Enjoying successful sustainability programs at home, some multinational corporations are exporting their efforts to their offices overseas. This year, Great Forest began working with a client’s Brazil location on their ISO 14001 program to better manage the environmental impact of operations at that office.
“After we established programs in several of the company’s North American locations, including their New York headquarters, they expressed interest in expanding the ISO 14001 program to Latin America,” says Great Forest’s Vijay Jesrani, the consultant managing the project. “We determined that Sao Paulo would be the best pilot location. In addition, there was great interest from empoyees there for sustainability programs.”
To date, Great forest has set up a comprehensive recycling program for the Sao Paulo office and also instituted a reusable mug program, doing away with landfill-busting paper and Styrofoam cups. Great Forest works closely with staff in Sao Paulo to track the office’s energy and waste data to create a baseline for setting future efficiency goals.
In London, Great Forest has been working on carbon footprint reports for another global client.
“We are continuously monitoring their emissions in their London and New York offices because these are their largest locations,” says Anna Dengler, Great Forest’s director of sustainability. “In addition we also conduct regular carbon foorprint reporting for their other offices across the U.S.”