PELHAM &045;&045; Employees for the AHI Group are &8220;going green&8221; thanks to the company&8217;s new weeklong environmental program known as Green Week.

The AHI Group has planned its first-ever Green Week this week to help educate employees, partners, suppliers and customers on the importance of recycling and environmental issues.

Employees are competing in a series of individual and group activities including relay races, adopt-a-road events, tree plantings, recycling and brainstorming ideas of how to lessen the impact on the environment, said General Manager of AHI Corporate Housing Division Cheri Jenkins.

&8220;We have created a weeklong field day, if you will, to get our team members actively involved in our goals and campaign,&8221; Jenkins said. The goal is to get &8220;our team members to think outside the box.&8221;

Employees are also given the opportunity throughout the week to submit ideas on how best to &8220;go green&8221; and save resources. The AHI Group expects many ideas submitted during Green Week to eventually be put into policy by the company and on a daily basis within the staff&8217;s own homes.

&8220;Recycling policies on bulk materials, such as cardboard, have been implemented from an employee&8217;s idea,&8221; said Jenkins. And that&8217;s not the only one.

So far, employees have been vocal on how the company can help the environment, such as water conservation in the Laundry & Linens Division, fuel saving ideas, consolidated delivery routes for trucks and reducing energy cost.

&8220;Our hope is that by the end of Green Week, we will have collectively come up with multiple ways we can recycle, conserve and reuse,&8221; said Jenkins.

The idea behind creating a Green Week developed from the 2007 national conference of the National Corporate Housing Providers Association, for which the AHI Group is a member.

&8220;We truly believed that it was a win-win situation,&8221; Jenkins said. &8220;We could help the environment, but also cut down on excessive waste in the workplace.&8221;