Success Stories

The WSP Group office in Boulder, CO is tucked away on the shady side of the street, across from Boulder Creek.  Tia Hansen, a consultant in the Environment and Energy section of WSP, has only worked there for six months, but she is already a cheerleader for one of WSP's big internal projects, called PACT.  PACT stands for Personal Allowance Carbon Tracking and is a voluntary program currently offered to around two thirds of WSP's 9,000 staff as an ever growing pilot.

 

WSP is a global consulting firm that offers global design, engineering, and management services.  When Tia started at WSP in the Environment and Energy department six months ago, she was told about the PACT program and immediately signed up.  Her thinking was "how can we help our clients if we don't take this seriously ourselves?"  Additionally, Tia was curious about her personal carbon footprint.

 

The PACT program was designed and is managed by a team in the UK.  Everything is done electronically, from logging information to emails sent out about once a month providing practical ideas to reduce carbon emissions and featuring every month a "carbon hero" who has performed particularly well. WSP was fortunate to have the resources to develop this software for internal use.  Additionally, they license it out to customers who want to track their carbon usage, but don't want to develop their own program.

 

PACT is designed so each employee has an allotted amount of carbon emissions for the year.  US employees are given 8 tons of carbon for personal use during one year.  Actions are logged quarterly and the program only takes a few minutes to complete.  Once employees are signed into the online system, their personal dashboard comes up, displaying their benchmarks against themselves and their colleagues (anonymously, of course).  Then the employee is led through a series of questions and drop-down menus to measure their carbon emissions over the past quarter.  While some things must be estimated, the system can get as detailed as putting in your meter readings from your home.  The program measures home energy readings, taking into account square footage, number of occupants, and usage, then calculates the employee's share of the energy used.

 

Employees also input their commuting habits and vacation travel.  Tia uses the drop-down menu to classify her car as a small hybrid and types in her mileage.  She also logs a recent trip she took to California for vacation.  She was surprised to note that her air travel constituted the largest portion of her carbon emissions over the past six months. 

 

Sixteen hundred employees worldwide are participating in the current phase of the pilot program, and Tia expects membership to grow, both as more WSP staff sign up, and also as other companies take on PACT for their staff.  One of the incentives for getting employees to participate is a small financial bonus for employees who come in under their allotted carbon allowance.  Conversely, if they go over their allowance in a given year, there is a small financial penalty, which is then donated to a local charity.  The average employee ends up reducing their carbon footprint by 10% during their first year of the program.

 

For Tia, being a part of the program is more than the financial gain or loss, although the reward/risk aspect makes it more engaging.  She hopes that through this program she will have a better understanding of the implications of her daily activities.  And through that understanding, she will be better at her job and continue to reduce her personal carbon emissions.

 

Written by Kristin Friedery, CORE Intern

 

How to write a success story

 

• Pick ONE initiative to tell about:
• Rather than listing off several initiatives, we ask that you pick just one to focus on for this success story.  By picking just one of the many great things your company is doing, you will be able to create a more complete picture for the reader of what you have accomplished. 
• 
  
• Pick an employee to anchor the story:
• This could be someone who helped begin the initiative or someone who can speak to the benefits.  People like reading stories that have characters, so give your audience someone to connect to.
• 
  
• Have a beginning, middle, and end:
• Tell how the initiative got started, what challenges you had to overcome (ie: not enough support at the start, not successful at first, etc…), talk about how you overcame those challenges, what success looks like now, and finally, give a taste of where you are headed in the future. 
• 
  
• Don’t make it just about the numbers:
• People want to read a story, not a list of facts and figures.  However, we know you may have some impressive CO₂ emissions reductions and huge cost savings.  The key is to pick the best numbers and weave them into the right places in the story.

• Be specific:
• When describing your initiatives, give specific actions that your company/employees take.  When demonstrating the success of your initiative, cite important numbers and data that show your success. 
• 
  
• Ask yourself, “is this something I would want to read?”:
• A good story is informative, but also engaging.  It should be a piece of writing that helps those not familiar with your company understand who you are and what you are doing.

