Earth Day 2018: Thornton Tomasetti’s push for sustainability

Green Champions from two collaborating Thornton Tomasetti offices in New York City built benches for school children at GrowNYC’s Governors Island Teaching Garden.

New York — April 22 marks the celebration of Earth Day, the annual event dedicated to the environment and its protection. Even though there is increasing worldwide concern on our effects on the environment, there are only a handful of companies leading the way when it comes to taking sustainability to the core. One of those companies, Thornton Tomasetti, continues to push for sustainability as an integral element to every endeavor they undertake, both in the projects they work on and their offices around the world.

As part of its multiple efforts, Thornton Tomasetti established the Green Champion initiative five years ago across all its offices in the U.S. and worldwide. Green Champions are employees who volunteer to be sustainability leaders in their office. Through the promotion and implementation of sustainable actions, workers themselves are the ones leading sustainability efforts, helping fulfill Thornton Tomasetti’s corporate sustainability guidelines and meeting their reduced corporate carbon footprint goals.

Green Champions are not only engaging in green practices, they are actually designing them, developing the roadmap for their own office. This is an initiative sustainable in itself; Green Champions develop an implementation plan that is shared and applied throughout the office and as new Green Champions join the initiative, they too revise and improve the plans.

While relying on their own to lead, Thornton Tomasetti provides Green Champions with the tools they need to make their implementation plans a reality. These include organization of company-wide events such as Daylight Hour, Earth Week, or the Wellness Challenge, as well as continuous support from Thornton Tomasetti’s Corporate Sustainability Department. In addition, the company also provides a Corporate Sustainability grant program that Green Champions and their offices can apply to.

Recent examples of successful employee-led efforts on sustainability include putting together over 26,300 meals for those in need in Los Angeles; building benches for school children at Governor’s Island by two collaborating Thornton Tomasetti offices in New York City; and introducing a weekly day light savings initiative at Thornton Tomasetti’s Mumbai office, where employees are obtaining impressive energy saving results.

Thornton Tomasetti believes that their employee-oriented focus on sustainability is a bold step towards making sustainability a core issue for each and every office and location. Furthermore, Thornton Tomasetti believes that their Green Champion initiative can be replicated outside of their company, throughout the corporate landscape. The company is committed to spreading awareness about corporate sustainability and engage people at both local and global levels.