Staff and students from Humber College planting trees to build a natural habitat for wildlife and improve water quality in Humber Pond.
Canada's Greenest
Employers (2024)
Winners from our 17th annual editorial competition
Staff and students from Humber College planting trees to build a natural habitat for wildlife and improve water quality in Humber Pond.

About the Competition

About Image
Vancouver-based MEC has longstanding community partnerships focused on conservation and protection of the outdoors. (Photo: M.Kootnikoff)

Background

Now in its 17th year, Canada's Greenest Employers is an editorial competition organized by the Canada's Top 100 Employers project. This special designation recognizes the employers that lead the nation in creating a culture of environmental awareness in their organizations. Canada's Greenest Employers These employers have developed exceptional sustainability initiatives – and are attracting people to their organizations because of their environmental leadership. Prior to 2009, this award was called "Canada's Most Earth-Friendly Employers". This year’s winners were announced on April 16, 2024 in a special magazine distributed online in The Globe and Mail. Read the press release issued the same day for more background in this year’s competition.


A nursery operations technician for Credit Valley Conservation Authority in Mississauga, Ont., pulls out invasive plants at a retirement farm for thoroughbred horses.

About Image
Vancouver-based MEC has longstanding community partnerships focused on conservation and protection of the outdoors. (Photo: M.Kootnikoff)

About Image
A nursery operations technician for Credit Valley Conservation Authority in Mississauga, Ont., pulls out invasive plants at a retirement farm for thoroughbred horses.

Selection Process

Each employer is evaluated by the editors of Canada's Top 100 Employers in terms of: (1) the unique environmental initiatives and programs they have developed; (2) the extent to which they have been successful in reducing the organization's own environmental footprint; (3) the degree to which their employees are involved in these programs and whether they contribute any unique skills; and (4) the extent to which these initiatives have become linked to the employer's public identity, attracting new employees and clients to the organization.


About Image
A nursery operations technician for Credit Valley Conservation Authority in Mississauga, Ont., pulls out invasive plants at a retirement farm for thoroughbred horses.

About Image
An employee at Toronto-based Crown Property Management harvests greens from the community garden.

Reasons for Selection

Each spring, our editors release the list of winners and publish their reasons for selection – click an employer's name below to read why each of this year's winners was chosen. Publishing detailed Reasons for Selection is an important feature of our competition: it provides transparency in the selection of winners and "raises the bar" so that other employers can improve upon these best-practices.


About Image
An employee at Toronto-based Crown Property Management harvests greens from the community garden.

Eligibility Requirements

Any employer operating in Canada may apply for the Canada's Greenest Employers competition. Employers of any size may apply, whether private or public sector.

2025 Competition

Applications for our 2025 competition will be available early in 2024. Our 2025 winners will be announced in the spring of 2025 near Earth Day. Join our mailing list to stay up to date and receive an application for next year's competition.

A Durham College employee harvests fresh crops grown on their Whitby, Ont. campus.
A Durham College employee harvests fresh crops grown on their Whitby, Ont. campus.

Introduction

Canada's Greenest Employers (2024) are in a green state of mind, leading the way with exceptional sustainability initiatives and innovative technology. It starts with developing a comprehensive sustainability policy that can serve as a guiding principle for all decisions and actions that a company might take.

That's exactly what Hatch Inc. has done by committing to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals in pursuit of a better world through positive change. The employee-owned company, headquartered in Mississauga, Ont., provides professional engineering, technology and consulting services to clients mainly in the mining, infrastructure and energy sectors. The company's ambitious sustainability goals are embedded throughout the organization into daily work and embraced by employees and clients alike.

"Professionally, we're all working towards the objectives of our sustainability policy that applies to every project we work on," says Robert Young, senior environmental planner at Hatch. "Our clients are asking us for those sustainability solutions now. We're committed not only to improving our own footprint and position, but to helping our clients achieve their sustainability goals and coming up with solutions to help them still be economically successful, but doing it in the best, least impactful manner possible."

