Canada's Greenest Employers (2025) - Flipbook - Page 5
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W. SAUNDERS/MEC
CANADA'S GREENEST EMPLOYERS (2025) SPONSOR CONTENT
Employees at Vancouver-based MEC Mountain Equipment Company embrace the outdoors during a team bouldering activity.
Raising the Bar
Canada’s Greenest Employers do more for sustainability every year
C
anadian employers of quality
have been green for a long time.
The first edition of Canada’s
Greenest Employers was published
by Mediacorp Canada 18 years ago, in the
first decade of the Top Employers series.
Admittedly, things were a bit simpler in
2007, says Richard Yerema, executive
editor at Mediacorp. “I remember early on
we’d say, wow, you have a rooftop garden.
That was a big deal.”
It takes a lot more than that to get on the
list of Canada’s Greenest Employers (2025).
More employers are following green
practices, especially initiatives that actively
involve their employees, a key benchmark
for the list. And more organizations are
entering the competition, hoping to show
jobseekers just how green they are. The
result is that the size of the list has again
expanded this year, to 100 employers. In
2021, there were 85.
“The size of the list is a reflection of
interest, but it’s also a reflection of the bar
going up,” says Yerema. “The calibre of the
applicant today is much higher. There are
more organizations doing more things and
more formally, with literature and
sustainability reports and regular reviews
of what they do.”
Chantel Watkins, assistant editor at
Mediacorp Canada, has seen a significant
evolution since she began working on the
project four years ago. “Even in such a
short time, the general conversation about
sustainability, climate change and
environmental awareness has grown so
much, and with that has come more
interest in the project – both from
employers and employees,” she says.
Moreover, she adds, “It’s almost expected
at this point, especially from individuals
who are entering the workforce for the
first time. It’s important to people that they
work at an organization that is intentional
about its environmental impact, is
passionate about mitigating that impact,
and gets their employees involved along
the way.”
Many organizations, too, are adopting
ideas from their peers, including some
they will read about in Canada’s Greenest
Employers (2025). There is still a long way
to go, of course, to make Canadian
employers fully sustainable and, notes
Yerema, “there are lots of organizations
that could stand to learn from this list.”
– Berton Woodward
