Four Ways We Incorporate Environmental Sustainability Practices Into Our Agency

Car­ing for the Earth and being mind­ful of the resources we use at Bell­mont Part­ners is impor­tant to us as a com­pa­ny. We val­ue envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty and do what we can to put our words into action. It’s why Bell­mont Part­ners has a Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Com­mit­tee – a group of vol­un­teers at the agency who lead coor­di­nate sus­tain­able activ­i­ties, events, efforts and resources for the team.

Over the years, we have found a few strate­gies that have worked for us to incor­po­rate envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty learn­ing for the team to use every day, both at work and home. Here are four ways we incor­po­rate envi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able activ­i­ties or knowl­edge into our agency:

Listen, take action and communicate 

As our team at Bell­mont Part­ners grew and went through an office update, we expe­ri­enced a pain point in han­dling waste. We lis­tened to our team mem­bers who said trash, recy­cling and com­post bins in the office weren’t large enough, and they need­ed a refresh­er on how to best use our waste systems.

The Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Com­mit­tee upgrad­ed the bins to bet­ter fit our teams’ waste quan­ti­ty needs, while also cre­at­ing clear labels and a map to com­mu­ni­cate prop­er dis­pos­al of waste or unwant­ed items, includ­ing unique offer­ings like used bat­tery dis­pos­al and plas­tic bag collection.

Get the team involved

Our Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Com­mit­tee is a group of four peo­ple who aim to share resources and infor­ma­tion with the rest of the agency so they feel empow­ered to make their own sus­tain­able choic­es. The com­mit­tee has encour­aged sus­tain­able actions through:

• Reminders to use the office’s reusable food con­tain­ers to bring home left­overs and reduce food waste after full-team lunch meetings.
• Cre­at­ing a sus­tain­abil­i­ty chan­nel on Teams to encour­age oth­ers to share tips and resources. This chan­nel also serves as our Bell­mont Part­ners in-house Buy Noth­ing page, offer­ing unwant­ed-but-still-use­ful items to give away to oth­er team mem­bers, pre­vent­ing them from end­ing up in a landfill.
• Shar­ing time­ly sus­tain­abil­i­ty tips dur­ing month­ly staff meet­ings to keep eco-friend­ly options top-of-mind for team members.
• Cre­at­ing a Free Lit­tle Library in the office for team mem­bers to leave books they no longer need or take new ones to add to their read­ing lineup.

Bring in outside experts 

Our Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Com­mit­tee strives to research and pro­vide use­ful tips for our team, but some­times it’s great to bring in an out­side per­spec­tive. Our team wel­comed Jen­ny Ked­ward, Hen­nepin Coun­ty Food Waste Pre­ven­tion Spe­cial­ist, to our office for a pre­sen­ta­tion on how to be mind­ful of using up the food we buy and pre­vent it from going to waste. Jen­ny had great tips and resources, and pro­vid­ed engag­ing con­tent for the whole team.

In 2025, we worked with the Min­neso­ta Cham­ber of Com­merce to con­duct waste and ener­gy audits to assess our in-office efforts and learn where we excel and areas where we can improve. We wel­comed the feed­back and also learned about more resources – from recy­cling edu­ca­tion and bin labels to paper tow­el com­post­ing and ener­gy smart ideas – avail­able to us in our efforts to be a high­ly sus­tain­able business.

Celebrate!

Our team loves a good par­ty, so we always find rea­sons to come togeth­er and cel­e­brate! Dur­ing Earth Month in 2025, we did just that with our first Bell­mont Part­ners Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Bash. We used this time not only to cel­e­brate our sus­tain­abil­i­ty efforts, but also to pro­vide infor­ma­tion to the team about the upgrad­ed waste, com­post and recy­cling sys­tems, along with guid­ance for oth­er sus­tain­able prac­tices every­one can tap into in our office and at home.

Plus, we had a lit­tle fun! We had snacks and bev­er­ages, includ­ing our sig­na­ture cock­tail, the Sus­tain­able San­gria, made with wine we already had on hand from a pre­vi­ous gath­er­ing. We also encour­aged team mem­bers to wear their best “slow fash­ion” out­fit – one that was thrift­ed, pur­chased through con­sign­ment, swapped, has been in their clos­et more than a year, made of nat­ur­al fibers or oth­er eco-friend­ly options.

When it comes to envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty at Bell­mont Part­ners, we wel­come all voic­es and aim for small actions, not per­fec­tion. The momen­tum from small actions keeps us going and adds up over time!

If you’re look­ing to start or join a sus­tain­abil­i­ty project, remem­ber it’s OK to start with a tiny step. And if your com­pa­ny is look­ing to share its sus­tain­abil­i­ty work more wide­ly, reach out to info@bellmontpartners.com! We would love to help!