by Chelsea McClain
As a green-minded company, we are always looking for ways to increase how we benefit the earth and reduce how we negatively impact it. We have an internal committee, our Green Team (or Sustainability Committee in more formal settings), which helps our company stay aligned with our Green Mission and leads us into the future with new goals and initiatives to make the world a greener place.
Just before the pandemic hit, some of our clients expressed interest in offsetting the carbon footprints of their in-person meetings. We had just started down this road when in-person meetings were shut down. When our clients started meeting in-person again, things had changed, and we needed a new organization to calculate the cost to offset the carbon footprint of each meeting.
As a benefit and cost savings for our clients, people from our Green Team and Executive Leadership decided to start doing this calculation in-house and to call this new initiative Green Solutionaries. After creating our own carbon offset calculator, we found charities to partner with to receive the offset amount for each meeting. The charities we chose are 1) One Tree Planted, 2) charity: water, and 3) Heifer International.
Most of One Tree Planted’s projects help with reforestation from forest fires and floods in North America, Latin America, Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia, and The Pacific. They also create jobs, build communities, and protect habitat for biodiversity. Volunteer tree planting opportunities are available. Please see their website for more information.
Charity : water implements community-owned water projects that facilitate comprehensive water, sanitation, and hygiene programming to promote and protect long-term health. Their clean water projects include irrigation for reforestation and afforestation, as well as carbon-storing soil projects.
Heifer International’s mission is to end hunger and poverty in a sustainable way by supporting and investing alongside local farmers and their communities. They have many types of projects in lots of countries. PMG is currently supporting reforestation, afforestation, peat management, and sustainable farming projects in Ecuador.
Our Green Solutionaries program went into full swing in August of this year and we have already created calculation presentations for five of our clients. We expect many more to request calculations this year, with our meetings goal being 100% carbon neutral by the end of 2025.
