Earth Day: Employees Acting Locally and Thinking Globally

More than 1,000 employees volunteered 800+ hours across the globe to Help Make Life Better for Mother Earth. Each year Earth Day begs us to take a pause and focus on our planet. This annual, global event on April 22, inspires people all over the world – 1 billion to be exact – to get involved in protecting the environment.

 

As a global business, Ingersoll Rand has the power to affect change around the world and being mindful about our influence is important. Which is why, in addition to our larger Environmental Goals, we believe in participating in daily actions that will help make life better for generations to come.

 

Led by our Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) leaders, we launched a company-wide campaign around the 2021 Earth Day theme: Restore our Earth. “Our Earth Day Team wanted to offer ideas to our sites that were meaningful, easy to implement and tied to our environmental goals,” said Mary Betsch, global EHS director and member of the Earth Day Planning Team.”

 

Here are just some of our employees’ impressive accomplishments:   

  1. Lights Out – Work by daylight to save energy. Globally, more than 1,300 kWh of energy was saved, and 16 motion sensors were installed!
    1. Memmingen, Germany turned off lights for three hours and many factories turned off half the lights or turned off lights at lunch.
  2. Plant a Tree – IR’s goal of planting 3,200 trees across the globe was surpassed with employees planting more than 3,270 trees at work, home or in the community.
    1. The Vignate, Italy site planted 10 trees, one for each baby born to employees in the past year.
    2. In celebration of 75 years of business, the Sunderland, England site planted 75 trees.
    3. Tempere, Finland committed to planting 2,350 trees, some of which have already been planted while others will be planted in June after the winter frost.
    4. Springfield, Mo., IR’s newest acquisition, planted 140 trees.
  1. Clean up the Earth – Across the globe, employees collected more than 4,000 pounds of trash and nearly 800 pounds of recyclable waste.
    1. Employees with the Davidson, N.C. Green Team participated in a “stream clean.”
    2. Moody, Ala. Employees picked up trash around the plant.
    3. The Guilin, China, Green Team volunteers cleaned up the community and around the river near the Guilin factory.
    4. Sites in Dallas and San Antonio, Texas, and New Orleans, La. coordinated with local military cemeteries to clean up grounds and plant a tree.
  2. Many sites chose to celebrate Earth Day in other meaningful ways.
    1. Bordeaux, France installed a new electrical system to save 10 percent energy, annually.
    2. The team in Winsford, UK partnered with a social gardening organization and donated wood from the factory to build planters.

We believe demonstrating respect and care for our Earth goes hand-in-hand with building a successful business. Through these environmental actions, our teams across the globe showed that Ingersoll Rand can positively impact the planet. And, although the sun has set on April 22, we must remember that there is still so much to be done and it is our job – as a company and as individuals – to keep that momentum going.

 

Thank you to the Earth Day Planning Team:  Jacky Teiw, Greg Gray, Sophie Lopez, Gaelle Romain, Dave Ardizzone, Anjali Mewade, Anjali Diwakar, Clayton Dale, Dale Sweeney, Siku Embry, Angela Wolf, Andrea Gioffrè, Danilo Scala, Caroline Seit and Mary Betsch.

earth-day-employees-acting-locally-and-thinking-globally_2