Top 40 Green Business Tips for Earth Day

With the 40th anniversary of Earth Day just around the corner, many businesses may be scrambling to improve their green and sustainable habits in the office. Becoming a more sustainable business may seem a daunting task, but there are actually many small and simple changes that can be made to habits and habitats that will create a more eco-friendly environment.

The Green Business Bureau (GBB) – an organization dedicated to guiding small and medium businesses to their green and sustainability goals – offers the following list of 40 environmentally friendly things businesses can do to prepare for Earth Day on April 22, 2010.

Break Room and Bathroom
1.       Reduce water waste by installing aerators to control water flow-rates on faucets.
2.       Install motion sensor controls that turn off faucets automatically.
3.       Eliminate paper, Styrofoam, or plastic cups, plates and utensils in the kitchen area. Use mugs, dishes, and silverware instead.
4.       Use environmentally friendly, non-toxic cleaning products.
5.       Switch from bottled water to filtered water, or install a water cooler, to save money and reduce waste.
6.       Choose re-usable cleaning supplies like sponges over paper towels.

Paper and Printing
7.       Reduce paper waste by using the blank backs of waste paper for drafts, scratch paper, internal memos, etc.
8.       Include a “Please Consider the Environment” footer in all your email signatures.
9.       Purchase recycled or remanufactured toner cartridges to realize significant cost savings.
10.   Purchase copy paper, folders, and other office paper products made from 35-100% post-consumer recycled materials.
11.   Begin using EcoFont® for internal documents and save up to 20% on ink costs
12.   Establish a paper recycling program for newspapers, office paper, direct mail, white and colored paper, cardboard, envelopes, magazines, and catalogs.
13.   Send and receive faxes directly to your computer. If that’s not possible, eliminate fax cover sheets by using Post-Its® on the first page.
14.   Purchase or lease copiers and printers that have a two-sided copying and printing function.
15.   Choose pre-used, recycled, or Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC)-certified boxes and bags for retail use or shipping.
16.   Establish a paperless billing program for your customers and encourage use by creating incentives.
17.   Sign up to pay your bills online and receive invoices and receipts electronically.

Saving Electricity
18.   Contact your local utility and ask for a free commercial energy assessment  to pinpoint specific areas of energy waste.
19.   Replace regular light bulbs with Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) bulbs that last longer and save energy.
20.   Install light switch occupancy sensors in proper locations to automatically turn off lighting when no one is present.
21.   Set computers to enter system standby or hibernate after 30 minutes of inactivity. Set monitors to enter sleep mode after 5 to 20 minutes of inactivity.
22.   Use a smarter power strip, like EcoStrip®, to reduce phantom charges.
23.   Replace all standard Exit signs with LED or high-efficiency alternatives.
24.   Install an ENERGY STAR® programmable thermostat to automate your HVAC  system.

Business Practices
25.   Create and adopt a corporate environmental sustainability vision statement.
26.   Encourage employee carpools, public transportation, or bicycling as a means of transportation. Post schedules and route maps throughout office.
27.   Switch to a green merchant banking solution like the Green Merchant Alliance.
28.   Use a green web hosting service for your business’ website. This is typically available at the same price and is completely carbon neutral.
29.   Reduce junk mail by removing your business’ name from national direct marketing databases.
30.   Enroll in a waste exchange program where your waste can become another company’s resource.
31.   Request that your payroll service eliminate the printed version of the pay stub and envelope. Ask them to email pay stub information instead.
32.   Complete a solid-waste assessment to help identify and quantify the items in your business’ waste stream.
33.   Reserve one day a year when your company volunteers for local environmental or community projects (e.g., Habitat for Humanity, Earth Day, Save a Tree).
34.   Purchase products and services from green-certified or GBB vendors.

