Recently in Team members Category

There's so much history in Washington, D.C. You have the monuments, the architecture, and of course all of the events that have helped to shape our country. I'm proud to say that Wells Fargo just made a little bit of D.C history as well.

Last night, along with my colleagues on the environmental affairs team Jeff Austin, Internal Sustainability Strategy, and Stephanie Rico, Customer and Community Engagement, I attended a dinner for the 2^nd annual Climate Leadership Awards. We were there to be recognized by EPA's Center for Corporate Climate Leadership for our company's dedication to reducing carbon pollution and addressing climate change.

It was an honor to be among the 23 sustainability leaders invited to the awards dinner, and on behalf of everyone at Wells Fargo, I want to thank the EPA for acknowledging our work. And, I want to send a personal thanks to Jeff and Stephanie; and our partners across Wells Fargo.  It's their leadership and work on behalf of Wells Fargo that makes this award possible.

I am pleased to introduce you to Jill Burbary, who leads marketing communications for Warranty Solutions®. Below she shares details about a great new product at Wells Fargo that automatically plants 25 trees for every sale of EcoMind®. Here's Jill:

While many of us are shifting gears for the holidays, it's hard to recall the wildfires that burned thousands of acres in Colorado this past summer. Well, one of the fires was just half an hour away from our Warranty Solutions office in Lakewood, Colorado. Thankfully, no one in our office was directly affected by the tragedy, but the devastation was visible to many of our team members who could see the dark smoke from where they sat in their offices. The reality of the shocking damage left by the fires made us realize the importance of doing all we can to help support those affected by the fires as well as the environmental restoration efforts wherever needed.

With this in mind, we designed a program this year that for every sale of our EcoMind® extended vehicle service contract option, 25 trees are donated for planting as needed to national forests that have been devastated by wildfires or disease. EcoMind is a coverage option designed to protect consumers and the environment. EcoMind provides additional mechanical breakdown coverage for the parts that help vehicles run more efficiently, burn fuel more cleanly, and reduce overall emission output.

While we have enjoyed a strong relationship with the Arbor Day Foundation since 2009, in just this year alone, we are proud to have directly contributed nearly 423,525 trees to the national forests. EcoMind provides a great option for our environmentally-minded customers. They are happy to be protecting their vehicle's components that help burn fuel efficiently and they are helping forests stay green through a living legacy that lives on--planting trees.

A recent video shares our EcoMind story.

Warranty Solutions is Wells Fargo Dealer Services business. Warranty Solutions provides finance and insurance (F&I) aftermarket products and services that auto dealers can offer to consumers.

Wells Fargo has also partnered with the Arbor Day Foundation by funding tree planting on behalf of customers who opt for paperless statements.

This past October, more than 60 company leaders representing our many Green Teams and business partners convened in Denver, Colo. for our 2012 Green Team Leadership conference. Team members representing Green Teams from across the enterprise (including international representation from India) met to discuss best practices, learn from internal and external sustainability practitioners and prepare for the coming year. Just as we did last year, we carefully considered our costs and emissions and decided to move forward with a slightly smaller event for 2012. The conference this year provided us all with valuable time to dig into the details of our revised environmental commitment (released in April) and learn about our new Green Team business planning process, which we hope to continue to share with our Environmental Forum readers throughout 2013.

Our event started with a community volunteer project held at Centennial Park, where more than 40 volunteers dressed in Wells Fargo red, helped Denver Parks and Recreation staff prepare the grounds for winter weather -- and not a moment too soon as snow arrived in Denver later that week. Post-volunteering, team members were treated to a farm to table meal at Coohill’s a local restaurant focused on sustainability and community engagement.

On Wednesday, the team assembled in our downtown Denver offices for a day filled with environmental presentations. The morning started with a panel discussion of our company’s new environmental commitment with representation from the Environmental Affairs corporate team and a great question and answer session with our extended network of Green Team leaders.  The next item on the agenda included a presentation on the role of our many Green Teams in helping to achieve our environmental goals and an overview of a new business planning process that the teams will use for 2013.

The business planning process is new for our Green Teams and something that we hope will help us to better share the value and impact our volunteer teams have for our business and communities. Our many Green Teams will be documenting their plans to promote environmental stewardship at work and in the community. We are also working with True Impact   to help document the financial and environmental savings that our Green Teams can offer. Our goal is to share these results with our business leaders to further engage the many layers of our organization and garner more support for our environmental efforts.

To help inspire our plans for 2013, we were joined by speakers from The Greenway Foundation , a local nonprofit who helped in planning our conference, and regional representatives from The Trust for Public Land , who presented their story of transforming the South Platte River from an industrial waste site to a beautiful recreational space used by all residents of the Denver metro area. Local organizations also shared their stories of environmental success ranging from Denver Water’s Use Only What You Need campaign for water conservation to the Denver Mayor’s Sustainability Office’s support of bicycle sharing services like B-Cycle .

Based on conference feedback, our Green Team leaders are energized, inspired and looking forward to the coming year. We’d love to know more about what you all are planning for 2013. Please share your stories and ideas with us in the comments section.

Listening, learning, and engaging are important acts of corporate evolution—a fact that's especially true on the environmental front, where issues are complex, interconnected and countless.

In developing our renewed environmental commitment we paid careful attention to comments received here on the Environmental Forum, as well as feedback solicited directly from our customers, senior leaders and team members. We also worked with Ceres to seek contributions from its team and its network of investors, environmental organizations, and thought leaders. All these opinions were necessary—after all, we wanted to be sure that our commitment was right for our customers, meaningful and forward-looking.