• Finally, a few specifications:
• 500-750 words: people won’t read much beyond that
• Save as a .txt. Our website struggles with .doc or .pdfs
• Either email us your logo or upload it to the CORE website
• Indicate a few places we can include hyperlinks. e.g.: your company’s website, definitions for industry terms, a press release about your sustainability efforts, etc…
• o   Email your story to pete@corecolorado.org

(Submitted by CORE member Ellen Fortier) The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has earned a 2011 Platinum-level Award from the Federal Electronics Challenge (FEC) recognizing NREL’s efforts to help the federal government improve its sustainable practices.

 

NREL achieved the award by tracking lifecycle data for electronic equipment, retiring old CRT monitors and replacing them with LCD units, ensuring the environmentally friendly disposal of electronics, and reviewing and revising NREL's policies to make the lab’s information technology environment more energy efficient.

 

In addition, NREL drafted a case study on the new Research Support Facility’s (RSF) desktop computing and data center policies. The study documented a 75 percent decline in NREL's overall power consumption at the user’s desktop, and a drop to an average 1.16 PUE (power usage effectiveness), or less, in RSF data center

 

“NREL’s Sustainability Program has been in place for more than a decade and we strive to be a leader when it comes to sustainability practices,” NREL Director of Sustainability Frank Rukavina said. “NREL continues to look for ways to decrease our environmental footprint while conducting world class renewable energy and energy efficiency research.”

 

This is the first time a Platinum-level FEC award has been available. In past years, NREL’s efforts have garnered two gold awards and one silver award. The Federal Electronics Challenge is managed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Office of the Federal Environmental Executive.

 

NREL is the U.S. Department of Energy's primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. NREL is operated for DOE by The Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC.

A catalyst.  That’s how Steve Schueth describes registered investment advisor, First Affirmative Financial Network, LLC., of which he is president.  While it may be difficult for some to think of how an investment firm could be good at anything other than making money, First Affirmative is proof that by strategically directing the flow of capital, anyone can make a difference.  Using both investing practices and the annual SRI in the Rockies Conference, the company is constantly pushing the envelope on behalf of their clients.

First Affirmative’s core business is investment strategies.  Clients come to the firm for help managing money.  However, these clients are not merely content with the age-old strategy of “make as much money as you can, however you can, and give some of it away.”  They want their investments to make an impact.  Steve refers to this as a “double bottom line return” which includes both making money and making a difference.

First Affirmative uses several tactics to enable investments to make a difference.  In making investment recommendations and managing portfolios for clients, they screen investment opportunities not only for financial performance, but also ESG criteria.  ESG stands for environmental, social, and governmental practices.  ESG factors tend to be effective indicators of ethically and sustainably sound companies.  Significant data also suggests that better management of ESG factors is a way to identify better long-term management of the company as a whole.

Shareholder advocacy is another way that First Affirmative makes clients’ voices heard.  In addition to voting proxies and engaging companies in dialogue, First Affirmative files or co-files about a dozen proxy resolutions each year.  This can be a very effective way to get the attention of a corporate board of directors.  Proxy resolutions have the double goal of improving financial performance and improving a company’s ESG management, thereby enhancing shareowner value over the long term.

Additionally, First Affirmative incorporates local community-based investments into client portfolios.  Community development financial institutions (CDFIs) allow for a more direct connection between the investor and the impact they see.  Many clients like investing in their local communities and being able to see first hand what their money has enabled others to accomplish.While all of these practices are client services and therefore adjusted based on the desires and risk tolerance of the client, Steve looks at the overall impact that First Affirmative is having in the world.  He likens the process of catalyzing at shift toward a more sustainable future to rolling a boulder up a mountain.  “It’s easier that it was five or ten years ago.  We are getting more voices and more shoulders behind the push…  We have got to get the money part right!”

Beyond its core business, First Affirmative produces the annual SRI in the Rockies Conference for the sustainable and responsible investment industry.  Having started in the front range of the Rockies, the conference now moves all over the country.  The requests for proposal that are sent out each year to various suitable venues include the Ceres requirements for their Green Hotel Initiative.  When First Affirmative began asking hotels about green/sustainability efforts, many of them didn’t even have recycling programs in place or ways to reduce water usage.  But these RFPs have acted as another catalyst for the sustainability movement by pushing hotels and conference centers to think about their environmental footprint.  Now most potential conference venues have measures in place to be more compliant with the Green Hotel Initiativeundefinedand hotel chains are competing with one another on how “green” they are.