Office Space
35.   Arrange the existing workspace to take advantage of areas with natural sunlight and design future spaces with natural lighting opportunities in mind.
36.   Use floor mat/dirt-collection systems at doorways facing the outside space.
37.   Designate carpool and hybrid parking spaces that are in preferred areas of your parking lot (e.g. closer to the building entrance or covered).
38.   Plant native, region-friendly plants to minimize the impact on the local habitat and to limit the amount of irrigation water needed.
39.   Lease business and office space in a LEED certified building – resulting in lower operating costs, a safer, less-toxic environment, and more productive employees.
40.   Have fun!

For more information on this topic, or for assistance in promoting your green initiatives, contact Rapport, LLC. Whether you’re a business promoting green products and services, or a government agency planning an energy awareness public outreach program, we can help. With sustainability and energy efficiency as our focus, we design programs, promotional communications and outreach materials for green businesses, government and non-profit organizations. Call us at 615-945-9296, or email gwen@rapportllc.net. To learn more about our services, visit our website at www.rapportllc.net.

USGBC’s New Green Guide

USGBC recently unveiled its new Green Home Guide on the web. This new site, in the Beta phase, is free for all users who are interested in implementing sustainable features into their homes. The primary feature of the site connects individuals to the green home professionals to answer questions about simple to major home improvements.

Want suggestions for choosing a kitchen countertop and all the environmental and health effects that go with? Bam, done. Want tips on choosing low-flow toilets or where to find low VOC paints? Boom, answered.

Eat your heart out Kermit. It is becoming easier to be green every day!

For more information on this topic, or for assistance in promoting your green initiatives, contact Rapport, LLC. Whether you’re a business promoting green products and services, or a government agency planning an energy awareness public outreach program, we can help. With sustainability and energy efficiency as our focus, we design programs, promotional communications and outreach materials for green businesses, government and non-profit organizations. Call us at 615-945-9296, or email gwen@rapportllc.net. To learn more about our services, visit our website at www.rapportllc.net.

Recycling Made Easy & How to Get Started

(Article written by Mariette Mifflin, About.com)

Our landfills are accumulating waste at a rate of 2 to 5 lbs of trash per person per day. Over our lifetime, the total would be staggering. But we can help to reduce this waste by reusing and recycling certain items. It’s a very small, virtually no-cost way of doing our part and helping our environment.

Take a day and really look at what you throw out. You will be amazed at what could be recycled or reused. A large plastic liquid detergent container can be quickly customized for a handy scoop for bird seed; a 2-litre/quart plastic soda bottle can be fashioned into a bird feeder; empty egg cartons can be given to a local farm to reuse; and the community food bank would probably love to take those plastic grocery bags off your hands.

Returnable bottles or tins can be redeemed, in fact many non-profit groups fund certain activities through bottling drives. Canning jars can be reused with new sealing lids. These are just a few ideas on how to reduce waste, I’m certain you’ll come up with many of your own.

Getting Started – What to Recycle

Getting a household recycling program started is easy and it’s a good family project. After all, we can start now to train the next generation to appreciate and care for their environment. First, you should inquire about recycling in your community:

• Should recycling be left at the curb or taken to a depot?
• What items are recycled?
• How should it be packaged. Do you need ‘blue’ boxes or can you use your own bins?
• In how much detail are items sorted.

Yup, I did say detail! I was amazed at how refined this process is in certain communities, and I did initially balk at the idea of spending time sorting. But I have since reconsidered – protecting my environment is well worth it. And a well organized bin system in your home or garage will make sorting quick and easy.

For instance, in some cities, plastics and glass must be sorted by the number size that is marked inside a triangle on the underside of the container. Of course, very old glass does not have any such markings and may be in a general glass category. Glass or plastic bottles may need to have the metal lids removed. Newspapers may need to be bundled in a certain way, and soda cans may need to be separate from food tins.

Understanding the details and sorting immediately, will enable you to recycle more efficiently and deliver your ‘goods’ to the depot or curb ready for processing. For now, we’ll assume detail is limited to certain types of waste and we’ll get started with a few basics.

