Global Citizenship

Profiles Green Partners

Employees Team Up to Help Abbott Go Greener

Employee Network Increases Awareness

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Paper Waste Eased with Email

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Community Garden Supports Food Pantry

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Household Electronic Waste Collection at Abbott

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More than 800 employees at Abbott’s headquarters are working together to increase awareness and green practices at our company. Green Partners offers educational programs and volunteer activities.

Green Partners uses email to spread the news of its upcoming events to Abbott employees. The group also sends a monthly email newsletter with ideas on environmental best practices.

More than 800 employees in Abbott's headquarters north of Chicago have teamed up to increase environmental responsibility awareness and practices through Green Partners. This informal employee network offers a wide range of educational programs and volunteer activities to help employees make sustainable choices both at home and at work.

Among other activities, Green Partners recently sponsored:

• An educational program on household energy conservation techniques and incentives, as well as updates on Abbott energy conservation projects
• A community outreach project in which the team built a community vegetable garden to support the local food pantry, while teaching local middle school students about nutrition, cooking and time management
• A vendor presentation about the water conservation benefits of low-flow shower heads, faucets and toilets – including a 40 percent discount on household bath fixtures for Abbott employees
• A seminar about the environmental benefits of landscaping with native plants

Green Partners also helped to organize and execute a household electronic waste collection day for Abbott employees in 2011. Partnering with the local solid waste collection agency and multiple Abbott experts, the event enabled Abbott employees to bring unwanted electronics such as computers, mobile telephones and television sets to the Abbott campus for environmentally friendly recycling and disposal. More than 450 donors contributed 41,400 pounds of waste – enough to fill two semi-trailers with electronics equipment.

Complementing its programs, Green Partners distributes monthly informational email newsletters to help share environmental best practices and encourage multiple work sites to adopt them. For example, a recent edition of the newsletter showcased Abbott corporate initiatives to reduce the use of Styrofoam in our cafeterias and to reduce paper waste by replacing some print jobs with scan-to-email technology. Another edition highlighted a way to reduce water usage when cleaning laboratory equipment in autoclaves. Typically, the autoclaves cycle hot water all the time, but Green Partners shared information on how one group modified the autoclaves so that they will cycle hot water only when they are actually in use.

Going forward in 2012, Green Partners members will work together to help multiple Abbott business units improve their recycling rates. The team is planning a series of educational events and best practice exchanges to help individual employees understand their role in helping to meet the company's recycling targets.

Note: All data in the Global Citizenship section reflects activities prior to the separation of Abbott and AbbVie on January 1, 2013.