Young says that working with clients right at the beginning of a project means you can get in early enough where they can make changes. Hatch has a number of long-term relationships with clients where sustainability is an ongoing process through multiple phases of projects.

"Our Climate Change Group has been doing a lot of assessments with clients to improve how they can decarbonize, such as using green steel which is more environmentally friendly," says Young. "We have very strong research and technology teams here that are always looking at innovations in how they can make things better for our clients."

Green steel is manufactured using renewable energy sources instead of fossil fuels so it has a minimum carbon footprint compared to conventional steel. While it's more expensive to produce, it's critical to the planet because steel production accounts for around eight per cent of total global emissions, according to the World Economic Forum.

As employers work toward a greener future, continual improvement and innovation are key to making a difference in the environment. In its own operations at its Mississauga facilities, Hatch significantly reduced water consumption and printing, plus switching to LED lighting, which is not only more efficient and economical, but much friendlier to the environment.

Another advantage Hatch has found is that a robust sustainability strategy can help in attracting top talent, particularly the next generation who want accountability concerning a company's environmental practices and policies.

"We recruit a lot of new young professionals here and find they're very interested in what we're doing in terms of sustainability," says Young. "It's important for everybody."

Employees at Sleeman Breweries Ltd. would agree. Sustainability initiatives and employee engagement go hand-in-hand at its distribution centres and breweries in Guelph, Ont., Vernon, B.C., Calgary, Alta. and Chambly, Que. The company has an environmental steering committee that strategically oversees its sustainability efforts as well as green teams made up of representatives from each facility.

Green initiatives include large-scale waste reduction (currently at a diversion rate of at least 97 per cent), water conservation, energy-consumption measures and brewing by-product management, as well as sustaining the natural environment through employee and community engagement.

Linden Gossen, national environmental health & safety manager at Sleeman in Guelph, says the green team has really focused on education with a variety of challenges for employees, such as reducing food waste, eating local and choosing transportation alternatives.

"What's been most successful is really challenging the mindset of over 1,000 employees to be reflecting on environmental sustainability and having lots and lots of ideas come through that process," says Gossen. "Then acting on their suggestions is the biggest win of all.

"That line, 'Think globally, act locally' really is true. Local is where you make the difference and often it's a collection of small things that create a bigger positive change."

Community awareness and outreach are important at both the corporate and employee level.

"We're always looking for opportunities for employees to get involved," says Gossen. "Employees have donated produce to the local food bank from gardens that they planted on our grounds and volunteers did a group tree-planting activity in support of the City of Guelph, whose 2030 goal is to achieve a 40 per cent tree canopy. These are employee initiatives that come up through the green teams, and then we share them across the country to see who else can do it."

Sleeman also partners with the City of Guelph through the Water Smart Business Program to minimize the load on municipal systems. Additionally, Sleeman Breweries recently launched the Sleeman Better Water Fund, an annual endowment to support Canadian water conservation and clean water accessibility.

Ultimately, the world still has a long way to go in protecting the planet and transitioning away from carbon. Canada's Greenest Employers may not all be there yet, but they're trying. Kudos to the winning organizations recognized here as they set an example for all Canadian employers in the drive for true sustainability.

2024 Winners

Here are the 2024 winners of the Canada's Greenest Employers competition. Click an employer name to read our editors' full Reasons for Selection:



                                A confident man with crossed arms stands in front of a modern building with large windows and two totem poles.
Calgary-based NovAtel provides employees with a personal spending account that can used for green living expenses, like solar energy equipment and energy efficient appliances. (Photo: D.Watt)
Staff and students at Concordia University enjoying a green space in the beautifully restored Grey Nuns residence in downtown Montréal. (Photo: L.Graves)
Staff and students at Concordia University enjoying a green space in the beautifully restored Grey Nuns residence in downtown Montréal. (Photo: L.Graves)

The Mission for Planet Earth

Canada's Greenest Employers are getting very serious about sustainability

Many of the winners of the Canada's Greenest Employers (2024) competition are large organizations involved in a wide range of endeavours, from brewing beer to selling insurance. But if you work at a company like Vancouver-based Tru Earth Environmental Products Inc., you get a two-fer in the sustainability performance so many job-seekers want to be part of.