Capacity & Convenience

Setting up an adequate bin system is key to managing your program in a time efficient manner. If you require blue boxes, these may be available through your depot, or can be purchased in varying sizes from many department stores. If blue is not a requirement, any size plastic bin, wastebasket or receptacle can be utilized. Here are some general tips to consider:

• For papers and newspapers – use a bin that is the correct size to lay papers flat, making it easier to bundle later.
• Bins that have hinged or flapstyle lids provide easy one-handed disposal of tins.
• Composting bins should have a secure lid to reduce the risk of unpleasant odors and prevent critter entry, and should be conveniently sized for locating close to your kitchen area.
• Bins should be adequately sized to handle your waste products according to how often you will be disposing of it. Containers that are uneccessarily large will require space that you could use for something else.
• Plastic is more durable than cardboard and you can wash them as required.

Organization

Delegate a bin to each class of waste with consideration given to sorting detail and capacity, and grouping them together (except for compost) will increase sorting efficiency. Keep them in a handy location. The following are a few general classes of recycling waste:

• Glass
• Tins/Cans
• Papers/Newspapers
• Compost
• Cardboard
• Plastics

General Recycling Tips

Composting is for your own benefit – to enrich your soil and provide a rich mulch for your gardens. You can compost most foods such as vegetable and fruit peelings, fish discards and other food scraps, with the exception of meat, poultry, gravy, grease or oils, unless you are using a specially formulated composting bin for all foods. Compost should be transfered daily to the outside composting pile or bin to reduce the presence of unpleasant odors in your home.

Tins and soda pop cans should be washed, flattened or crushed with an economical wall-mounted can crusher. Washing food or drink tins will reduce the risk of unwanted pests. Cardboard boxes and dry food boxes should also be flattened.

These are just the basics, you can build your recycling program to suit your lifestyle and needs. Recycling helps us look at what we consume, how to reduce the waste we generate and what we can reuse. A small ‘back to the future’ investment with considerable ‘green’ environmental benefits.

For more information on this topic, or for assistance in promoting your green initiatives, contact Rapport, LLC. Whether you’re a business promoting green products and services, or a government agency planning an energy awareness public outreach program, we can help. With sustainability and energy efficiency as our focus, we design programs, promotional communications and outreach materials for green businesses, government and non-profit organizations. Call us at 615-945-9296, or email gwen@rapportllc.net. To learn more about our services, visit our website at www.rapportllc.net.

3 Keys to Successful Green Marketing

Article by Susan Ward (www.about.com)

Show potential clients that you follow green business practices and you could reap more green on your bottom line.
Green marketing isn’t just a catchphrase; it’s a marketing strategy that can help you get more customers and make more money. But only if you do it right.

For green marketing to be effective, you have to do three things; be genuine, educate your customers, and give them the opportunity to participate.

1) Being genuine means that
a) that you are actually doing what you claim to be doing in your green marketing campaign and
b) that the rest of your business policies are consistent with whatever you are doing that’s environmentally friendly. Both these conditions have to be met for your business to establish the kind of environmental credentials that will allow a green marketing campaign to succeed.

2) Educating your customers isn’t just a matter of letting people know you’re doing whatever you’re doing to protect the environment, but also a matter of letting them know why it matters. Otherwise, for a significant portion of your target market, it’s a case of “So what?” and your green marketing campaign goes nowhere.

3) Giving your customers an opportunity to participate means personalizing the benefits of your environmentally friendly actions, normally through letting the customer take part in positive environmental action.

Let’s put the three essential elements of a successful green marketing campaign together by looking at an example.

Suppose that you have decided that your business will no longer use plastic bags to wrap customer purchases. You know that the traditional plastic bag takes about one thousand years to decompose (cbc.ca) and want to do your part to stop the proliferation of plastic bags in landfills. You feel that this is the kind of environmental action that will be popular with potential customers and a good opportunity to do some green marketing.

