Presenting on climate to Fidelity

Fidelity Investment’s Merrimack, New Hampshire campus is on a sustainability journey. There are some active initiatives already, many led by the real estate team, to install solar panels and an onsite industrial composter. It’s nice to see, although it’s not clear whether the entire organization has a sustainability strategy. There is also a team of staff members who are volunteering time as part of their “sustainability committee” and that team has its eye on all the little things happening in the office that add up to a big impact. They discovered, for example, that the campus is on track to dispose 1 million coffee cups this year, because the kitchen is not set up to allow staff to use their own mugs.

The Sustainability Committee has also organized a Green Week, to correspond with World Environment Day. This is the first time they’ve done it, and they have a broad range of activities planned.

Today, I visited the campus to deliver a Climate Reality Project talk in one of their flex conference spaces. Despite a reasonable number sign-ups, however, only five people showed up. It was a nice conversation, nonetheless. Hopefully, they’ll keep the momentum and get many more people involved next year, in what they believe will be an annual event.