Southwire Celebrates Inaugural Sustainability Week
View the original article at https://www.southwire.com/blogs/southwire-celebrates-inaugural-sustainability-week
In honor of the company’s 75th anniversary and in celebration of Earth Month, Southwire hosted its first ever Sustainability Week in April. The sustainability team hosted a week of communications, education and activities to engage team members across the globe.
“In order for Southwire to continue to be generationally sustainable for the next 75 years and beyond, we need everyone on board,” said Burt Fealing, Southwire’s EVP, General Counsel and Chief Sustainability Officer. “We hope that Sustainability Week helped all of our team members, 9,000 plus strong, better understand how they can get involved in sustainability and how they can be a leader in these efforts at home, at work and in their communities.”
Each day of Sustainability Week was focused on one of Southwire’s five core tenets of sustainability:
Growing Green Monday highlighted success stories from the sustainability champions at Southwire’s Denton, Tx., Lafayette, In., and North Campus, Ga. sites. Sustainability champions are volunteer roles at each site who are responsible for furthering local energy, water and waste efficiency projects.
Living Well Tuesday featured health and wellness benefits available to all Southwire team members, including free therapy and coaching sessions from Spring Health, digital musculoskeletal therapy for back and joint pain from Hinge Health, webinars and resources for National Stress Awareness Month & Substance Abuse Awareness Month and more.
Giving Back Wednesday promoted volunteer events in April including electronics recycling and our annual Walk for Water fundraiser. The day also highlighted Southwire’s Dollars for Doers program, which enables team members to earn donation credits for volunteer hours served, redeemable to any 501(c)(3) nonprofit of their choice.
Doing Right Thursday told the story of how Southwire’s ethics & compliance program was built from the ground up and how it contributed to Southwire being named one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies® by Ethisphere for the second year in a row.
Building Worth Friday included an educational presentation on sustainable innovations happening within Southwire, as well as a panel discussion on Building a STEM Career in Green Technology in partnership with Georgia Tech and Envision Racing, one of the founding and most successful teams in Formula E racing.
During Earth Month, Southwire also distributed nearly 400 trees to team members to plant at home or at a facility. Through the Arbor Day Foundation’s community canopy program, team members signed up to have trees delivered directly to their home or to their manufacturing or distribution site, with web-based tools to help them identify the ideal planting location to maximize energy savings and carbon sequestration. Southwire also partnered with Neighborhood Forest to gift trees to students at our two 12 for Life facilities in Carrollton, Ga. and Florence, Al. to plant with their families at home.
To learn more about sustainability initiatives at Southwire, visit southwire.com/sustainability.
