Earth Day is not only a global celebration it is also a movement that aims to mobilize people worldwide for transformative action for our planet. At Zuora, we continue to focus efforts on lessening our environmental impact. From the technological tools we implement to the electric car charging stations for employee use at our HQ; Zuora has committed a strong focus on reducing waste within our offices including cutting out plastic water bottles, providing reusable dishware, and educating our ZEOs on proper recycling. Celebrating Earth day gave us a chance to do just that.
With all 1300+ of our ZEOs staying safe and working from home, we decided to celebrate Earth Day virtually all month long! ZEOs from our ZEOs4Sustainability interest group, Workplace Resources and Zuora.org collaborated to organize multiple events including, an educational session, a Zoom background fundraiser, Earth Day Family trivia, and a zero-waste challenge we could take on at home.
Educational Session with Hilary a “Zero Waste Assistant”
Hilary Near, a Zero Waste Assistant with the City and County of San Francisco, kicked off our Earth month celebration with a session on how to properly sort our waste. ZEOs got involved with their at-home questions like what’s the deal with bottle caps, and how empty is empty enough when recycling jars? As Hilary explained, bottle caps should stay attached to their item when recycled and that jars, whether spotless or a little something left, should be capped and recycled. She even fielded questions about how to compost when your apartment building doesn’t offer the proper cans — which led to the video cam getting pretty up close and personal with some worms!
Earth Day Themed Zoom Backgrounds for Charity
On Earth Day, ZEOs joined their regularly scheduled meetings showing off their Earth Day-themed background on Zoom. Images of polluted oceanscapes, favorite vacation destinations and cartoon images of Earth flooded our virtual meetings, giving us much to appreciate, yet ponder over the future. So with the support of Zuora.org we’re donating $5 for each photo shared by our ZEOs to the National Park Foundation.
Earth Day Family Trivia
We wrapped things up with family friendly Earth Day themed trivia that doubled as a homeschool science lesson for the day for our littlest ZEOs. In fact our Grand Prize winner wasn’t even over the age of 10, but he sure gave us a run for our money and was psyched to win some cash to donate to an environmentally focused charity of choice. For the rest of us we learned a thing or two like: Gaylord Nelson founded Earth Day, Las Vegas appears brightest from space, and The Canopy Project has a goal to plant 7.8 billion trees (one tree for every person on earth) in honor of this year’s 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Oh and if you’re wondering, the answer to the questions above is Utah!
Earth month may come to a close but we hope that our ZEOs and those around the globe will continue to make those transformative actions for a better planet! As always, thanks to all of our ZEOs for organizing events and helping us continue to focus on what matters.