Wow, a big challenge is over now and I have successfully completed a four-week marathon where I raced to integrate sustainability into both my personal and professional life. Now, it's time to rest my eyes and fingers for a bit. Let me briefly share what I experienced before and during this sustainability challenge within my company.
In March, before Philip Morris International (PMI) released its 2022 Integrated Report on sustainability, the company announced the "IR22 Challenge" (Integrated Report 2022 Challenge). As I am an equally responsible person for sustainability just like my colleagues, I first called on my colleagues to participate in this competition. As we work remotely under Smart Work conditions, I thought that the best way to invite our Duty-Free team was through our internal social platform: Yammer. So I used Yammer to notify and push for action.
As the registration date approached, I reminded my friends to register and tried to make it easier for them.
I even went a bit further and shot a video for the day of the report's launch to raise awareness about sustainability.
During our competition, which started on April 5th following the publication of PMI's Integrated Report, and lasted until May 5th, we received daily individual challenges, as well as specific challenges related to a topic selected from our 2022 Integrated Report on Tuesdays and Thursdays. During this four-week period, we used an application called "Do Good" and uploaded both written and visual contents to complete the challenges. These posts, just like on Twitter and Instagram, were seen by other users (by users, I refer to colleagues who joined the challenge). As our posts were open to all users' comments and likes, we had the opportunity to exchange views on sustainability with PMI employees from different parts of the world. I met new people and learned about new approaches from all around the world. Of course, not all challenges were work-related. We also shared actions we can take for sustainability on an individual basis. For example, as a person who enjoys listening to music while showering, I had the chance to add many new songs (of course the short ones) to my Spotify list that my colleagues suggested during a specific challenge, that would help me save water while I am having a shower in the bathroom. Throughout this process, a scoring was made based on the challenges we completed, the comments we received, and the likes (Goods) we got. I was leading in the first two weeks and then experienced the runner-up position in the last two weeks of the competition, finishing the competition as the second winner.
During this process, the best contents were chosen and announced by the project team every week. Being in the most interacted content list motivated me to spend more time on the application, and it was pleasing to see that my posts were appreciated and creating interaction among the colleagues. This forced me to provide more interesting sustainability challenges and updates to the audience.
At this point, I can talk about the only criticism I have about the challenge, which may be time management. When I looked at the data from my phone's screen time feature, I saw that I had reached weekly durations of 19, 23 and 20 hours during the last three weeks of the competition. Spending that much time in front of a screen was a disadvantage in terms of disconnecting from the outside world and not being able to spend time with my family. However, it was a limited time, and my screen time returned to its normal level after the competition ended. A significant part of the competition took place during Ramadan, and I completed the challenges at Sahur. It was challenging, but it was also exciting to be able to accomplish this during the holy month.
I am happy to share that the challenge was a success, and I learned a lot from the experience. I was able to make changes to my daily routine that helped reduce my carbon footprint and promote sustainable living. Additionally, I had the opportunity to meet new people who are also passionate about sustainability and learn about my company's sustainability initiatives as well as the best practices in the industry. This was an eye opener for all of us.
In the meantime, my company continues to set an example in sustainability, as demonstrated by the weekly rewards we received during the challenge. One reward involved planting a tree in my name through Treedom, while the other involved making a donation to the World Wildlife Fund to symbolically adopt a penguin. I am grateful for these thoughtful gifts, which show how much my company cares about sustainability.
By the way, I recently shared some of the sustainability initiatives that my company has taken, which I have noticed be a separate blog content. These initiatives in my radar have made it easier for me to come up with ideas for the daily challenges. I benefited from these photos during the daily challenges. If you want to see them all, here they are: Volkan Yorulmaz: Capture PMI's Transformation Journey towards Sustainability
Last but not least, you can find information about PMI's sustainability goals, initiatives, and case studies at the link below:
What does our sustainable future look like | PMI - Philip Morris International
