A key part of the Cadbury Purple Goes Green initiative is advocacy and awareness raising, starting with our colleagues but extending to the wider society. Meeting our environmental commitments requires a change in the way we make decisions and operate - as our ambitious targets will not be reached through “business as usual”.
The first step to achieve our targets is to create awareness of climate change and our company’s commitments amongst our employees. Engagement of people at different levels of our company is key to changing mindsets. This engagement facilitates change in the way we operate and the way decisions are made.
We have established a “culture change” programme in order to create environmental awareness amongst colleagues at all levels of the organisation. This programme is being led by “green advocates”, who are enthusiasts committed to creating environmental awareness within their sites. They operate in the form of a network that regularly shares information and tools through our intranet and emails. As of now, the expanding network has around 200 members covering almost 50 sites across 35 different countries the globe. Some examples of their activities aimed at building environmental consciousness are:
• In the UK, Green Advocates introduced eco-friendly stationery, re-educated people about recycling, integrated recycling into the office clearout day and encouraged people to buy eco-friendly Christmas gifts in December;
Some Green Advocates in the UK making a pledge by signing their 'commitment tree'.
• In Australia, a ride/walk to work day resulted in 40 colleagues using eco means to get to work;
• Green Advocates in Australia were instrumental in the implementation of a solar electricity system on the roof of the manufacturing site in Huntingwood;
• The US team organised a Sustainability Awareness Week which included working smarter day (video conference training), black and white day (workshops on smarter printing), green day (turning off monitors, introducing new dishwashers, car pooling, switching off plasmas etc);
• The New Zealand Dunedin team got colleagues out of the office to help clean Dunendin’s coastline as part of Seaweek 2008;
• In the Gladstone Plant in Canada they had an internal campaign on World Environment Day - encouraging colleagues to take alternative transport, bring a litterless lunch, unplug all non-essential appliances at home, not use the elevator etc. 105 colleagues took alternative transport resulting in an estimated 701.01kg reduction in CO2.
• In Poland, Green Advocates ran a campaign on ecological offices, which had colleagues sending over 80 ideas to green the office
• When plastic bags were banned by some supermarkets in Greece, colleagues used it as an opportunity to campaign along with the Athens local authority - sponsoring reusable shopping bags
“More companies can take a lead from “Purple goes Green” to harness green activism within their own global workforces. Unleashing people’s passion for the environment to create better, low carbon ways of working is essential to reducing global emissions and tackling climate change.”
Steve Howard, CEO, The Climate Group
Awareness campaigns run by the green advocates are designed based on local reality and culture. This brings together a group of like minded people sharing information and campaigning for action on the environment within their factory or offices.
In addition, our culture change programme has a specific programme of work to develop sustainability leadership capabilities. A bespoke “Building Sustainability Leadership” Development Programme was designed along with Forum for the Future and the first pilot was attended by over 30 participants from different functions across the globe. We created new role of Sustainable Business Practices Manager within our Corporate Responsibility team to head the programmes roll out, tailoring content to geographic and specialist functional interests (e.g. Marketing, Supply Chain, Science & Technology) in order to maximise its impact.
Theatre performance during the “Air Protection Month” in our Cali Plant in Colombia. The umbrella represents depletion of the ozone layer and respirator represents air pollution.