RSA Canada engages staff in environmental initiatives

RSA Canada is partnering with the World Wildlife Fund-Canada to engage its employees in environmental initiatives.

The insurance company has signed a new five-year sponsorship agreement with WWF-Canada’s Living Planet@Work, through which the conservation organization will support RSA Canada to develop a national green team program to engage its employees across the country to take action on sustainability.

“We are aiming to have all green teams in place at the beginning of June to mark this year’s World Environment Day,” said Mark Edgar, senior vice-president of HR at RSA Canada.

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“Members of local green teams will be working together to identify and focus on specific targets for their offices. It might be an audit on their office’s consumption of electricity or a campaign to encourage less printing and more recycling.”

The partnership is also part of RSA Canada’s corporate responsibility commitments under its Sustainable Future CR pillar, which aims to reduce the carbon emissions from their internal operations by 12% per employee by 2018, as well as supporting customers to better respond to changing environmental risks.

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WWF-Canada’s Living Planet@Work was launched in 2011 to engage environmentally-minded employees to lead footprint reduction initiatives, sustainability awareness campaigns at work and build support for WWF’s conservation efforts across Canada.

More than 1,200 employees from more than 900 companies use the program.

“We had green teams in place years ago but they faded away about three years ago, except for the one in St. John’s, Nlfd., the only one that survived,” said Edgar “We believe, because this time green teams will have the chance to develop customized plans for their offices/locations and have access to Living Planet@Work tools, it will maintain employees’ engagement in the green teams’ project.”

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