Nouslife: How to turn your boss green

31 August 2006

How to turn your boss green

This article sets up the question;

at work it's a different story. All that wasted paper, the unfairly traded tea and coffee, the lights left on over night, the computers blazing out heat all day long. It's not your fault - although many businesses are getting serious about sustainability, some still fail to provide recycling bins or to consider the environmental impacts of their products and services. If your employer is one of those who hasn't yet gone green, how can you make them change their ways?

And answers it with some good distilled wisdom.

Talk to your boss. Tell him or her about an article you read on John Browne - the chief executive of BP who turned it round from being an oil company to being an energy company....
Talk about the risks your company faces. Climate change ... Rising oil prices ... Limits on the emissions of CO2... managing these risks can save the business money.
The next thing for business is to be the biggest and best at meeting the growing demand for solutions to these problems ... You and your boss could come up with the next great idea.
In almost every sector there's someone making a bid to be seen as the sustainability king. ...
many of the issues we're facing are too big to squeeze into a board meeting agenda - you need to cut them down into bitesized chunks that relate to your core activities. ...
Get your colleagues interested in your cause by organising lunchtime talks, expeditions, nights out to an organic restaurant - anything that's fun or novel...
Make sure you keep all your messages positive and friendly. Don't go on at people about all the things they're doing wrong because they won't like you much. Instead, tell them what they're doing right, and how good changes will be for the organisation in general and their job in particular. Talk about increased job satisfaction, publicity and customers - make people feel excited about doing things differently.