To be genuine, you have to ensure that none of your business practices contradict your decision not to use plastic bags. What if customers who happen to walk behind your store see an overflowing trash bin filled with paper, cardboard and plastic bottles? Obviously, he or she will decide that you don’t care as much about recycling as you say you do in your green marketing.

Not using plastic bags appears to be environmental no-brainer, but you will still need to educate your target market. Did you know that a single use plastic bag takes about one thousand years to decompose? I didn’t until I researched this article and probably a fair number of otherwise environmentally conscious people don’t either. This one little factoid about plastic bags could be used as part of your green marketing campaign – all by itself it lets the public know why single use plastic bags are environmentally disastrous and that you and your business care about the environment.

And the third element? By shopping at your store, the customer is taking action to protect the environment by preventing at least one single use plastic bag from going into a landfill. It doesn’t sound like much, but he or she gets the satisfaction of physically doing something that fulfills their beliefs. You can also reinforce your customers’ green decisions and increase their participation by offering them additional related actions, such as buying cloth bags to use for future purchases.

Sometimes the best thing to do with a bandwagon is jump on it. You have to walk the talk and actually implement green policies and act in environmentally friendly ways for green marketing to work, but if you do, you’ve got a powerful selling point with those who are environmentally conscious and want to act to make the world a greener place – a market that’s growing exponentially right now.

Need help with your green marketing?

Call Rapport Group now at 615-945-9296 to arrange a free consultation. Or, send an email to Gwen Canfield: gwen@rapportllc.net. To learn more about Rapport, and see samples of our work, visit our website at www.rapportllc.net.

Publicity: 3 Steps to Getting Free Press Coverage

Ever wonder what the difference is between advertising and publicity?

Simply put, publicity is free. Advertising costs money.

In other words, if a newspaper writes a news article about you (but doesn’t charge you), that’s publicity. If the newspaper charges you for the space (even if it is in article format), then the message just became advertising.

Wouldn’t we all like a little publicity – or “free press” – now and then?

Sounds easy enough…nice payoff…so where to start?

Before someone starts wordsmithing a quick news release from the top of their head, this quest does not begin with you or your organization – at least not yet. The first and most important insight is that getting the publicity that you want – good, effective publicity – depends entirely on being able to help the news media get what they want.

In other words, your story has to be newsworthy and relevant to your target media outlets’ readers, viewers and/or listeners.

Keep in mind that “free publicity” is a bit of a misnomer. It’s seldom easy, never automatic, and the required investment will be careful and thoughtful research, plus a healthy pinch of creativity. What’s more, if you really want to maximize your chances of getting proper exposure, you may need to hire a professional publicist to get your message out, and publicists are definitely not free.

Begin with two important inventory steps. Make two lists…and the match between the first list and the second list is where you’ll find (or make) opportunity for publicity.

#1 MEDIA INVENTORY

Chart all possible media that touch the people you want to reach. Start by brainstorming to find relevant media. In addition to the obvious local daily newspaper, magazine and/or broadcast outlets, include community weeklies, ethnic or special interest publications, regional, monthly or quarterly magazines, industry newsletters, etc.

In this process, also identify appropriate sub-categories. For example, a newspaper or magazine may have a designated section, editor, reporter or periodic edition for your industry. Look at several editions to recognize what each media outlet favors and whose name is on the “by-line” or section. Identify as many people as possible by category, section, topic or interest.

It’s no secret that the purpose of any commercial media is to attract an audience – and it’s these readers or viewers that the advertisers want to target. So, if the media appeals to an “up-scale” audience, or a “Smallville/Main Street” audience, your best chance of successful publicity will be to tap into their goal.

#2 PERSONAL INVENTORY & POSSIBLE “HOOK” IDEAS

Now look for ideas that help the media. Take an inventory of your own strengths, special knowledge or other ideas that might be of interest to the media’s audience.

