Here at Dassault Systèmes, sustainability is always front and center. Our objective of consistently being an environmentally-friendly company with solutions that enable our clients to be the same is and will always be part of our corporate mission. While Sustainability Month only comes once a year, it’s a formidable time for us to remind ourselves that the planet deserves our attention every single day.
We’re proud to spotlight some of the efforts set forth and achieved by our employees during this time.
While we are proud to carry out sustainable practices on a corporate level – like reaching net-zero for carbon emissions by 2040 – we also encourage our employees to make environmentally-friendly choices, too. At each of our major regional offices, we have staff-led Green Teams, which organize activities and challenges to implement sustainable practices.
As the regional Green Team leader for North America, Collette Schneider plays a vital role in incorporating such practices in our offices across the nation. Schneider has served in the position for 12 years and orchestrates sustainable initiatives that impact thousands of employees.
“I try to get employees into sustainable habits one way or another,” Schneider said, explaining how she organized a program that gives new hires ‘green gear’ kits on their first day, complete with reusable utensils, straws, drinking containers and plates. She’s also reduced the prevalence of individual trash cans at desks, and replaced them with communal bins, decreasing the likelihood that nearly-empty trash bags will be thrown out each day, contributing large amounts of waste.
For Sustainability Month, Schneider helped institute trash clean-ups at various offices around the globe, which employees have taken part in.
Under Schneider’s guidance, our Green Team leader in our Euro North region, Séverine Trouillet, led several Sustainability Month initiatives, including a sustainability-themed bingo game. The game, which challenges employees to partake in eco-friendly practices, has been a hit in the Hammersmith, London office. Some of the challenges include cycling to work or using a carshare, fixing damaged items instead of throwing them out, choosing to buy green products when possible, and using reusable goods like shopping bags and food containers. The aim was to encourage employees to implement easy-to-make changes that show how sustainability doesn’t require massive adjustments, just simple adaptations.
“You don’t want to just see one person taking on these challenges,” Trouillet said. “Seeing other people motivated to join is really encouraging. It makes me really proud to see how easily you can create a movement.”
In India, Green Team leader Gauri Wagh facilitated a myriad of activities, including educational campaigns about food and electronic waste. The e-waste event garnered more than 200 participants and provided attendees with information about how to not only recycle electronics responsibly, but how to know which products make for the most sustainable purchases.
In addition, Wagh orchestrated what was the company’s largest sustainability event worldwide: a widely-attended fun run and bicycle rally. The event was open for employees and their friends and family, and it aimed to increase awareness about Earth Day and sustainability in general.
“Here in India, we have many employees on campus who are conscious about their health and wellness,” Wagh explained. In organizing the event, she hoped it would draw a crowd, and “to our surprise, we received an overwhelming response with over 1,600 participants for the run and 140 for the bicycle rally.”
At Dassault Systèmes’ office in the Netherlands, our food services team provided employees with meatless meals for an entire week, encouraging a decreased consumption in animal products, an important aspect of sustainability efforts. In our Osaki, Japan office, our Green Team leader Hisataka Katagiri teamed up with the site’s facilities team to launch a program that takes difficult-to-recycle resin-coated paper cups and turns them into toilet paper.
Throughout the month of April, offices around the globe took part in trash-cleanups, lunch & learns and a variety of other community activities to spread awareness about sustainable practices and encourage participation. From corporate commitments to individual changes, the adherence to adapting eco-friendly practices is evident throughout the company, and we are proud to showcase these contributions.
Shoshana is a Senior Communications Manager on the Corporate Publishing team here at Dassault Systèmes. With experience in journalism, marketing, and PR, her work has been published around the world and across the internet.