All in a Day's Work

Too often in our bottom-line, short-term focused lives, ecological stewardship is seen as a virtue more appropriate for the personal than the professional realm. Someone apparently forgot to tell that to Betty Anderson. For the past 16 years, she’s been infusing her work at telecom giant Verizon Communications (and Bell Atlantic, before it was bought up by Verizon) with an environmental passion so strong, it’s changed the way the company does business. How many of us can go home at the end of a long day knowing that?

Betty holding Verizon’s highest honor for environmental efforts, the John S. Balaguer Environmental Award, presented in recognition of her work.

In her early work at Bell Atlantic, Betty managed real-estate operations and major construction projects. The expertise in nuts-and-bolts operations she gained in these positions made her a natural candidate for an internal organization formed in 1999 called “Team Energy,” designed specifically to look at ways Bell Atlantic (soon to become Verizon) could cut its energy costs and run its business more efficiently.

Not content just to put in her time or save her company money, Betty embraced her opportunity as a Team Energy member and the new Communications Manager for Energy Programs to make the crucial link between energy awareness and the corresponding environmental crisis of global climate change.

“I knew that energy was the number one source of commercial pollution but I was sure that employees did not,” Betty explains. “Once I let them know that personally wasting energy was just as bad, if not worse than littering, they began to understand that energy use has a huge impact on our environment.”

Seizing every chance to highlight the ways in which Verizon’s energy programs were already positively impacting the environment, Betty also combined her communications savvy and deep personal convictions to design new projects that effectively gave the company increased incentive to make its environmental footprint a factor in future decision-making. Toward this end, Betty’s initiatives aim to educate Verizon’s employees, executives, customers and competitors about the connection between energy management and environmentally responsible policies.

A poster included in SAVE, Betty’s awareness-raising energy newsletter.	A mascot and Verizon fixture: ‘Captain Planet.’

One such effort is the creation of an employee newsletter called SAVE (Saving Verizon’s Energy). In it, Betty has included information not just about corporate energy usage but about climate change in general, the connection between Verizon’s business success and its environmental ethics, and how Verizon employees can reduce energy-related pollution at home and in their communities. Being editor of SAVE was rewarding because, as Betty explains, “The more I communicated with employees, the more my own belief was reinforced that the environmental message is the greatest motivator. People want to help save energy when it has a greater purpose than just saving money – particularly at work.”

Another of her creations is the Energy Champions program. This initiative (currently involving over 330 employee volunteers in 189 locations in 26 states plus the District of Columbia!) was designed to recruit folks from all locations and levels who would promote wise energy use at Verizon. Turning off lights and unused equipment, working with building and computer administrators to identify opportunities to increase energy efficiency, and encouraging co-workers to make conservation a habit are all Energy Champion “duties.”

Not only does the Energy Champions program save Verizon an estimated $2.2 million annually (a figure guaranteed to get the attention of company executives); it’s also responsible for cutting the company’s greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 20,000 tons each year—while improving employee morale, fostering creativity and team-building, and teaching people about energy and climate solutions that they will take home with them after work! One Energy Champion, Michael Hug of Levittown, PA gave out a crisp new $1.00 bill to everyone at his location who turned off their lights and computers. When he and his 11-year-old daughter were through making their rounds, they’d given out $170 of Michael’s money.

Betty Anderson (left) with Energy Champions MaryLiz Hepburn and Susan Reinhardt of Arlington, VA.	Looking smart: Verizon president and CEO Ivan Seidenberg with a few of the Energy Champions.

Betty also was instrumental in working with Clean Air-Cool Planet to enable Verizon’s participation in a prominent ad campaign focused on energy savings, business profitability and environmental responsibility. The Verizon ad, published in both the Wall Street Journal and New York Times with the series slogan “Energy Efficiency. It’s Money in the Bank” was sponsored by the Energy Foundation and the Center for Energy and Climate Solutions. It touted the company’s leadership on conservation and clean energy technology development, communicating to company executives, competitors and customers the same message that SAVE posits to employees. The positive response and attention it garnered was a big factor in Verizon’s decision to step up its efforts and commit additional resources toward a crucial new fuel cell project that the federal government hopes will serve as a model for future initiatives in telecommunications and other sectors.

Spreading the word about the value of energy efficiency (click here for a link to the full page ad. )	Verizon’s Team Energy with EPA Director Christie Todd Whitman (Betty is second from the left.)

As Communications Manager for Energy Programs, Betty was so successful at making the connection between energy and climate change to company executives and employees that Verizon gave her a new title in the spring of 2002: Manager of Energy Communications and Greenhouse Gas Programs. In doing so, the company was in effect recognizing greenhouse gas reductions as an important corporate priority—and, in the process, validating what Betty had been demonstrating all along: it pays to bring one’s principles to work in the morning.

Due in a large part to Betty’s communications efforts, Team Energy’s work has paid off to the tune of a $60 million energy savings over the past two years, on the strength of a $25 million initial investment. The benefits of the improved business model Betty Anderson’s work inspired at Verizon may just continue to pay off for all of us, by putting increased corporate resources to work in the advancement of improved energy planning and technologies for the future.

--Jennifer Schroeder