As most of you know, we celebrated Earth Day a little over a week ago, on April 22^nd. This post is a little late, but the arrival of Earth Day called more attention to the little things that some of my Millennial employees do that encourage sustainability in our everyday office functions. It got me thinking – will sustainability and the ‘green’ movement only flourish with future generations?

For example when we have a document to edit, my management team (all Gen Xer’s) all print a copy and submit edits individually. My marketing team on the other hand (all Millennials) print one copy and make edits to the same copy but sign their initials to signify which edits are theirs.

When it comes to employee handbooks, guides and training manuals, my managers and trainers (all Gen Xer’s) prefer printed copies with new copies printed each time, which comes out to thousands of pages depending how many employees are being trained.  My Millennials keep pushing for us to hand out training tablets so that everything can be loaded onto the tablet.  Is your manual out of date? Not a problem. Delete it and we’ll send you a new one. No paper wasted which means that the upfront cost of the tablet will eventually be evened out by the amount of ink toner and paper saved – or so argues my executive assistant.

Recycling?  The Village of Freeport doesn’t recycle for businesses, but my Operations Manager (Millennial) brought in a recycle bin for employees to put their empty bottles and cans in. Then she takes it home!

Looking around your office, do you see a difference in generations? Are you seeing the same trend? I’d be interested to hear from you.