 

“There are those of us who can envision a truly sustainable economy.  The question is how do we get from here to there?” Steve says.  The philosophy of First Affirmative Financial Network is that strategically directing capital can help move us all toward truly a sustainable future.  So Steve will continue to roll the stone uphill and First Affirmative will continue to be a catalyst for change.

Written by Kristin Friedery, CORE Intern

 

Arriving at the Prologis office buildings out by Denver International Airport can be intimidating; the two giant buildings loom over their surroundings.  But Jennifer Leitsch’s welcoming personality immediately puts her visitors at ease.  She, as the Corporate Responsibility Manager, quickly begins sharing about a few different unique things that Prologis is doing within the realm of sustainability, including the large renewable energy initiative (learn more about that here).  Obviously proud of what the company has accomplished, Jennifer settles into discussing an employee program called CR Champions.

 

The Corporate Responsibility Champion initiative was the brainchild of Jennifer’s predecessor, Sarah Martinez, and Jennifer is happy to carry on the program into the future.  In 2008, Prologis had firmly put a stake in the ground as a green building company, using LEED certified buildings as the cornerstone of their business.  But there was a disconnect between this outward sustainability focus and the internal corporate operations.  This is where the CR Champions came into play.

 

CR Champions are Prologis employees who volunteer for the position.  Some offices have 5 or 6, but the goal is for every office worldwide to have at least one CR Champion.  The employee’s role is to educate their coworkers, promote sustainability measures, and implement initiatives in their local office.  CR Champions are strictly volunteers and do not get any additional compensation for their extra work.

 

To start off the program, the employee volunteers were asked to brainstorm ideas for making their offices more environmentally friendly.  These ideas were sorted and compiled into an interactive PDF called The Green Path.  This document is available to all employees and makes it easy for CR Champions to pick an initiative to pursue within their local office.  The idea is that no matter where you are on the path to being “greener,” there is always something more you can do.

 

In the first year of program, CR Champions were asked to pick just one initiative from The Green Path to implement.  This could be as simple as changing all the light bulbs in the office to CFLs or as involved as switching to low-flow toilets throughout the building.  During this year, data collection was not a priority, something that Jennifer hopes to change in the future.  However, through anecdotal data collected through quarterly conference calls, the project was deemed a success.  So they upped the ante for the second year and champions were asked to look at three initiatives to implement in their office. 

 

One of the benefits of having CR Champions in each office is that it has opened up unique lines of communication between satellite offices and Prologis headquarters.  Additionally, Prologis does not have a central procurement function, so each office has their own system of making decisions.  By discussing and sharing resources and ideas between offices, each office can work better to find more environmentally friendly procurement options.

 

Understandably, the recent merger of ProLogis with AMB has disrupted life as usual within the corporate offices.  As things are settling into a new normal, Jennifer is working to get CR Champions signed up from the new offices created from the merger.  She hopes that soon the lines of communication will be established between all the new and old CR Champions to build a bigger and better CR network for the future of the company.

 

Additionally, the initiatives are shifting from a singularly green focus to adding a social component.  Prologis employees are allowed 4 paid days off to volunteer.  Two of those days are reserved for company sponsored activities and the other two are for the employee to volunteer with an organization of their own interest.  The CR Champions will be the point people in each office to help organize group volunteering and answer any questions people might have about how they can spend these volunteer days.

 

By moving forward with the CR Champions program, Prologis will be able to differentiate itself not only in the marketplace with customers, but also in the local communities surrounding its many office locations around the world.  Additionally, employees feel more engaged with the values of the company when they see them lived out in their own workspace.

Written by Kristin Friedery, CORE Intern

Renewable Choice Energy is a company founded on the idea that you can do well in business by doing good.  In order to help reduce carbon emissions and promote renewable energy, the company offers a variety of services (you can read more here).  Above and beyond this, Renewable Choice Energy is actively pursuing initiatives to get employees more excited about doing good for the environment.

 

Employees at Renewable Choice Energy are eager to share all the great things their company is doing.  Jamie Dandar, Director of Market Development, talks about how Renewable Choice sponsors several music festivals around Colorado to offset their carbon footprint with RECs (renewable energy credits).  She also mentions how happy she is to be working for a company that is actively working to fix problems that have frustrated her for awhile.  “I always get disheartened when I see someone throw away something that could easily be recycled,” she says.  And this same sentiment permeates the Boulder-based office.  Jamie pointed to the motion-sensory lights, and recycling and compost bins as examples of employees living out the values of the company.  

