Environmental Ennui

I generally like trees--as long as they're not flowering trees in April with the season's first bumblebees buzzing around (bumblebee phobia), and I adore animals (especially house cats, though polar bears also are good), but I'm not an environmental activist, and most of your employees aren't either. The ice caps may be melting, but I suspect many of your employees care much more about their after-work beer growing tepid. So when your company launches an environmental awareness campaign as part of an overall corporate social responsibility push, I'd say to expect a substantial amount of laziness.

Now, I may be suffering from the psychological phenomenon of projecting--projecting my own bad habits and inglorious feelings onto others--but I think it's more than that. I think at the end of the day it's all a weary employee can do to remember that his empty Diet Coke can belongs in the blue bin rather than the overflowing regular garbage. On top of that, is there anything else that can be expected of them?  What kind of success are you seeing mobilizing your in-house environmental missionaries?  As a person who likes the solitude of nature and the non-verbal rapport with animals infinitely more than cocktail parties, I hope I'm just being pessimistic about the environmental inertia I sense among fellow run-of-the-mill employees. Am I?

If you want to round up the corporate troops, I wouldn't start by telling them what I'm sure they're already aware of--the planet's dying, polar bears are losing their homes, the oceans will overflow some day, yada, yada, yada. It's frightening and upsetting, but, yeah, we know all that. Instead, I'd bypass that step (and please no more recycling mantras) and organize interesting, and maybe even some fun, activities to get employees excited about the environment. What about organizing team building activities around environmental charities, like beach cleanup or volunteering at a sanctuary for injured wildlife? On the fun side, what about a leadership development retreat with a dinner held at an environmentally-relevant place--like a nature preserve or (my favorite) at place with animals, such as an aquarium? Many zoos or wildlife refuges also have places where events can be held. If your leadership retreat is in, Orlando, for instance, you might even be able to host an event at Disney's Animal Kingdom. An educational tour by a knowledgeable guide might be all it takes to inspire conservation among employees whose auto-responses until now have been stuck in mode wasteful.

One idea I especially like, that none of the people I've spoken to at my company think is viable (actually they think it's just really funny) is  the possibility of the corporation adopting animals, which would live inside the office building. What with all the layoffs and stress, who's going to notice if the next cubicle over has a Basset Hound instead of a person sitting in the chair?  If that's truly not feasible (allergies, fear of beings with canine teeth), how about the company sponsoring a local animal rescue operation?  A few thousand dollars a year would easily keep a dozen dogs or cats (or many more than that) alive for a long time until they can be adopted. Saving the polar bears is laudable and inspiring, but you'd be surprised how touched your employees and the local business community would be by your saving Lassie. To tell you the truth, I think it might, by far, be the simplest and most effective environmental option.

So, tie leadership development and team building activities to environmental charities, think up fun times to have in natural, animal-laden settings, and help the stray animals in your own communities. The one thing not to do is send off more e-memos about how much we're wasting everyday. I'd much rather host a stray cat in my cubicle.

Any luck mobilizing your employees to contribute to your company's environmental charity (if you even have one)?  Any ideas/success stories of how you made inert employees enthusiastic about the environment?