Green-up Your Insights Initiatives
As our in-person research – and team activities – KNow Research is now a certified California Green Business. It was important for us to do it this year more than ever since we’re back to doing more in-person qualitative fieldwork.
We put together a series of standards and best practices so that we can make sure that not only the day to day running of the business, but also the research studies that we conduct, are in line with the certification standards to ensure we’re having as little negative impact as possible.
4 Tips to Green-up Your Insights Initiatives
Tip #1: Looking for green inspiration for your next participant incentive, team member “thank you,” or client holiday gift? Look no further than EcoMatcher and integrate transparent tree-planting into your studies and gifting. We’re proud of the KNow Research trees we’ve gifted and planted over the past year, which help to contribute to the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals through tree planting.
Tip #2: Chose environmentally preferable products for onsite events and research studies. In California, the Green Business Network provides a handy directory to find green business in any category. We’ve already used the directory for team meal catering options and local printing services. Look for a similar directory in your state!
Tip #3: Select the most environmentally friendly ride sharing options for business travel. Team members use public transportation whenever possible when working from the office, carpool when we can for in-person events and use Uber Green or Lyft Green Mode for project travel.
Tip #4: Share an Employee Green Resource Guide with your team. The one linked here is a free resource available to all businesses. We appreciated the prompts and thought starters provided along the way and used them to craft our own Environmental Policy Statement.
When we started the certification process, we weren’t sure we could make that much positive impact as a B2B services business with a distributed team. But we were pleasantly surprised at how much we could do to help. Here are just a few components of our policy statement that help us walk the walk:
- Using environmentally preferable products for onsite events and research studies
- Reusing and refusing packaging materials
- Only purchase low toxic janitorial cleaning products certified Green Seal, UL/Ecologo, Safer Choice, and/or meet criteria on www.sfapproved.org
- Offer a plant-based options for catered meetings, and company events
- Using energy-conserving software programs and unplugging equipment
- Investing in carbon offset projects to mitigate and sequester carbon; we offset 76,000 air miles last year alone
Want more information about going green? Get inspired here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u8JRal8fIA
