GENERAL

Figure 1: The Green Challenges Initial Results The Green Challenges (GC) is an initiative targeting corporate sustainability education, transparency and outreach through accessibility, awareness and communication.  The challenge began with an initial research study of the leading 1,200 organizations in the United States including the Fortune 1000, top 100 U.S. Law firms and top 100 U.S. Accounting firms and analyzing their commitment to the environment and organizational sustainability through their website. The results (see Fig. 1) were incredible in that more than 80% of the business leaders in America lacked any statement or commitment about the environment, sustainability or “green”. This initial study is published as a series of fully searchable databases available to members.

This initial study assisted our team in focusing The Green Challenges into two primary channels. The first is awareness and recognition for positive environmental change in corporate America. The second is resource and productivity tools for the everyday consumer in order to gain access to often difficult to find and evauluate corporate sustainability information as well as provide working tools and models for organizations of all scales to participate in the challenges.

AWARENESS AND RECOGNITION

Figure 2: Who's GreenThe Green Challenges database currently consists of nearly 1,300 leading organizations (Fig. 2) in sectors as diverse as Biotech/Healthcare to Services and includes information ranging from revenue to headquarter location to sustainability information. The database is the first step in raising awareness about organizational sustainability by providing a baseline of corporate America’s environmental commitments. As part of our ongoing initiative, the program is also available to businesses of all sizes through the Open Source Project (OSP) where any organization can become a member, enter their data and earn recognition amongst peers for positive steps.

As the program matures, the Sustainable Sitemap Initiative (SSI) will be released as a tool to organizations to clearly define their environmental commitments and obectives and share direct links, reports and information with the public. Through the SSI companies will be able to download and produce live widgets from The Green Challenges publishing their “sitemap score” and earning recognition for leadership.

RESOURCES AND PRODUCTIVITY

The three primary objectives of The Green Challenges are: education, transparency and outreach. The initial challenges and database, Open Source Project and Sustainable Sitemap Initiative are our response to the transparency charge leaving the program to develop educational and outreach resources and tools to meet our objectives. The program features a number of reasources for employee and stakeholder education including the blog “Top Down Ground Up” and a myriad of other resources such as sustainability reading materials, presentations, reports, and agency and guide links.

A major component of The Green Challenges is its outreach campaign through various social media including Digg, Delicious, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Vimeo not to mention resources provided to members on how to use this technology and leverage for sustainability communication.