The Joinery is participating in the 2016 EcoChallenge

After a great experience last year, The Joinery is again participating in the NW Earth Institute’s EcoChallenge. With over 80% of our employees taking part, our Sustainability Team divided participants into four separate teams for an added layer of fun and friendly competition. The team came up with a new set of challenges:
  • Challenge #1: Don’t eat anything that once had a heartbeat. Whatever your take on the ethics of eating animals, a diet featuring meat and poultry has a dramatically bigger environmental footprint than a vegetarian diet. There is ample evidence that reducing meat intake also improves your health. Our goal as a company is to reach 600 meatless meals.
  • Challenge #2: Avoid to-go containers. A trash audit conducted earlier in the year (yes, our team shown below did some dumpster diving to determine what exactly we are throwing into the landfill) showed that about 10% of the trash from our Woodstock location was made up of to-go containers for food and coffee. Our goal is to eliminate the use of to-go containers in general and disposable coffee cups in particular, and to help we are providing insulated coffee containers to all participating employees.
  • Challenge #3: Daily Exercise for at least 30 minutes has a beneficial impact on mental as well as physical health. And it can also be a lot of fun.

2016 EcoChallenge

We are kicking the Eco Challenge off with a Vegetarian Luncheon this Thursday, when our four teams will begin battling it out for bragging rights.

We are hoping for results similar to our 2015 EcoChallenge, which included the following:

  • Challenge #1: Vegetarian challenge: Go a whole day without eating any meat:
  • Result: Total of 203 meatless days, including 5 employees who didn’t eat meat for the entire 15-day challenge (and one who converted to a vegetarian diet as a result of his experience).
  • Challenge #2: Printing challenge: Reduce out the use of printer paper by cutting out non-essential printing.
  • Result: Overall 38% reduction. This thoughtful printer usage has continued and resulted in less paper usage year over year.
  • Challenge #3: Eliminate our use of paper towels.
  • Result: We switched to reusable napkins, and have eliminated paper towels from use going forward..

If you would like get involved with the 2016 EcoChallenge you sign up here.

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