Lauren Turk

Case study · Program Design & Implementation

Compost
by design, not compliance.

A 13,000-person, $1B-revenue company wanted composting to become an everyday workplace habit — not a sustainability checkbox. We designed for habit, friendly competition, and immediate reward. 82% of employees enrolled in the first quarter.

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The client

A 13,000-employee, $1B-revenue company. A $1B-revenue, 13,000-employee company set out to make composting an everyday workplace habit — not a sustainability checkbox, but a real cultural shift tied to corporate ESG goals.

13K employees across the workforce
$1B in annual revenue

The challenge

Sustainability programs fail when they ask employees to feel guilty. They work when the right thing is rewarding.

  1. 01

    A 13,000-person, $1B-revenue company wanted to make composting an everyday workplace habit — not a sustainability checkbox, but a real cultural shift tied to corporate ESG goals.

  2. 02

    Corporate sustainability programs typically struggle with engagement. Most are either passive ("here’s a bin in the break room") or compliance-driven, and peer programs report enrollment in the single digits.

  3. 03

    What this company needed was a program that made the right behavior the easy and rewarding one — at the scale of an entire workforce.

The approach

Designed for habit, not for guilt.

I designed and implemented the program end-to-end — research, design, rollout, education — anchored on three forces that actually move behavior: friendly competition, real-time impact, and immediate reward.

  1. Research

    Interviewed leadership, facility managers, sustainability staff, and employees across functions to surface what would actually move behavior here — and what would fail.

  2. Design

    Gamified the program around friendly competition between teams, real-time impact tracking, and a weekly reward lottery — rewarding the right behavior at the moment of choice.

  3. Implementation

    Rolled it out across the company — bins, signage, partner haulers, the digital tracking layer, and the rewards system.

  4. Education

    Led workshops and speaking engagements connecting individual action to climate, soil health, and company culture.

Inside the rollout

  1. 01

    Cross-functional interviews

    Conversations with leadership, facility managers, sustainability staff, and employees to map what would actually move behavior in this culture.

  2. 02

    Team-vs-team competition

    Friendly competition between teams gamified the habit without making it feel like compliance.

  3. 03

    Real-time impact tracking

    Every contribution counted, attributed, and visible — turning anonymous good behavior into a measurable team metric.

  4. 04

    Weekly reward lottery

    Immediate, visible reward at the moment people had a choice to make — designed to anchor the habit.

  5. 05

    Educational workshops & talks

    Connected the daily act to climate, soil health, and company culture — so the program had a why, not just a what.

The outcome

82% enrolled in Q1 — by design, not accident.

82% enrollment in the first quarter — for a voluntary corporate sustainability program.
  • 13K employees across the workforce
  • 1st employee compost rewards program at this scale
  • $1B revenue company — corporate scale
  • Q1 quarter-one rollout window

An end-to-end program delivering:

  • Cross-functional stakeholder research and culture mapping
  • A gamified program design — team competition, real-time impact, weekly rewards
  • Operational rollout across the company — bins, signage, partner haulers
  • A digital tracking and rewards layer
  • Educational workshops and speaking for employees and leadership

Three forces that moved behavior

Friendly competitionReal-time impactWeekly rewardVisible attributionHabit, not compliance

Why it worked:

  • The right behavior was the easy and rewarding one — at the scale of an entire workforce.
  • Visible impact, rewarded behavior, and a story connecting the individual act to something bigger.
  • 82% enrollment in Q1 vs. single-digit peer benchmarks — by design, not by accident.
  • Corporate sustainability works when it’s built on a feedback loop, not on guilt or compliance.
  • The same logic now powers COMPOSTARS at the city scale.

Designing a sustainability program your employees actually use?

Behavior-led program design for corporate sustainability, ESG, and workplace climate work — built to move enrollment off the single-digit benchmark.

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