Need some help driving your office's green initiatives? WWF offers free downloadable tools including getting-started guides, spreadsheets, benchmarks, campaign poster templates for green initiatives on energy reduction, paper reduction, waste reduction, travel, procurement, and green team building. I find some of the tools very useful.

As mentioned in an earlier article Employee Engagement Drives Sustainability Strategy, World Wide Fund for Nature's Living Planet @ Work program aims to make it easier for businesses to make greener choices. The program helps businesses large and small with strategic guidance on green business ideas and best practices and offers tools to empower and engage employees so they can drive sustainable practices at work. While one-on-one advisory and direct support from WWF Canada involve fees, the self-serve portion of the program is completely free. Over 300 companies have already joined. Major participants include Hewlett Packard, Accenture, H&M, Hydro One, P&G, Fairmont Hotels, and LCBO.

If your company is setting energy reduction goals, for example, it's useful to compare your current and targeted footprint against industry benchmarks available from WWF. If your company is starting a green team, it's useful to reference WWF's best practices on defining scope, establishing team structure, recruiting team members, and selecting priority areas. Both of these documents are available for download after the free sign-up at Living Planet @ Work web site. (While some of the tools offered are specific to Canada, e.g. energy benchmarks, most of the tools should be just as useful to companies outside of Canada, e.g. green IT, paper reduction, waste reduction, procurement, etc.)

I find the program's resources and tools page easy to navigate. They are organized into these categories:

• Green IT: common initiatives, footprint calculator, e-waste collection
• Energy: common initiatives, benchmarks and targets, spreadsheets
• Paper: common initiatives, benchmarks and targets, footprint calculator
• Waste: common initiatives, benchmarks and targets, spreadsheets
• Travel: common initiatives, benchmarks and targets, spreadsheets
• Procurement: primer, vendor surveys, actions guide
• Sustainability reporting: primer, template, guidelines and best practices
• Campaigns: contest ideas, Earth Week activities, employee recognition certificate
• Green team: recruitment poster, building team, setting goals
• Many other areas

Participants to the program take a pledge to reduce their company's footprint, engage their employees in green campaigns, and organize fundraisers for WWF. For example, in order to lower their company's carbon footprint, they may upgrade the window treatments in the office to something that is made from eco-friendly materials like bamboo and reduces heating and cooling costs. Another activity that businesses could do is to appoint an "Energy Champion" to their company's green team, who can take the lead in the office's energy reduction campaigns. (See: How Small Green Team Can Transform Large Corporation)

These and many more ideas are available on the program's web site along with related guidance materials. I think they should get your new year off to a good start. May 2015 be a year each of us creates great things both professionally and personally.