owen’s world
Owen turns four years old in 2011. He’s already started changing the world. He helped build an organic garden and he regularly picks up, for recycling, the litter tossed to the curb in front of his house. By the time Owen is 20, the difference he’s made will be staggering and he will have done it one step at a time. Owen created a model for change that eliminates the excuse that we are too small to change the world, and leaves us with the obligation to ask one question: “What can we do?”
RuthiPostowStaffing turns 10 years old in 2011. We are committed to helping Owen save the earth. It started with one individual’s personal passion for the environment that brought changes in the way we lived. Then we brought that passion into our business.
We sat down and asked ourselves, “What can we do?”
We can plant a tree! And we can bring our clients into our project. Christmas was coming and we partnered with an organization to plant a tree for each client.
Then it was the New Year, 2009. Our resolution: to take one new green step every month of that year.
We changed to recyclable printer paper. E-brochures replaced paper. Paper timesheets were replaced by electronic timesheets. We stopped using paper and Styrofoam in the kitchen in favor of china and glass. Our staff’s favorite was Pizza Thursdays which we instituted to cut down on lunch packaging. We gave our staff aluminum water/coffee canteens. Electronics were set to hibernate. Then it was Christmas again and we chose journals made of recycled paper for our clients.
As we continued our one-green-thing-per-month plan into the new year, it became harder to think of a new initiative every month for our office, so we took our commitment out into the community. Our staff took off a day to clean up the Tidal Basin. We held a fundraiser for Casey Trees. We collected cell phones for redistribution to the troops. Ruthi dedicated her July column in the Washington Business Journal to the green theme.
Since taking that first tiny step towards saving Owen’s world, we’ve come full circle and are working with other children. We partnered with City Blossoms and worked alongside students, teaching them about organic gardening, as we built environmentally friendly gardens.