You may or may not personally be part of this audience, so focus on their point of view. Look beyond the obvious, be inventive (within reason) and create a list of possible “hooks” or “angles.” What might be attention-getting or unusual? Consider:

• What is legitimately the first, newest, latest or unique?
• Do you have a new way to solve a problem?
• An insight to an emerging trend or something of benefit to a large number of people.
• A story that is truly heart-warming, tear-jerking or emotionally compelling.
• Is there a celebrity angle? …a “hero” angle? …an unusual hobby angle?
• Can you provide expert commentary about a timely topic?
• Do you know a local angle to a national item?
• Are you an expert, author, inventor or credentialed authority?
• Can you create a newsworthy promotion or event?

#3 CROSS REFERENCE “WHAT THEY WANT” WITH “WHAT YOU’VE GOT”

Brainstorm many possible topics…narrow to several…and refine the best two or three possibilities. The refinement step will also take into consideration the needs and interests of the specific reporter, editor or producer. And that’s the person to whom you will make your pitch.

It’s likely that you’ll find a match, but you may have to drill down and be a bit inventive to carefully make the match between what they want and what you’ve got. And when you do, that’s where your opportunity for free publicity begins.

That’s how the game starts. But there’s much more to winning publicity as well as planning, public relations, advertising, promotion, strategic thinking and effective execution for practice development.

Winning at the publicity game is challenging. Give Rapport a call today at 615-945-9296, or email gwen@rapportllc.net. We’ll be happy to help you spread the word about your green initiatives. Rapport partners with some of the best PR strategists in the business, and can assist you with public relations planning, advertising, promotion, strategic thinking and effective execution. To learn more about Rapport, and view our portfolio, visit www.rapportllc.net.

How To Effectively Promote Your Green Business or Program

To help boost your business in line with the growing demand for eco-friendly products and services, green marketing should be a part of your plans or green programs. As you know, Internet marketing has become a trend among business owners and promoters. And the results prove to benefiting for their businesses. Take for example the likes of Toyota and Starbucks. These are just a few of considered large and popular companies that have successfully used Internet marketing to reach green consumers.

But this is not to say that only large companies can manage to reach vast market through the Internet. Orange Glo and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters are among those who have gone extra miles to market their green product.

Green may be an “in” concept but it does not automatically ensure that your product or program will be get immediate buy-in. Marketing will play a critical role in your green promotions. There are still a lot of businesses and non profit organizations that have little to no knowledge and capability to use the Internet to market directly to a target audience.

Here are a few tips to help your green organization reach your target green conscious consumers.

1. Use search engines capability. You can place ads on popular search engines such as Google and Yahoo! You can make use of Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing. By carefully choosing keywords that match your product or service with high ranking green keyword search, you will definitely reach a vast number of prospective customers. The benefit of marketing in these search engines is that you will only need to pay when someone clicks your advertisement. A research also indicates that green clients uses the Internet more often to search for green products and/or services. You or your staff will have to research the best keywords that will generate the right clients upon typing in search boxes. You would not want to choose keywords that are not usually searched by Internet users. It will pay to learn the details about Internet marketing process so that your business can maximize sales potential.

2. Narrow down your Internet marketing strategy. There are a lot of websites that you can choose from to advertise your product. However, the rule of marketing indicates that you should always identify your target market before you launch any marketing approach. Conduct an extensive research to find out the type of consumers that usually patronize your product type. Look for green Web portals for both B2B and B2C audiences. Here is a simple definition of these concepts taken from www.askstrategic.com:

“B2B or Business to Business are portals that allow businesses to deal directly with their distributors and suppliers online which allows electronic transfer of orders, invoicing and even payments. B2C or Business to Customers are intermediary portals to link customers to suppliers. Some of the major ones are eBay, Yell and ZDNet.

Find out which websites and email newsletters have the most number of clients that falls under your target category. There are a lot of green web portals that offers B2B and B2C to clients involved in green businesses as well as green customers. These portals usually reach thousands of clients every day.

