Informa’s Green Week promotes responsibility
Informa’s 4th annual Green Week once again celebrated initiatives around the Group that make us a greener company. Informa aims to be the world’s best knowledge provider, and this means working and behaving responsibly. Green Week has become an annual fixture, recognising staff excellence, sparking new ideas and making Informa a great place to work.
Impressive Green Week examples include Euroforum Germany delivering carbon neutral events and operations in the last year, in full compliance with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Equally impressive, our recent acquisition, Informa Canada, has perfected the skill of running zero-waste events. A large-scale three-day event run in this way saves a staggering 238 trees, 22 cubic metres of landfill space and 19,450 litres of water.
As Part of Green Week, we run a number of Group-wide competitions, including “Sustainability Initiative of the Year”, “Unsung Green Champion” and our Green Games. In the latter, staff across the business compete to improve daily habits so they become more environmentally friendly. In some cases, those good habits stick.
Local offices organise activities including volunteer days where staff contribute to many different activities. For instance, Informa employees helped run a Foodcycle café (where surplus food from markets and supermarkets is used to make nutritious meals for those at risk of food poverty), coppiced trees at the London Wetland Centre, and took part in trail maintenance, weeding and pruning at Fort Mason in San Francisco.
Numerous creative recycling initiatives have been set up to support local charities and conservation projects. Amongst the many donated items were shoes for Soles4souls, blankets, comforters, sheets and towels for the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless and children’s books for [link removed as site is no longer available]. Informa’s Dubai office held an auction of office items that were no longer needed and managed to raise over £1,350 for a conservation project chosen by staff.
“The highlights of the week always centre on staff enthusiasm and participation,” said Colette Bennion, CR executive at Informa. “They tell us about their experiences from volunteer days, how they’ve persevered in promoting environmental awareness in their offices or even just created incredible communications.
“As a business, we want to continually make steps towards sustainability. Whether that’s in our own operations or through our content, we want to support staff in ways that will take us there.”