February 28, 2020

Anna Jean Pollock was introduced to sustainability during her work as an administrative co-ordinator at McGill University, and it didn’t take long before she started finding ways to improve her own department’s environmental record through WWF-Canada’s Living Planet @ Work program. She soon discovered McGill’s Sustainable Workplace certification, an incentive for all campus departments to earn recognition status for completing a checklist of various sustainability actions. Eager to earn this achievement for her own department, Anna Jean got to work.

In her role, Anna Jean supports the university’s Chemical Engineering department in the Faculty of Engineering with a variety of responsibilities that include programming departmental events, purchasing and expenses and managing the department’s social media accounts. In addition to this, Anna Jean also volunteers as an environmental champion and helps her department improve its sustainability record.

After just a few months, Anna Jean completed several workplace greening actions including the reduction of single-use paper towels, purchasing reusable dishes and cutlery and helping to implement a composting program with her co-workers. She also created a sustainability board that promotes a variety of sustainable actions to employees.  These are just some of the efforts that earned her department the Gold-level sustainable workplace certification. Anna Jean’s department was the first one to be recognized in the Gold category for the Faculty.

Beyond sharing sustainability tips and knowledge with her co-workers, Anna Jean is also passionate about learning from others. “I am motivated by people educating others about what they can do. I believe in sharing realistic ways on how we can make a difference with our daily habits goes a long way,” she says. That’s what Anna Jean finds the most valuable about Living Planet @ Work. “I am motivated by the results that other champions have made. Their courage and ability to take charge is admirable and pushes me to continue to trail blaze in the right directions.”

Thank you to Anna Jean who has worked hard to champion change for nature with her workplace!

Inspired by this story? Sign up for Living Planet @ Work to learn how you can start strengthening sustainability at your workplace with WWF-Canada.