One man gathers what another man spills. Some organic farms have started to pick up on money saving strategies such as collecting designated scraps from local restaurants, and adding them to their compost. In this mutually beneficial relationship, the business saves on their garbage bill, and the farm gets free compost. In the way that nature’s living organisms play off of each other in an ecosystem, this is the most fundamental form of sustainability.
Filed under Business, Buy Local, Creative re-use, recycle, Reduce, Restaurants
By this point in the Sustainable Business Network game, I’m sure you’ve already swapped your old light bulbs for CFLs, stopped using Styrofoam and maybe started biking to work.
…So kudos to you, and all alike, but why stop with your business?
It should be pretty clear that sustainability starts at home, down to the very basics: like cleaning supplies and personal care products such as body moisturizer.
Green walls are the way to go!
To keep your business and home safe, you must put a roof over your head, but what about a green roof. Over the last few years, green roofs and now green walls have been a trend in helping improve the environment as well as your business. Adding a green roof to your business can also add new life to your community. Literally! Green roofs create new gardens and ecosystems on places that one would never think to find growing produce or even a butterfly sanctuary. Green roofs are set up to help control rainwater, but also increase the diversity of the concrete jungle. By definition, “green roofs are the result of a complete underlying roof build-up system, providing continuous, uninterrupted layers of protection and drainage. Free drainage covers the entire roof surface, avoiding problems associated with walls and pillars built off a roof deck.” http://www.greenroofs.com/Greenroofs101/concept.htm
Investing in a green roof will help reduce the costs of your heating and cooling bills, reduce storm-water runoff, and bring new life to your building (both wildlife and new customers as well!).
In more recent years, green walls have been popping up on buildings in addition to roofs. Green walls take the same concepts as roofs but make them vertical. Both roofs and walls help insulate buildings for sound and remove pollutants from the air; making your business that much fresher! Depending on the size of your building, green walls also offer the opportunity to create artworks using various designs made out of natural green plant life.
Check out these sites for more info:
Filed under Business, Green on the GAP, In the News, Reduce, Retailers, Triple bottom line
How to Make Your Event a Little “Greener”
Whether you are having a family get-together or a community-wide event, there are ways to help you save money as well as save the planet in the long run.
First off, invest in any reusable products – From plates to gloves to tablecloths to containers! Do you often use plastic tablecloths to cover the tables at your picnic, monthly meetings, or special event? Next time consider opting for a few fabric table coverings that you can simply wash each time. They will last for years, unlike plastic tablecloths that will last for decades in a trash dump. The same goes reusable plates and silverware. You may not want to use your good china or daily dinning ware, but perhaps you could buy a set of durable, reusable plates (usually a heavy plastic) and utensils that you can use and wash for the next time. These make better options than Styrofoam and other disposables.
Planning to do a clean-up in the community or even at your own home or business? Will you be using gloves to collect the litter and trash along the way? Invest in garden gloves rather than latex/plastic versions. Much like fabric tablecloths and heavy plastic plates, these gloves can be washed and reused each time instead of being tossed in the garbage. In any case, it’s always best to find a way to reuse a product before recycling or even throwing something away.
Another thing to consider in planning your event is your location. If you can, hold your meeting or festival outside using natural light. Another option would be to hold an event in a room with plenty of natural sunlight where you would need no or very little artificial lighting. All of these options can reduce your overall energy usage.
Now on to the food! Every picnic or meeting has to have something to snack on! Why not try creating an entire meal from local farmers markets and fresh produce vendors. Supporting local farmers supports the local economy. Many of these vendors have organic choices to make your meal even greener!
Finally, make getting to your event more environmentally friendly. Encourage friends and family to walk, bike, or even use public transportation to attend your “green” picnic, meeting, event, or festival!
These tips are just a start to help your organization, business, and family make small differences with a big impact on both the environment and your wallet!
Filed under Business, Buy Local, Green on the GAP, how-to, Local Food, recycle, Reduce, reuse, Triple bottom line
The cold weather has finally given away to warm, if not hot days, and we are all aching to get out of the office to spend time outdoors! Read on to find out how to make your summer more sustainable.
Sustainable Vacations
With gas prices up and the economy still down, plan a low impact, high quality summer vacation. Vacation locally and save time, save gas money, and reduce carbon emissions.
Whether you are spending a lot of time outside or you serve customers that are visiting our region to enjoy the natural wonders here, you can use these tips to promote sustainable lifestyles.
From a personal perspective:
From a business perspective:
With energy costs pushing up these days, many consumers have been looking to find even small ways to save money on their gas and electricity bills. Appliances such as refrigerators, freezers, televisions, computers, and dishwashers all use a lot of energy, and older models tend to be less energy-efficient than newer ones.
If your appliances are outdated, unreliable, and in need of being replaced (appliances tend to have a life span between 6 to 12 years), TopTenUSA is a good website to find the most efficient new appliances on the market and save money on your long-term energy costs. Free web-based rankings of the ten most energy-efficient appliances in a variety of categories are available on the TopTen USA website, along with pricing, specifications, local and online retail options, and personalized rebate information.
