Brian Ringer: inspiring climate action at work

Brian Ringer is the co-founder and CEO of GetGreen — an app that facilitates and encourages employees to reduce their carbon footprint at work. With a background spanning technology and environmental leadership, it’s fitting that his platform is one of the main players in the sustainability gamification space. How engaged team members feel around ESG is often a determining factor for whether a company’s targets are met, so it was a real treat to sit down with Brian and discuss challenges and opportunities around sustainability and employee action.

What inspired you to found GetGreen and what’s your company’s mission?

Here at GetGreen, we feel a similar pull as many others - that the world is at a critical time for climate change and that we need to start taking meaningful action to reduce emissions now. This decade is critical, but it is also a huge opportunity to transform the way we live towards a lower carbon future. The good news is that so many people, both individuals and organizations, feel the same and are wanting to take action. Oftentimes though, they need help getting started with how to launch an effective program in the workplace or take direct action at home. That’s the mission of GetGreen - empowering individuals and organizations to take action on climate change. 

GetGreen’s mission is to make it easy for anyone - companies, organizations, even individuals, to start taking action on climate change and reducing their emissions. We make it easy and fun by gamifying sustainable living into the app. 

How did you become interested in behavior change for sustainability?

A recent McKinsey study estimated that 75% of the solutions we need to combat climate change already exist and time is running out. New innovations are important. But there’s a huge gap there on usage and uptake of existing solutions, the things that we need to do NOW. Behavior change is key to making it happen.

On the personal side, during my career in technology leadership, I also ran the sustainability departments for these companies. We saw the most success when company employees were actively engaged, contributing ideas and action, and incorporating sustainability into their daily decision making. Our goal with GetGreen was to produce solutions that allow all organizations to amplify and realize their sustainability goals through team engagement, by making sustainability part of everybody’s job. 

What are some of the challenges companies are up against when it comes to reducing their carbon footprint and how have you seen those challenges be addressed?

Distraction is one; that temptation to focus on the immediate urgency of the moment instead of making a thoughtful plan and executing it. Procrastination in another, to delay sustainability program rollouts until next quarter, next year…taking that first step is the hardest. Overcoming that force of standing friction to start moving. 

Some companies are concerned about cost implications. But once companies dig in, that seems to dissipate. So many of the sustainability changes are really about being more efficient with resources, which frequently turn out to be cost and financial savings as well. 

Does anything need to be in place before a company is ready to engage employees with sustainability?

It turns out that engagement is a great place to start. We see companies go on arc with their employees, focusing on awareness and engagement first, gathering input from their employees and then formulating a plan.  

For a lot of companies, by the time it is urgent, employees complaining, customers complaining - it can be too late. Hop in now! Heads of sustainability think they need to have a master plan to get started. Let your employees lead the way - you’ll be blown away by their creativity and passion and willingness to do a lot of the heavy lifting. 

What are some best practices you’ve seen help companies reduce their carbon footprints?

True emissions reductions are hard, harder than picking a short term alternative like carbon offsets and just settling for that. But once you start digging in, things can get started. Those changes to your building facility to improve the energy efficiency, upgrading the transportation fleet- almost immediately result in cost savings. And the NPV estimates show those are great uses of capital. 

At the top level, team engagement is high up on the list. Getting people involved and engaged is absolutely a great place to start. A recent Harvard Business Review/Daggerwind survey showed that frontline employee engagement is actually the single most important difference between programs that are succeeding and those that are not. 

For company specifics, they usually start with directly accessible things that everyone can understand and participate in. Setting up lower carbon commuting options - carpooling and public transportation. Changes in their offices and facilities - optimizing the heating and cooling, reducing solid waste by emphasizing recycling and composting.

Education is the other one. As people start to understand more about sustainability and what makes a difference and understand concepts like sustainable design, they start to imagine ways to perform their own roles differently and more efficiently. That's what really gets the flywheel spinning.  Company transparency and having clearly defined goals are always things that come back high on the list of things employees would like from the companies, driving that circular engagement. 

There are a lot of platforms that gamify climate-friendly decision making — what makes GetGreen unique?

We started with a few core principles - positive behavioral reinforcement - people have to want to use it. Built in education - GetGreen is not just about action, it’s about understanding what’s happening both at the macro level with climate change, and at your particular company or organization. It’s not just about what to do but why. With our enterprise version, it is fully customized to each company. We aren’t just providing a blanket list of actions for anyone to take. There are specific actions directly aligned with the sustainability goals and carbon-reducing choices for that particular company. 

What have you learned about this space since founding your company? Has anything surprised you?

We’ve been surprised by the excitement around climate change and taking action. So much nicer to be in the business of helping people do something they want to do rather than convincing skeptical people that they need to. That’s been surprising and a huge asset. On the flip side, it has been disappointing to see anything ESG-connected be turned into a political football, particularly here in the U.S. Things like green-hushing - companies not wanting to talk about what they’re doing for fear of alienating some potential customers. 

We’ve also been pleasantly surprised by the number of really talented, positive people who want to help out. We’ve been so fortunate to have so many of them on the GetGreen team. Really amazing people who are so passionate about taking climate change head on, especially from college students and recent graduates. That gives me so much hope through the haze, that the future bodes well with so many talented new people coming into the space to make a difference.

What are you most excited about for the future of corporate sustainability?

This positive flywheel of people actively looking for solutions across the company, coupled with so many great innovations in all areas - the built environment, transportation, supply chain, renewable energy, waste reductions - and as more front line people get focused on sustainability, these great innovations can get adopted and deployed much more quickly.