3. Work on your email list. Avoid spam as much as possible. Before you offer any product, make sure to build relationship with potential clients first. Make your messages personal and credible as possible. Provide information about green benefits, green practices and green products among others.

Email is an effective way to make sales. Include a squeeze page on your website so that clients will provide their personal information particularly email addresses in exchange of valuable information that you offer. These offers may come in the forms of newsletters, brochure etc. This way, you create your own email list. Offer them information that they cannot refuse. Once you have built a strong relationship with them, you can promote the benefits of your product as if you sell to them on a one on one basis and they will most likely buy from you than someone else.

4. Your website design and functionality will decide whether visitors will click other pages within your site or click away confused and frustrated. Create a landing page that will look as someone is actually talking to them. Keep your offer as simple as possible and easy to comprehend. Do away with overcrowding as it will distract visitors from your actual offer. Create a privacy policy, contact information and if possible, refund guarantee. Above all, relate to them the benefit of your product to their health, their community and the society.

5. Create an after sales marketing strategy. Satisfied clients are more than willing to recommend product to others. As you know, the best selling tool is still word of mouth. A simple email with “is there anything I can help you with” that you send a week after sales will surely make your customers feel important.

No matter how productive or environmentally friendly your product or service may be, it will not be sellable unless you promote your business effectively. A well thought out marketing strategy is sure to create an impact to clients. Pilot a target client base to at least 50-100 persons before you launch your sales campaign in the worldwide web. Lastly, make sure to state facts and not exaggerate inputs to clients. You may sell a good number of units at the startup but it will definitely dwindle down as soon as clients find out about your misleading information.

Happy green promoting!

For more information on this topic, or for assistance in promoting your green initiatives, contact Rapport, LLC. Whether you’re a business promoting green products, or a government agency planning an energy awareness public outreach program, we can help. With sustainability and energy efficiency as our focus, we design programs, promotional communications and outreach materials for green businesses, government and non-profit organizations. Call us at 615-945-9296, or email gwen@rapportllc.net. To learn more about our services, visit our website at www.rapportllc.net.

Energy Efficiency Outreach – Motivate Your Audience

Before deciding how to convey the desired behaviors you want, it is important to consider what motivates your public audience to change their behaviors.

A common mistake is to assume that people will adopt energy-efficient practices simply if they understand the need to conserve energy, believe that energy efficiency is important, and know what actions to take. Many studies conducted over the last 30 years have shown that these factors alone are not enough to change behavior. If your program is based solely on giving information to people, it will almost certainly fail.

Changing people’s energy-use behaviors must go beyond one-way education. The campaign must address barriers to change, as well as making the behaviors easy, convenient, relevant, and socially desirable. Research and case studies have revealed some factors that have proven effective:

Make your contacts personal and interactive.
Face-to-face, back-and-forth communication is one of the most effective motivators in energy education. When people are personally confronted with an opportunity to adopt more energy-efficient behavior, as opposed to having the opportunity presented through information materials or the media, their participation rises dramatically.

Use vivid, relevant, personalized information.
Information that is presented in a vivid way is more likely to prompt action than a standard list of tips or numbers. If the desired behaviors are pictured, people are more likely to visualize themselves doing them. Videotapes of people taking energy-efficient actions in their homes and offices have prompted similar actions by viewers, even after only one viewing.

Emphasize a positive gain, not deprivation.
People naturally avoid and resent hardship and the implication that they are being asked to sacrifice their comfort to save energy. Therefore, emphasize what they will gain from adopting certain behaviors. For example, the most important factor in energy-related activities is thermal comfort. People resist doing things that make them feel uncomfortably cold or hot, even if they save energy, but are more receptive to things that will improve their comfort and health and give them a sense of control ove rtheir environment. Make it clear how certain activities, such as adjusting the temperature to be more seasonal and using daylight instead of electric lights will improve their well-being and convenience.