According to the Bryn Baker of the World Wildlife Foundation, “TopTen helps consumers make informed decisions on household products that can help fight climate change by reducing energy consumption, while saving money on electricity and gas bills.”
Baker continues: “Even small shifts in the products that consumers buy and use every day can produce a considerable impact: just a 10 percent shift in current sales to the most energy-efficient products could eliminate the release of nearly 3.5 million metric tons of carbon-equivalent gases each year, which is like taking 600,000 cars off the road. If all products used in the U.S. were TopTen ranked, the country would save over 270 million metric tons of CO2 and more than $46 billion dollars in energy costs over the product lifetimes. That would be like taking all the automobiles off the road in California, Florida, New York and Texas.”
TopTen functions similarly to Consumer Reports, as a non-profit organization that is independent and does not accept product samples or payments from manufacturers. The key criterion for listing is energy efficiency but, depending on the type of product, may also include environmental, health and safety concerns.
Norman L. Dean, the president of TopTen USA, says: “We’re spurring an upward spiral toward efficiency—the more consumers demand it, the more emphasis manufacturers will place on efficiency. Rather than copying technology to meet a standard, manufacturers will be innovating to be the best.
“We make it easy for consumers to find the most energy- and money-saving models, which in turn encourages manufacturing innovations that will make products in the United States even more energy-efficient. …TopTen USA intends to transform the American market from the one of excessive energy use to one that actively sustains products with the highest practical energy-efficiency.
“By doing so, TopTen USA helps tackle important issues such as climate change, pollution of the environment, the national security threat from our dependence on foreign oil supplies and high energy bills.”
Filed under Business, Reduce, Resources, Triple bottom line
Checkout http://www.freecycle.org for an easy way to reuse! This nonprofit organization connects you with local freecycle groups, allowing you to easily post items you want to get rid of, but don’t want to trash or recycle. You can also browse online postings of items that people in your community are trying to get rid of. Get rid of stuff for free, get stuff for free – pretty sweet deal.
We strongly encourage companies to join freecycle at work, http://quickbase.intuit.com/freecycle as a way to enhance your company’s corporate social responsibility. Remember the triple bottom line ~ People, Planet, Profit.
Reducing paper use, and reusing and recycling paper will not only save your business money, but will also reduce your businesses environmental footprint.
Approximately 7 million hectares of forests are destroyed a year and 80% of the world’s original forests are gone. In addition to accelerating major losses of biodiversity, deforestation is a culprit of climate change, destroying valuable carbon sinks and releasing carbon dioxide into the air when the wood is burned for fuel or decomposes.
As a business there are many steps you can take to decrease the burden that paper production has on forests and to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emissions attributed to deforestation and paper production.
As the mantra reduce, reuse, recycle suggests, the first step to reducing your environmental footprint is to reduce the amount of paper used at your office. Follow these tips to reduce paper use:
•Pay bills online.
o Visit the website associated with the business or company that bills you, and you will find a paperless billing option.
•Stop junk mail.
o Return first-class mail to sender. Cross out the address and bar code, circle the first class postage and write “refused: return to sender.”
o You can stop mail from the following credit agencies, Equifax, Trans Union, Experian and Innovis by calling 1-888-5 OPT OUT (or 1-888-567-8688) 24 hours a day. Most mail you receive will have an 800 number listed. Call and simply request to be removed from the mailing list.
•Before you print, use print preview.
•Print double sided.
o Under printing properties, choose double-sided or duplex option.
o For printers that require manual duplexing, print the odd pages first, flip (with the back of the first page on top) and print even pages.
•Narrow margins and single space on every document possible.
•Email agendas rather than printing.
•Bookmark webpages instead of printing.
•Share a master-copy of hard documents.
•Edit papers on the computer rather than printing and editing.
•Use emails to send announcements and newsletters.
•Send and receive faxes via personal computers to avoid printing.
•Eliminate cover and divider pages.
•Keep electronic records.
•Rather than using paper dining products (cups, plates, napkins, and paper towels) invest in dishware and cloth napkins.
As you probably guessed, reuse comes next. There are a few easy ways to reuse paper in your office:
•Use paper that has only been printed on a single side as scratch and note paper.
o Collect these partially used papers in a clip-board or bind them to create a notebook.
•Reuse folders and binders. Label in pencil or white out old labels.
Finally, recycle, recycle, recycle.
According to the EPA, recycling one ton of paper would save enough energy to power the average American home for six months, save 7,000 gallons of water, and save 3.3 cubic yards of landfill space.
The EPA also reports that recycling paper instead of making it from new material generates 74% less air pollution.
•Set up a paper recycling station in your office.
o Next to the printer makes recycling easy, although don’t forget to reuse paper that has only been printed on one side.
•If your office does not recycle paper, check to see if there is a paper-retriver bin nearby: http://www.paperretriever.com/. If there is no bin nearby, consider being the sponsor of a bin, which could earn your organization money.
•Purchase recycled paper products such as office paper, toilet-paper, paper-towels, napkins, plates, etc.
o Optimally, your office should purchase 100% post-consumer recycled paper products.
