Over the past few months if you’ve visited a Symantec campus you may have noticed employees snapping photos with their morning coffees. What is going on you may ask? A coffee or selfie craze?!
It’s our “One Mug, One Planet” campaign, a Green Team campaign that asks employees to pledge to eliminate their use of paper cups, with the goal of meeting our corporate-wide goal to reduce paper cup usage by 15%, and to achieve 80% waste diversion at all of our audited sites.
At the start of the campaign we set a goal of 1,000 pledges signed across Symantec, and 10% of employees at sites that have opted in to join this campaign.
And we have nearly met our goal with 917 pledges to date!
To join the campaign, employees simply sign the “One Mug, One Planet” pledge online and for those sites that have opted to join¹, if employees also take a picture with their mug – a mug shot– we provide a free Symantec reusable ceramic mug.
For all employees, the most creative mug shot will win a prize announced at the end of the campaign.
It’s been fun to catch the mug shots as they come in and we’ve been sharing them on our intranet for all employees to see including one of our most recent, this group shot from our Mountain View campus.
| Group Mug Shot! Mountain View employees flashing their mugs for the One Mug, One Planet campaign. Launched on Earth Day, the campaign is aimed at reducing waste in Symantec’s offices by asking employees to pledge to eliminate paper cup usage. |
As mentioned in our last update, the campaign has not only been effective for raising awareness about the benefits of using a reusable mug, but it has also expanded our Green Teams with our first Latin American Green Team recently launched in Mexico City and a new team in Beijing. Five new sites have also joined the One Mug, One Planet campaign since it started for a total of 11 sites.
Employees, sign the pledge and help us reach our goal!
Symantec employees, if you haven’t done so yet, please sign the “One Mug, One Planet” pledge– and make a commitment to use a reusable mug every day. We are close to wrapping up our six-month campaign so we hope you can sign up soon!
Remember, if one person used a reusable mug every day this year it would save 87 lbs of CO2². If all Symantec employees used a reusable mug every day for one year it would save 1,883,400 lbs of CO2.
It’s that easy to make a difference!
For more information on Symantec’s Green Teams, please contact Environmental_Responsibility@Symantec.com.
Jaime Barclay is Symantec's Corporate Philanthropy Program Manager.
[1] Participating Sites: Mountain View, CA; Springfield, OR; Dublin, IR; Auckland, NZ; Sydney, AUS; Heathrow, FL; San Francisco, CA; Cape Town, South Africa; Mexico City, Mexico; Beijing, China; Pune, India
[2] Based on 2000 study by Starbucks that calculated the average paper-based coffee cup produced 0.24 lb of CO2 – assumes 21,500 Symantec employees, one cup per day, 365 days per year; http://www.ecopedia.com/environment/reusable-coffee-cups-a-simple-step-for-a-huge-impact/