One advantage, as at many organizations, is the opportunity for Tru Earth employees to be involved in brainstorming sustainability ideas, raising internal awareness and volunteering for the company's #TruEarthMovement environmental outreach. But the other is its own suite of products. Tru Earth makes concentrated laundry detergent "eco-strips" and other cleaning offerings delivered in slim cardboard envelopes rather than the heavy plastic containers and packaging that detergent pods, powders and liquids come in.

"Our battle is against plastic," says Anita Spiller, vice president of environmental, social and governance for Tru Earth. "There is no plastic in our packaging at all. As you know, with plastic you have to extract the petroleum, then you produce the plastic bottle and then you have to battle the microplastics. So we look at it in terms of the emissions we're not transmitting. And because it is a compressed strip, it means we're not shipping water across the country as with liquid detergents, which are up to 90 per cent water."

All of which makes Tru Earth an attractive, even idealistic, place to work. "It matters for us that folks are aligned with our critical cause to make true lasting change, that they feel like they're a part of what we're doing. Because we're making great environmental products, but we also want to do good for the planet."

According to Richard Yerema, executive editor at Mediacorp Canada Inc., which runs the competition, green measures have become very important to employers' recruitment efforts. "You're speaking to generations that assume that these things are being addressed in a meaningful way, that this is a portfolio which the employer takes seriously. If not, or if you're just trying to do some greenwashing, it won't resonate well. A lot of young people coming into the workplace are more sophisticated about these things."

So employers whose businesses may have little to do directly with the environment are keen to show their commitment to sustainability. "We've seen a lot of formalization of programs and policies, rather than just an ad-hoc effort," Yerema says. "It becomes part of a strategy and a plan. And they're usually reviewed on a regular basis, not just every five or 10 years. This is an area where they engage with their people – they sit with their green teams or sustainability staff and decide exactly how to update the program."

And step by step, Canada's Greenest Employers are making a difference. "Why I like this project is it's practically oriented," says Yerema. "It's what companies can do to mitigate operations and lessen the impact. They're still going to brew beer. But they've taken feedback from employees who figured out a way to save water. If you're going to effect change, how you operate very much matters. Even if your impact is minor, if it's just turning out the lights and reducing the heat and updating your systems of energy usage, these are simple things that we all can do. One little bit at a time, across the board of many employers, the cumulative work will start to be seen."

Now, too, notes Yerema, sustainability goals are "not just siloed off to the green team," but integrated into the mainstream operations of Canada's Greenest Employers. Often top executives in the C-suite have the portfolio embedded in their mandate. One of those is Selwyn Crittendon, CEO and chief sustainability officer at IKEA Canada. "For us," he says of his title, "this is not so much about an additional task. It's really what we do."

In fact, Crittendon, who recently took the IKEA Canada post after a career in the company's U.S. operations, sounds like a man with a green mission. Looking beyond the many sustainability achievements at IKEA, Crittendon sees a lot of potential for the planet in partnerships among major companies.

"IKEA can't do this alone," he says. "So how do we work together to achieve more? What happens when we band together on topics like EV networks, the circular economy or food waste? These are making large impacts. If we can do this, we will make fundamental change, and actually start to move the needle for climate change. The partnership model is going to be crucial. I need many more players and many more CEOs to come on this journey with me so we can make a lasting impact for all people that live on this planet."

It's a promising call from an industry leader. And it's an example of the quickening momentum for sustainability at all levels of Canadian enterprises. Whether large organizations like IKEA or smaller enterprises like Tru Earth, whether they offer sweeping changes or incremental fixes, Canada's Greenest Employers are helping to lead the way to a better world.


Find jobs from Canada's Greenest Employers



Live search powered by Eluta.ca

Employers: Post jobs on Eluta.