Finally, use the paper calculator (http://www.edf.org/papercalculator/), to calculate environmental savings resulting from your paper purchasing choices.
In a perfect world, we could all bring reusable food containers and coffee mugs every time we visited a restaurant or cafe. However, when we’re ordering takeout, we forget to bring our own containers with us, or if they’re just inconvenient to carry on the go, we often need to use disposable boxes and cups.
With biodegradable take-out containers cheaper than ever, now is a great time for restaurants and cafes to do away with Styrofoam and paper and to adopt greener alternatives. While these alternatives do cost more than the traditional Styrofoam and paper cups and containers, their additional cost is relatively marginal over the course of a business year.
Whereas Styrofoam cups cost $25 per 1000, biodegradable cups can cost as little as $100 for 1000. This means that if your business uses 1000 disposable cups a year, the additional cost would be only $75 per year, which is the amount of money you might make in a single business day. With take-out containers, the additional costs for biodegradables can be less than $140 a year, if your business goes through 1000 of them in that time span.
That’s all it would cost to help curb the use and disposal of Styrofoam, a product that takes a minimum of 20 generations (500 years) to biodegrade, was made using a nonrenewable resource (petroleum), and could potentially be ingested by animals when it inevitably breaks into small pieces.
Paper cups, in many cases, have even fewer redeemable qualities than Styrofoam, considering that they do not insulate heat nearly as well, take much more energy to produce, and cost well more than Styrofoam, at about $80 per 1000 units—which is only about $20 less than some biodegradable alternatives.
When the time it takes for many paper cups to decompose (over 20 years, if the cup is coated with wax) is factored in, paper looks even less attractive than Styrofoam from both an economic and environmental standpoint.
Thus, while large chain restaurants might save a substantial amount of money using traditional Styrofoam, paper, and plastic, small businesses can substantially reduce their environmental footprint with only a minor additional investment in biodegradable take-out boxes and cups.
Here are some resources that explain the economics and environmental impact of Styrofoam, paper, and plastic disposable containers:
And the following links provide a good sampling and explanation of some biodegradable alternatives:
Filed under Business, recycle, Reduce, Resources, Restaurants
Many of the items we use on a daily basis produce a large amount of waste. Much of our trash comes from food and beverage containers. You eat a bag of chips, and then that bag sits in a landfill for years. Other common sources of trash include school and office supplies, small electronics, and shipping materials. However, there are ways to actually make money from items that normally go straight into the trash.
Here are five types of items that you can get paid to get rid of in an environmentally friendly way.
1. Food and beverage containers
Within the last few years, a new company known as TerraCycle has found a creative way to reuse candy wrappers, chip bags, beverage containers, and even wine corks. They take in these types of trash and then turn them into useable products, such as school and office supplies. The best part is, TerraCycle will pay you for your trash. By registering your organization (usually a school, scout troop, or non-profit), you can begin to keep track of what you send to the company. The price is usually $0.02 per piece of trash, but it all adds up to help produce less trash and raise money for local schools or charities.
For more information, visit http://www.terracycle.net
2. Cardboard
Businesses that ship and receive lots of items end up with lots of boxes to deal with. They can be recycled normally, but unfortunately such facilities are not always available, or easy to take your cardboard to. For businesses with a large amount of cardboard, a web-based company will actually pay you for your used shipping boxes. They require loads of at least 5,000 boxes, but they will work with the business to arrange pickups and payment.
For more information, visit http://www.usedcardboardboxes.com
3. Appliances
If you have appliances that are still useable, they can always be donated to organizations such as The Salvation Army or Goodwill. Often, donating any items (not just appliances) can get you a tax write-off, so you save money at the end of the year. But if they are broken, large appliances can be sold for scrap metal. Contact your local junkyard or metal recycler for more information and prices.
4. Ink Cartridges
Offices, schools, and even households can go through quite a number of ink cartridges in a year. Not only are they costly to replace, they contain plastics and many chemicals that are best not thrown into a landfill. Thankfully there are ways to get paid for your old ink and toner cartridges. Some companies refill them and then sell the refurbished cartridges for cheaper than new ones. Others recycle the entire cartridge. A quick search online will bring you to many companies that will pay you anywhere from a few cents to several dollars per used ink cartridges. Check to find a local company, or shop around to see which service fits your needs best.
5. Sports Equipment
Spring is finally here, and soon we’ll all be heading to the track, field, court, or diamond on our days off and weekends. If it’s time for a new racket or bat, some stores exist that will let you trade in old items for a discount on new ones. The company Play It Again Sports has locations across the country, including right here in Southwest PA.
For old athletic shoes, Nike runs a program called Reuse-A-Shoe. You can donate your old shoes, which will be ground up and used to back the rubber for running tracks, padding under tennis courts, and a variety of other uses. Individuals and send their old shoes in to be recycled. Local schools, gyms, and other groups looking for a new athletic surface can research how to get one made from recycled shoes.
For more information, visit http://www.playitagainsports.com
And for Nike’s Reuse-A-Shoe, visit http://www.nikereuseashoe.com
Great Allegheny Passage Sustainable Business Network 