The Beginning: Three Schoolgirls and a Science Project
In 2017, the daughter of an Avaya employee and two of her school friends from Scoil Iognaid in Galway entered the BT Young Scientist Exhibition with a project examining microplastics in drinking water. Their work won first place in the junior category and earned an EPA Environmental Award. They were invited to present their findings to around 500 Avaya employees at an open company forum. Their direct, evidence-based message and the uncomfortable questions they raised landed different. A Sustainovation Team was formed at Avaya and, unlike many such initiatives that emerge from HR departments or CSR strategy documents, this one started from the floor up, based on personal conviction and peer energy.
Starting Small and Smart
The early initiatives at Avaya followed a simple rule: remove the easy option and behaviour changes. In a few weeks, keep cups replaced single-use ones, plastic utensils disappeared from the canteen, personal waste bins at desks were removed and replaced with central recycling hubs, forcing people to actively segregate their waste for the first time; coffee grounds from the canteen were advertised as available to collect and within days a rotating list of around fifteen employees were taking them home for composting or garden beds; printers were removed from individual offices, consolidated into a small number of central hubs, resulting into a 50% reduction in paper usage and a significant drop in maintenance costs. People reduced their printing as it became inconvenient, not because they were urged to save paper.
The Business Case
As the Sustainovation Team’s ambitions grew, so did the need to secure company investment, but getting funding for sustainability projects required putting forward a business case with clear return-on-investment projections. The team’s approach was consistent: “if you can show the company something is cost neutral or cost positive, the door opens.” The lighting upgrade is a good example. All 1,435 units across the facility were replaced, moving from incandescent and fluorescent lights to LEDs, combined with smart occupancy sensors so lights would turn off automatically when rooms were empty. The payback period was under one year. The carbon saving was 76000 KwH of CO2e/year. The boiler conversion from oil to gas heating followed. The result was a reduction of 209900 KwH CO2e annually.
The packaging efficiency story illustrates the same principle at a product level. An engineer followed a delivery of Avaya terminals throughout the full shipping process and discovered that the three cables included with every unit (to fit UK, European and US outlets) were rarely, if ever, used. Most installation sites already had cabling in place. Making cables an optional extra rather than a default inclusion with every product saved several hundred thousand dollars in the first year alone and reduced materials waste.
The Personal Case
The solar initiative, which was set up around 2019–2020, after one employee installed solar panels on their own home, became a cultural turning point for Avaya employees. A group of over ten colleagues from different departments (engineering, finance, operations, marketing) came together initially; they shared knowledge, rated installers, worked through payback calculations and answered each other’s questions. All of a sudden, the company had a cross-departmental community that had never existed. In a 500-person facility, typically, “the technology guys stay with technology, R&D stays with R&D. Nobody knows what the other departments do.” The solar group broke that pattern and the result were impressive: 60% of Avaya Galway’s workforce actively engaged with the solar initiative, and
around 40% went on to install solar panels on their own homes. What’s more, as the lead recalls, “every person who installed solar then influenced six to ten others, family, friends, neighbours. They became community leaders in their own streets and parishes. And that kept bringing new energy back into the group.”
This marked a significant mindset shift: sustainability had become personal, tangible and contagious and people believed in it because they had lived it themselves, rather than because it was mandated at the corporate level. The solar group then spawned subgroups: one on electric vehicles, one on home heating one on home automation. The momentum gained corporate support. EV chargers were installed on site, with electricity funded by the company, and free charging became one of the incentives that helped bring employees back on site after COVID-19. Three covered, secure bicycle sheds were also installed and approximately 15–20% of staff began commuting by bike. A simple cycling infrastructure had achieved what cycling communications campaigns struggle to achieve: it changed behaviour by making the better choice the easier one.
From Galway to Global
What started in Galway went global. Galway representatives led sustainability across Avaya’s EMEA region and the model was replicated in Germany, Spain, Singapore and India. It was a wonderful and simple example of what bottom-up sustainability could deliver. What’s more, it also sparked technical innovation: the Green Software initiative was born. Engineers who had learned to think about energy at home brought that logic to their code, pulling only the data needed, processing only what mattered. Less waste at every step.
The company also committed to an annual month of giving, during which employees could donate paid days to beach cleanups, school projects and community volunteering. Over eight years, charitable giving totalled approximately €1 million.
In 2023, this full body of work was submitted to the itag Sustainability Awards. Avaya Galway won.
What can one story teach us about sustainability?
What made sustainability work in Avaya? It gained traction through employee-led action, which generated far more engagement and credibility than any top-down programme. It brought people together. Initiatives benefited people personally before they benefited the company professionally and every major project was backed by a clear ROI case that brought company investment. Having strong leaders and buy in from the Site Leadership team (including Pat Lawless, Joe Flaherty & Jim Briscoe and Facilities Manager, Adrian Megahey) were also critical to its success.
The team have packaged the model for delivery to other companies, running workshops on solar and energy use for groups of five to ten employees at a time. Training of this kind is eligible for Green Plus grants and other IDA and Enterprise Ireland funding, making it financially accessible for SMEs.
The Avaya story is one worth sharing. Beyond corporate sustainability, it reached beyond work, into homes, communities and other organisations. We need more stories like this. Greenwashing gets the headlines, but green hushing, doing real work and never talking about it, is equally widespread. Employees don’t hear about it. The community doesn’t benefit. The momentum is lost. As one of Avaya’s Site Leadership team puts it: “Companies are doing real things and not telling anyone, not even their own people. That’s a waste of something that could inspire others.”
The itag Sustainability Case Study Series aims to address this. When we stop framing sustainability as a compliance burden, it can become a source of innovation, culture, cost efficiency and human connection. The Avaya story is the first in a series of sustainability case studies from the itag community.
Does your organisation have a sustainability story worth sharing? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch at info@itag.ie
