Creating sustainability champions in the workplace

THESE days, it is an accepted fact that the burden of reversing the climate crisis lies largely on the shoulders of governments and corporations. After all, research shows that less than 100 companies are responsible, whether directly or indirectly, for the majority of carbon emissions throughout history. Thus, companies have been under scrutiny to ramp up their sustainability initiatives. The recent Grant Thornton International Business Report (IBR) even saw that 42 percent of the surveyed Philippine mid-market firms were ready and likely to invest in sustainability reporting and initiatives.

Be that as it may, personal responsibility is still important to achieve environmental and sustainability goals. Everybody is capable of being a changemaker. Adapting more sustainable habits is not only personally empowering, it also compounds and ultimately affects large-scale change. Dr. Steve Cohen, former executive director of the Columbia University's Earth Institute, put it succinctly: "Individual responsibility and the thought process and value shift that stimulates individual action [is] the foundation of the social learning process required for effective collective action."