As the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference approaches, we as a community need to be taking responsibility for our environmental footprint. A fun way to encourage your office to ‘go green’ is in a competitive green week challenge.

Competing for a sustainable footprint: Green Week Office Challenge

How it works  

While keeping one to three people as the referees of the game, split the rest of your office into teams, this can be something simple like the marketing team vs the finance team, or you can mix together the teams to get more collaboration across the company. Once the teams have been decided, they choose a leader, a team name, and create a team Instagram account.  

Throughout the week, members will send their team captains photos of them doing sustainable activities such as walking to work, using natural lighting, bringing in their own reusable coffee mug etc. Each task can be given a different point tally depending on the complexity, so walking to work might be worth 3 points while using a reusable water bottle may only be worth 2. Each photo will be uploaded to the Instagram page with a unique company hashtag, for example #E2EGoesGreen, and the referees will add up the total points at the end of the competition.   

Whichever team scores the most points can be rewarded with a nice dinner or drinks, a sustainable gift basket that includes bamboo straws, steel water bottles, a public transportation card etc, or anything else you believe will encourage participants to embrace green week. 
 

Here is an example list for the green week challenge (but feel free to add your own depending on your company): 

Using natural lighting – 2  

Bringing a plant into the office – 3  

Walking or riding a bike to work – 4  

Carpooling – 2  

Using public transportation – 2  

Bringing a reusable water bottle or coffee mug to work – 2  

Using reusable bags – 2  

Recycling – 2  

Re-using packaging – 3  

Eating vegan – 3  

Bring your lunch in a reusable container – 2  

Printing double sided papers – 1  

Not printing – 2  

Planting a tree – 5  

Using reusable straws – 2  

Reading “How to be sustainable” articles/watching videos on sustainability – 2  

Using recycled material such as paper, bin bags, and pencils – 3  

Using leftover papers in old notebooks – 1  

Hand drying the dishes with reusable towels – 3  

Wearing a reusable mask – 2  

While this is a fun week-long activity, it needs to be stressed that the tasks the employees are doing for points should become integrated into their everyday lives to help preserve our beautiful home.  Join this step towards rebuilding a healthy planet with E2Exchange and participate in a green week office challenge this month.