Bellmont Partners Recognized as a “Green Business”

Cli­mate change is one of the biggest and most urgent chal­lenges of our time, and we need every­one to do what they can to address it. Our envi­ron­ment affects every aspect of life, from our food, to bio­di­ver­si­ty, weath­er pat­terns and more, and every­thing we do indi­vid­u­al­ly con­tributes to what kind of world we live in. The choic­es we make on a dai­ly basis may seem small, but tak­en col­lec­tive­ly can have a mas­sive impact on our planet.

To take a more envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly approach to our oper­a­tions, we cre­at­ed a for­mal sus­tain­abil­i­ty pro­gram at Bell­mont Part­ners in April 2017, and have rolled out a wide vari­ety of ini­tia­tives over the past four years. This year, we are very proud to announce that we have earned a Sil­ver Tier des­ig­na­tion from the City of Edina’s Green Busi­ness Recog­ni­tion Pro­gram.

A blog post we wrote in 2018 pro­vides a look at sev­er­al of our top ini­tia­tives such as our organ­ics recy­cling pro­gram, as well as events like the Lean + Green Chal­lenge or Car-Free Day (a per­son­al favorite of mine, as an ama­teur bike com­muter!), and we’ve con­tin­ued to add new ini­tia­tives since then.

Here’s a snap­shot of some of the addi­tion­al pro­grams and prac­tices we have imple­ment­ed over the past few years:

• Elec­tron­ic waste col­lec­tion – Employ­ees are encour­aged to bring in unused tech, elec­tron­ics and bat­ter­ies for respon­si­ble e‑waste recycling.
• Inter­nal “Swap” chat chan­nel – We set up a “For Sale” chan­nel in our inter­nal chat plat­form where team mem­bers can trade unused items or request to bor­row some­thing they need rather than buy­ing new. This chan­nel is very pop­u­lar with the team!
• Mas­ter Gar­den­er Cours­es – One of our team’s favorite pro­grams has been invit­ing a Mas­ter Gar­den­er from Hen­nepin Coun­ty to give a pre­sen­ta­tion on a gar­den­ing top­ic (such as veg­etable gar­den­ing and con­tain­er gar­den­ing) and answer questions.
• Remov­ing water cool­ers – Good­bye, water cool­ers, hel­lo water fil­ters! We waved good­bye to the water cool­ers at the office and installed Water­drop fil­ters on our sink faucets for hydra­tion that’s both more sus­tain­able and economical.

When the pan­dem­ic hit last year and forced all of us to work remote­ly, we adapt­ed our ini­tia­tives to accom­mo­date a work from home envi­ron­ment, including:

• Sur­vey­ing team mem­bers on what their per­son­al chal­lenges and areas of inter­est are relat­ed to sustainability
• An “at-home” ver­sion of the Lean + Green Challenge
• Tran­si­tion­ing our beloved office patio planter from a veg­gie gar­den to more resilient native species
• Shar­ing tips and tricks for sus­tain­abil­i­ty at home digitally

Look­ing ahead, there’s a lot to be opti­mistic about in 2021 around envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty. With Earth Month and Earth Day in April, now is a great time to review your own per­son­al activ­i­ties in this area, as well as ways you can influ­ence your wider net­work and com­mu­ni­ty to make changes for the bet­ter. If you’re look­ing for some tips for increas­ing your efforts in this area or any of our sus­tain­abil­i­ty ini­tia­tives, we’re hap­py to chat! Drop me a line at johanna@bellmontpartners.com.