PTC Celebrates Earth Week 2021

Since its inception in 1970, Earth Day, a global celebration in April, has served as motivation to drive positive action for the planet. The purpose of Earth Day is to diversify, educate, and activate the environmental movement worldwide, mobilizing individuals, businesses, cities, and even local governments to come together and drive lasting environmental change.

At PTC, Earth Day is an annual engagement event celebrated globally – and extended into an “Earth Week.” The week-long celebration, featuring global and local discussions, activities, and volunteer opportunities, is designed to drive awareness of and collective action toward environmental sustainability.  It's also a way for PTC to instill a sustainable mindset, encouraging employees to make small changes every day to better the planet.

Led by the Green at PTC employee resource group (ERG), in partnership with PTC’s Employee Communications & Engagement team, PTC’s Earth Week 2021, April 12th – 16th, marked the 10th anniversary of this event. The festivities, held virtually in this time of COVID-19, featured special celebration activities to commemorate the milestone, concluding with a virtual Earth Week-inspired game show.

Let’s take a look at how the week unfolded:

Five Days (and Many Ways) to Get Involved

Green at PTC, an employee-led volunteer organization aimed at making a big impact across the company and within our communities, organized the Earth Day 2021 theme - Restore Our Earth - into five daily themes:

• Day One: Restore Our Environment
• Day Two: Restore Cur Communities
• Day Three: Restore Our Materials
• Day Four: Restore Ourselves
• Day Five: Reflect on the Week & Celebrate Our Planet

Earth Week activities included an employee panel discussion, environmental justice podcast, newsletter, and even a recycle Bingo challenge – all geared toward promoting green initiatives and educating others about how they can make a difference at the office at and home.

Despite being held virtually, Earth Week 2021 came back bigger and better than ever, with innovative new ways of connecting and engaging employees from all over the world, such as a virtual plant doctor visit, a virtual clean-up, PTC Earth Week game show and more.

Dedication to the Environment

In addition to the week’s flurry of activities, Earth Week 2021 also encouraged PTC employees to get involved with the “One Volunteer. One Tree. One PTC.” initiative. Now in its fourth year, the program goal is simple: One tree is planted for every PTC employee who participates in the activities of Earth Week. The program gives employees around the world the opportunity to work as a unified team toward a common sustainability goal, and it provides a physical representation of the impact of the collective action.

Since the program’s start, PTC has planted nearly 4,000 trees in various employee-chosen locations in need around the world, including the Amazon Rainforest, Haiti, India, Brazil, California, Australia, and the California Rockies. As in previous years, employees had the opportunity to vote on where to plant the trees donated through this year’s celebration.

Dedication to Inclusion & Diversity

In addition to this year's Earth Week, a global virtual experience giving all employees the opportunity to participate in the week's celebrations, Green at PTC took a fresh look at other ways we could represent the diversity of the topic of sustainability.

For the first year ever, Green at PTC produced a partnered podcast with HOLA, PTC's Hispanic heritage ERG, to introduce the topic of environmental justice and tell the astounding story of worker rights activist, Cesar Chavez. Together, we shared with the company how he and his peers fought for the health and safety of communities being affect by pesticide pollution.

Dedication to our Future

Going forward, sustainability at PTC continues to be at the heart of PTC's goals and our leadership team:

“PTC is on a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) social impact journey,” says Kameelah Benjamin Fuller, PTC’s Chief Diversity Officer & CSR Leader. “CSR has been and continues to be important to PTC, and as we continue to dig into this work, Earth Week is another moment out of many that we are proud to celebrate.”

With the support of the company, leadership, and our passionate employees, PTC is excited to continue to make small changes every day for our employees, our communities, and our environment.