Desjardins Group has been demonstrating its commitment to the environment for many years. For example, Desjardins was the first company to sign on to Équiterre's Change the world, one step at a time campaign.
We show our green colours by:
… incorporating environmental awareness into our corporate culture
- We encourage our employees to choose alternatives to business trips, such as video conferencing, and when they do have to travel, we encourage eco-friendly options like our Desjardins shuttle between Montreal and Lévis
- We've cut back on paper publications as much as possible in favour of electronic versions
- We provide recycling bins for paper and other recyclables at all of our work sites
- We try to use recycled paper for all of our documents – in 2008, we reached our goal of reducing our paper consumption by close to 20% and increasing our use of recycled paper to nearly 50%
… encouraging employee initiatives
- A few of our dedicated employees created the Green Squad, a group that encourages employees to improve their consumption habits (water, energy, etc.)
- We organize lectures for our employees on environmental topics, such as: home composting, climate change, buying local, etc.
… taking small steps on a daily basis
- We no longer provide creamers and styrofoam cups at our work sites
- We donate all of our empty ink cartridges to the Mira Foundation, a seeing-eye dog organization, and collect old cell phones for recycling through a joint program with Bell Canada