As promised earlier this year, this post highlights all the input we received while developing our commitment. The following table, developed largely with the help of Ceres, summarizes our dialog for you to review. We hope it's an indication to you that your input is important to us and that we're listening.

We hope you continue to share your thoughts, questions, and constructive criticism with us. As always, please let us know what you're thinking about the intersection of environment and finance in the comment section. Thank you!

Today is Blog Action Day, an annual event that unites bloggers around the world by focusing on a particular topic.

This year, the theme is "The Power of We," and to me, nothing symbolizes that subject more than the Wells Fargo Green Team. Our Green Team consists of more than 65 inspiring groups of Wells Fargo team members around the world who volunteer their time and talent to make our company operate more sustainably.

The stories each team shares about projects they are working on at the office and in the community are often reported on our blog. From energy scavenger hunts and "vampire" slayings, to trash-can trade-ins and Earth Day events, our Green Teams help Wells Fargo deliver on our commitment to do right by the communities in which we work and live.

Our Green Team is how our environmental actions come to life at Wells Fargo. They form an extensive environmental network across our international company that delivers local programs that support our shared company goals. It is the collective work of our teams and the many communities they support that allow us to leverage our collective energy and enthusiasm  to create positive environmental change.

So, today, in honor of Blog Action Day, we here at the Environmental Forum celebrate "The Power of We" as demonstrated by our Green Teams.

How about you? Tell us how you use "The Power of We" to inspire change in your community!

At Wells Fargo, we hope to inspire a culture of sustainability for our communities—in our operations and through our everyday business decisions. One of the ways we help to engage team members at all levels is through our Green Teams, and recently, our St. Louis team created a unique recognition program that helps "catch" people in the act of being "green."

Here's how it works: Green Team members serve as spotters for office "green" actions of any kind—from using reusable mugs and sorting recycling correctly to biking to work or opting not to print. The "eco" team member is thanked for their work on the spot, as well as with a follow-up eCard, one of our corporate recognition tools. Every month, all the people who receive an eco eCard are entered in a drawing for a chance to win a gift card prize, and the winners are announced via the Wells Fargo Advisors Intranet.

Launched just last month, the program has already received more than 100 submissions in the first month alone! The immediate recognition and follow-up prizes are helping to make eco actions fun and engaging for everyone at the St. Louis campus. And the Green Team is able to collect great data on how people are embracing sustainability at work.

While many of us don't need additional incentives to do the right thing for the environment, it's always nice to be recognized by others. Sometimes the promise of a potential prize can help convince even the most skeptical employees to take part.

Does your company recognize its employees for your environmentalism? If so, how?

...if you give it away! At least that's the message according to Michael Norton, a social change researcher at Harvard, based on a recent TEDxCambridge presentation.

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about philanthropy because September marks Wells Fargo's annual Community Support Campaign. Every year, our team members from across the company donate time and money to the community organizations that matter the most to them.

What I particularly like about Professor Norton's call to action is his recommendation to help DonorsChoose, an innovative nonprofit that helps schools in need find resources through individual donations. Our Wells Fargo Green Team uses DonorsChoose as part of our end-of-year recognition. Instead of buying our teams "stuff" to thank them for their work throughout the year, we provide money to donate to a local school.

Our team members actually prove Professor Norton's research by sharing their inspiring stories with each other and exchanging messages with the students and teachers they've supported. In fact, even as I'm writing this post, I smile each time I look at my office collection of "Thank you" notes from students who received a DonorsChoose donation. When I see the joy in these hand-made notes, from kids I've never met, I have to admit it makes me happy, too!

But regardless of how you opt to spend your money, I think you'll find this research both informative and inspiring. Just think what good we could all bring to the world if we "bought" a little more happiness through giving.

Environmental Forum readers, you may have seen our Sept. 13 announcement about being included in Carbon Disclosure Projects's (CDP) Carbon Performance Leadership Index. The index recognizes companies for excellence in carbon disclosure reporting as well as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction performance.

We're certainly proud to be in the index, and congratulate all the other companies that are in the index with us. As a CDP signatory, we also appreciate the companies that have responded to the CDP questionnaire. According to CDP, 81% of corporations from the Global 500—the largest companies by market capitalization included in the FTSE Global Equity Index Series—and 69% of the S&P 500® companies responded to the CDP questionnaire this year.

Completing the CDP questionnaire is no easy task, but it's very worthwhile because it provides a framework for thinking about how climate change can affect your business. When I'm working on it, I can't help but think about how the questions are also applicable to individuals.

With that in mind, I'd like to take this opportunity to pose some of the survey questions to YOU. I've paraphrased a sampling of questions for individuals versus businesses.

Never one to shy away from a good sustainability challenge, the Vancouver Green Team recently tackled the topic of office trash (or the lack thereof) at their center based near Portland, Oregon.

The team started with a trash audit that provided some interesting insights: With a comprehensive recycling program in place, the Vancouver office really wasn't throwing out that much trash, but they were throwing away a lot of empty plastic trash bags. In fact, they were throwing away enough small empty bags to fill several large trash bags every day.

For the Vancouver team, throwing away clean trash can liners seemed like a wasted effort in many ways. Not only did empty bags create far too much landfill-bound waste, but they also were a burden to the cleaning staff, who were charged with replacing trash can liners as part of their daily janitorial service.

So the team got to work on a solution. Post-audit, their first order of business was a call to the janitorial manager, who confirmed that his staff would be delighted to support the Green Team on this effort. The team then hosted a series of "lunch and learns" designed to raise awareness of the problem and encourage colleagues to help by volunteering to share a trash can with their cubicle neighbor. Emails, posters and recycling stations outfitted with helpful signage helped bring the message to everyone at the Vancouver center.