Supports

As soon as you join the Impact Network, your team can immediately start benefiting from our experience and insights into best practices as we collaborate to find the best sustainability solution for your organization. After all, we’re here to help you turn your interest into action! For example, we’ll work together with you to create sustainability goals that are right for your company, then provide you with progress reports as you work towards achieving your goals and targets. We’re here to help you meet your sustainability goals by offering green team support, collecting energy, waste and water data, helping you create sustainability policies, supporting your energy reduction efforts, and much more. By leveraging our online portal, MemberLink, your team will also gain access to regularly-updated resources, such as our Idea Book and Green Team Guide, and you’ll get to join our online community of other sustainability driven members!

The Impact Network not only recognizes your commitment to sustainability but also celebrates your leadership and achievements along the way. We use scorecard badges, contest points, social media, events, blogs, press releases and more to share your stories. At the core of our belief in celebrating our collective success is SWR’s Evening of Recognition. This event brings together the entire sustainability community to honour our members’ efforts, share their stories, and cheer on their progress. It’s also where we release our annual year-end report, showcasing the efforts and achievements of all of Sustainable Waterloo Region’s programs.

Sustainable Waterloo Region hosts over a dozen in-person and online events every year, bringing the sustainable community together to network, learn, share experiences, and collaborate. Your Impact Network membership includes passes to attend events throughout the year that give you and your team the opportunity to connect with other local sustainability leaders. These range from small peer-to-peer get-togethers, to midsize technical events, to larger gatherings where experts from the sustainability community share their approaches and insights. Check out the events page to see what we’ve got planned!

When you join the Impact Network, you’ll access a host of great opportunities to inspire and engage your employees as you work collectively toward your sustainability goals.

For example, our annual Carbon Cleanse is a month-long sustainability challenge that includes four weekly themes: energy, water, waste, and transportation. This inter-member challenge is designed to engage employees with other member organizations in the spirit of friendly competition. Each participating member collects points by competing in pre-designed challenges, with the winner receiving the Carbon Cleanse trophy at our annual Evening of Recognition, though in our eyes all participants are winners!

To help your team take part in the Carbon Cleanse, the IN team provides you with helpful communication templates including posters and emails, social media support/promotion, and weekly planned activities. The Carbon Cleanse is designed to help every member of your team engage in sustainability activities by integrating into all areas of the business, even where sustainability activities are not necessarily central to operations. We also leverage social media to foster friendly, fun, and creative competition.

Aside from the Carbon Cleanse, members can also earn points and badges by participating in year-round activities, with updates posted on the MemberLink portal. Points are awarded for actions such as attending events, sharing case studies, completing a baseline objective, and much more. This is a great way for members to stay up-to-date, see what others are up to, and show some competitive spirit. As an added incentive, the member with the highest score takes home the Most Active Member award at the Evening of Recognition.

We can also help you create your own in-house sustainability drive to help motivate your team. Our team members can offer direct assistance with this, including green team participation, coaching, and day-to-day support. We’re here for whatever you need!

Reporting is a key component of all sustainability plans and it’s our goal to make this as easy as possible for your organization. First, we’ll take you through an assessment to help focus our collective efforts on making your company’s goals a reality. From there, we’ll send you a personalized, custom report that includes key sustainability indicators including your leaderboard score, sustainability badges, event attendance, policy development, milestones, carbon/waste/water footprint, and SDG Tracker Progress, as well as recommendations and achievements. We’ll also provide insights on how your peers in the Impact Network community are doing, and our Energy and Sustainability System will keep you informed with 24/7 web-based access for your team.

Tracking your environmental impact is the best way to find eco-friendly savings, eliminate greenwashing (using misleading or overstated environmental claims), and build integrity. Our Energy and Sustainability System measures your selected target areas, such as greenhouse gas footprint, waste diversion and/or water footprint. This provides you with hard numbers and easy-to-read data visualizations that show the progress your organization is making, while highlighting areas of opportunity for further impact and action.