The Global Green Games
We pit our divisions against each other on environmental challenges. There is a competitive streak that runs through all of our businesses so this works well! Our senior management team act as our “Champions” for each business, leading their teams. The Games consist of 3 main pillars:
- Daily challenges: All staff scores points by completing simple challenges day by day, from not using any disposable cups to reading the environmental section of a news source.
- One key environmental business initiative: Each division chooses an environmental initiative that they’re going to implement that makes the most sense for their business. Entries are judged on their innovation, environmental impact, engagement of staff or 3rd parties and scalability.
- Creative communications campaign: Environmental messages can become cliched so each division is asked to come up with an original campaign that would engage others to constructively address environmental concerns. Campaigns are judged on creativity, clarity of the message and potential to engage the audience.
A flavour of Green Week 2011…
- Euroforum Germany signed a contract to start sourcing their electricity from renewable sources.
- IIR Hungary has set up a long-term partnership with a local school and during Green Week, held an interactive “Green Seeds” event, teaching the children about environmental concerns around energy, waste, travel and water.
- Our Shared Services Centre in Colchester, UK, had a print free day during the week with a commitment to becoming a paperless office by March 2012.
- IIR Middle East raised money to pay for their plastic waste to be recycled into reef balls. The reef balls will act as fake coral reef to bring sea life back to areas that have been wrecked by the Dubai industries.
- T&F USA donated 4 bikes to Bike Broward, 40 cell phones to HopeLine and 45 pairs of glasses to Lions Clubs International Sight Program.
- Informa Australia entertained staff by using the Incredible Hulk to encourage better environmental behaviour and have put together a great summary of their week:
View Informa Australia video
- And many other iniatives, green lunches, dress green days, vegetarian recipe swaps, environmental volunteer days, office clear outs and plants for our offices.
Our 2011 Unsung Green Champions
- Ellen Cabral, Marketing Director from our IBC USA office won the “at work” category, working to dramatically fine-tune print runs for all promotional materials to avoid waste and ensuring all brochures are printed on FSC paper. Sample giveaways, such as tote or messenger bags, are also now saved to be donated. Around the office, she has been encouraging the 3 “R”s - recycling, reducing and reusing - spearheading many Green Week projects.
- Our Unsung extra-curricular Green Champion was Anji Kurian, Conference Manager for Informa Australia. Together with her film-maker husband, she has long focused on environmental and human interest issues in documentaries and voluntary work. Their most recent project, “Toxic”, focused on the worldwide efforts to ban the pesticide Endosulfan and the controversies surrounding it. The ban has been driven by a cluster of villages in Southern India where spraying of plantations has caused great damage to animals, soil and people.