Unilever Green Ambassadors, Let’s Go!

On April 29, 2014, seventeen new management trainees of Unilever participated in the training of the Eco Office Program. Starting with the introduction of the evaluation criteria, one of the trainers briefed the management trainees on evaluation tools, and evaluation contents that required attention to give them a general knowledge of the whole training process.

In the afternoon, there were a painting competition and an environmental quiz for the trainees. After the all-day training, trainees not only mastered basic survey methods, but also learned what were the not eco-friendly behaviors in the office and how to help the office reach the goal of energy conservation and emission reduction by little actions.

On May 16, after the theoretical training was over, trainees took what they learned and put it to work right away. They visited three office buildings of Unilever to observe whether there were energy saving lamps in offices, whether water-saving devices were applied to bathrooms, whether kitchens were equipped with garbage recycling bins and so on. What’s more, the trainees interviewed their colleagues about their energy consumption habits and took down their commuting mileages to calculate the daily carbon emission of an average staff member. At last, they conducted an interview with the administrative staff. As soon as the trainees finished their investigation, they began to estimate the collected data and put forward their own suggestions.

Under the guidance of the concept that “little actions make a big difference”, Unilever has made great efforts to decrease the influence of daily office activities on the environment. Since 2011, Unilever has cooperated with the Shanghai R&S on the eco-office project. Unilever encouraged new management trainees to become Green Ambassadors as the investigators of offices, from a new perspective, to discover and give their suggestions to encourage eco-friendly behaviors at workplace. In addition, these Green Ambassadors carried out colorful activities, including the Sustainable Development Day of Unilever and the 30-day Environment Protection Superman Challenge, to name just a few.

What’s more, the Eco Office Program, as one of the indispensible training projects for new employees, enabled management trainees to have a better knowledge of Unilever’s position on and requirements for sustainable development and helped them form the green habbits both at work and in life. To their delight, suggestions put forward by the new recruits were taken seriously by the management of Unilever, under whose encouragement and support, eco-office spaces were soon set up in Unilever. Since Eco Office was introduced to Unilever, resource consumption has gradually decreased – overall energy consumption decreased by 10% and paper consumption was reduced by 9%, according to the evaluation data of the year 2013, and offices have become more eco-friendly.