KnowBe4 Celebrates Earth Month 2024

At KnowBe4, we do everything in a big way, and have fun while doing it – including celebrating Earth Day, which we did for the entire month of April! According to Earthday.org, Earth Day is widely recognized as the largest secular observance in the world, marked by more than a billion people every year as a day of action to change human behavior and create global, national, and local policy changes in order to protect our environment.

So what did Knowsters do to celebrate? Read on to check out just some of the fun events that took place.

National Rainbow Day was April 2, 2024, so Knowsters planted a rainbow of flowers for pollinators during the first week of Earth month – 113 flowering plants in all - more than double what we planted last year!

International Plant Appreciation Day took place on April 13, 2024. Plants are vital to all life on Earth. They take in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and produce oxygen. In addition, plants make up the base of the food web by producing their own food using light, water, carbon dioxide, and other chemicals. Much of human nutrition depends on plants, either directly or indirectly. Employees celebrated Plant Appreciation Day by sharing pictures of their favorite plants. We got to admire over 50 plant pictures from five different country offices!

For the third week of Earth Month, Knowsters shared images of their repurposed items; 40 in all, from four different countries. Repurposing items extends the lifespan of products, reducing waste and conserving resources by giving them a new function instead of discarding them. It also promotes creativity and innovation, as individuals find novel and practical uses for objects that were originally intended for different purposes. I read recently that if each of the 330 million people in the United States repurposed just one item of clothing per year, it could save approximately 6 billion pounds of carbon dioxide emissions, which is equivalent to taking over half a million cars off the road for a year. This demonstrates the significant environmental impact that repurposing items, even on a small scale, can have on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

This year, Earth Day fell during the fourth week of Earth Month. Over the course of the week, 139 Knowsters took part in group and individual cleanups, and collected 225 pounds of garbage across the globe (seven countries total: Australia, India, Germany, Singapore, South Africa, UK, and U.S.). The U.S. alone had 63 Knowsters come out to clean up!

Those offices that didn’t have cleanups celebrated in other ways. For instance, in the Netherlands where it was too cold to go out, they had a plant-based potluck for Earth Day. Conversely in India, where it was too hot to go out, they did an in-office cleanup. And in Dubai, they were supposed to have individual cleanups, but when flooding made that problematic, they quickly pivoted and did a replanting effort instead. Our Japan and South Africa offices also had plant-based lunches, and Singapore employees took part in a terrarium building event for Earth Day at their office (in addition to their cleanup). Our South Africa and UK offices also gave out seeds for Earth Day in addition to their cleanups, and South Africa also handed out eco bottles that double as phone chargers!

Brazil sponsored a group that provides environmental education activities in schools in Conde, on the south coast of Paraíba, where they work on sea turtle conservation. They teach the importance of preserving biodiversity, and also the problem of plastics in the oceans and climate change. 

In Australia, they launched their “circle of life” initiative for Earth Day.  They installed a new recycle bin in the office to collect cans and bottles. One of their employees will regularly empty the bin to collect money from recycling, to put towards social events.

This internal post from one of our Australian Knowsters (Steve P) sums up how special our employees are: “Picked up my share of glass on the beach this morning before work. Hate the thought of dogs cutting their paws, so I’m always on the lookout. I’ve also been rescuing bees of late that are injured or fall into our backyard. They sit on the flowers, the birds (pests) rip off the flowers and the bees hit the ground. Many get some honey water and fly back, for others it’s a hospice. Kinda relaxing, until they sting you lol. #EarthDay“ (you can see a bee on his hand in the cover photo of this article)

Arbor Day fell on April 26th, and thanks to Knowster donations and individual plantings, collectively over 1,100 trees were planted across the globe for Arbor Day.

And finally, for the entire month of April we had our annual “Cleaning Earth Together” challenge, where Knowsters are encouraged to clean up any trash they find whenever taking a walk, going for a run, etc. Then they log their cleanup each time. This year there were over 100 cleanups in six countries, resulting in over 155 pounds of trash collected.

All said and done, we had nearly 250 participants from 11 different countries take part in Earth Month, with prizes awarded for each of our weekly themed events throughout the month (16 winners in all). That’s a 26% increase in participation over last year.

Winners:
“Plant Flowers for Pollinators”: Justin G 🇺🇸 Amanda E 🇳🇱 Natasha S 🇺🇸
“Plant Appreciation”: Jyoti Y🇮🇳 Marly B 🇳🇱 Kris K 🇺🇸
“Reuse/Repurpose”: Rachel H 🇺🇸 Siddharth P🇮🇳 Vishal I 🇺🇸
“Dress to Rep the Earth”: Tara F 🇺🇸Rhea Pillay 🇿🇦 Rachel K 🇺🇸
“Plant a Tree for Arbor Day”: Jennifer L 🇺🇸 Keith Z 🇺🇸 Sheila S 🇺🇸
“Cleaning Earth Together”: Giselle P🇸🇬

Way to go, Knowsters, we are already looking forward to next year’s Earth Month! 🌎