Promote social interaction.
Community meetings and other events may be used to conduct focus groups that design and evaluate the program, but also to help foster exchanges of information. Workshops, kids’ events, fairs, and other activities can be the means to promote energy-efficient behaviors.

Provide feedback.
Feedback provides the community with results and successes, and actually shows how much energy they have saved over certain periods of time. Feedback also helps people visualize the results of their actions, which is important because energy-saving results are often invisible or difficult for communities to evaluate.

For more information on this topic, or for assistance in designing and promoting your green program, contact Rapport, LLC. Whether you’re a business promoting green products, or a government agency planning an energy awareness public outreach program, we can help. With sustainability and energy efficiency as our focus, we design programs, promotional communications and outreach materials for green businesses, government and non-profit organizations. Call us at 615-945-9296, or email info@rapportllc.net. To learn more about our services, visit our website at www.rapportllc.net.

Implementing An Energy Awareness Program In Your Organization

This article provides a summarized step-by-step approach to help you design and implement a program aimed at increasing energy-efficient behavior of employees at your facility. We hope you find it useful if you are planning a green program at your business, organization or government office.

STEP 1 – PLAN THE EFFORT

• Define your agency’s mission and goals. Establish a direct relationship between saving energy and success in meeting these goals.
• Assess the constraints and opportunities of your facility. Evaluate energy use patterns based on your types of equipment, size of staff, hours of operation, and current levels of energy use. Use this information to ensure that you develop obtainable goals and plan activities well-suited to your organization’s needs.
• Determine the specific goals and objectives of your awareness program.
• Obtain upper management support. Ask a Senior Manager to serve as the facility’s “Energy Champion” to lend authority and endorse the program’s messages.
• Recruit enthusiastic and capable team members to serve on your planning committee.
• Assess your access to various communications channels (such as newsletters, closed circuit TV, etc.) and program capability to produce printed materials, displays, videos, and hand-outs.
• Assess your financial resources and develop a preliminary budget.
• Examine existing links with institutional groups and others that can help promote your program.
• Consider an evaluation mechanism for gathering behavioral data and reporting program results.

STEP 2 – DESIGN & IMPLEMENT THE PROGRAM

• Solicit input from employees to develop program content via surveys, focus groups, and personal interviews.
• Identify the desired behaviors/actions and consider how you will motivate employees to take these actions, such as through incentives and awards.
• Develop motivational themes, messages, and slogans.
• Determine the communications channels you will use to convey your information (e.g., posters, video, newsletter, exhibit).
• Select the activities/methods you will employ to distribute the messages/information.
• Develop a new budget specific to the products you plan to develop and the activities in which you plan to participate.
• Develop a schedule based on a specific timeframe (e.g., one fiscal year) to help you produce your products in plenty of time to carry out planned activities.
• Produce your visuals, products, and materials and conduct activities.

STEP 3 – EVALUATE & REPORT RESULTS

• Obtain employee feedback on the program’s effectiveness through focus groups and surveys. Consider a mid-course evaluation as well as a final evaluation.
• Document the energy and water savings. Share results based on measures implemented and employee achievements.

STEP 4 – SUSTAIN THE EFFORT

• Develop ways of introducing new employees to the program, such as an informational video, personal interview, or employee awareness handbook.
• Continue to implement your incentive and awards programs and publicly recognize employee accomplishments.
• Ask employees to pledge their commitment to specific personal actions or new events to promote and encourage ongoing participation.
• Recruit new members and conduct regular meetings with your planning committee. Continue to plan your program into the next year.

For more information on this topic, or for assistance in designing and promoting your green program, contact Rapport, LLC. Whether you’re a business promoting green products, or a government agency planning an energy awareness public outreach program, we can help. With sustainability and energy efficiency as our focus, we design programs, promotional communications and outreach materials for green businesses, government and non-profit organizations. Call us at 615-945-9296, or email info@rapportllc.net. To learn more about our services, visit our website at www.rapportllc.net.