 

The carbon footprint from employee commuting and business travel is also tracked and measured every quarter.  Posted on the wall in the main hallway of the office is a large chart with every employee’s name along one side and working days along the top.  This chart tracks everyone’s commuting habits throughout each quarter.  One point is given for every day the employee takes alternative transportation to the office and one half of a point is given for every day the employee works from home. 

 

At the end of each quarter, the employee with the most points is declared the winner.  The prizes are various gift certificates and a celebration in honor of the winner’s efforts.  The goal of this initiative is for every employee to participate at least once a week in reducing their commute.  Looking at the chart it is obvious that employees care about reducing their carbon footprint.  The majority of the names have markings in almost every box, indicating that they seek out alternative transportation more than just once a week.  The chart is also a visual way for employees to note which of their coworkers might need a little extra encouragement to participate in the program.

 

Since implementing the program, employees have logged 750 days of emissions-free or emissions-reduced commuting.  With an average commute of 12 miles roundtrip, this can add up.  By doing the Commuter Challenge, Renewable Choice Energy annually saves 1,726.9 lbs of CO₂.  This amounts to almost two barrels of oil.  Even though Renewable Choice Energy is a small company, Amy Haddon, Director of Business Operations, says “Every little bit helps and if more companies participated it could make a big difference!”

 

Amy could not stress enough that the success of the employee commuting chart and the business as a whole comes from the buy-in of every employee from the top down.  She feels that working in an office environment that supports green practices helps people carry those practices throughout their lives, because it becomes the norm to act a certain way.  In the office it is easy to implement good ideas for new initiatives and achieve buy-in because everyone understands the benefits received.

 

For a business like Renewable Choice Energy, it is important for their success in the market that they walk the walk and not just talk the talk.  By engaging employees in actively reducing their own carbon footprint, they are reinforcing the values of their company and creating a more supportive workforce.  Employees like Jamie and Amy can say they are proud to work for a company that is actively working to make a difference.

Written by Kristin Friedery, CORE Intern

At the BolderPath headquarters, located in scenic Boulder, Colorado, Robert Bogatin sits forward in his chair, eager to talk about his company.  Faint sounds can be heard through the door of men loading equipment onto a truck as BolderPath is in the middle of expanding the capabilities of its LEED Gold sewing facility..  Samples of the innovative products hang on the walls, creating a tactile background for the story of BolderPath’s success.

Robert’s enthusiasm is obvious as he begins explaining his vision for revolutionizing the manufacturing business.  BolderPath’s success story is unique in that there isn’t just one initiative to focus on.  The mission of this small manufacturing company can be simply stated: “To realize scalable and sustainable systems for waste-to-product solutions.”  Robert was motivated into action by a personal passion for creating a higher quality of life for people without sacrificing the health of the planet.  As a serial entrepreneur, he saw the need for a revolution in traditional value chains and decided to make an impact within the manufacturing industry.

BolderPath has taken on the challenge of using repurposed materials for totes, laptop bags, and the like for corporate conferences and promotional merchandise.  Making bags out of non-recyclable resources such as vulcanized rubber and vinyl billboards, Robert and his team create new products that extend the useful life of these old materials.  As you can imagine, creating a supply chain for finding and maintaining these kinds of materials was not always easy.  Robert persevered and is to a point where companies are calling him, asking if he can do anything with their waste. 

However, as much as Robert believes in creating new products from repurposed waste, he doesn’t want to waste his time chasing down product designs that will not be sustainable and profitable. For this reason, BolderPath has created a software program that is used internally to assess the real time costs and ecological footprint of each design they create and every order they deliver.  Most reclaimed materials are readily available at lower quantities and more profitable in smaller projects, but that is not the most sustainable business model.  When scaling design solutions for Fortune 500 clients, the risks that must be considered include waste (resource) availability and proximity.  Additionally, the increased costs and footprint that result from larger collection programs should be looked at closely.

The ideal customer for BolderPath is a “supplustomer,” which is both supplier and customer. “It’s low hanging fruit for any company to start looking at waste because you are throwing away money.,” says Robert.  A great example of this is the work BolderPath has done for Microsoft's Convergence event. This year they provided an expo tote made almost entirely out of repurposed vinyl banners from previous Microsoft events.  In the fabric, you can make out some of the signature Microsoft images from their logo and promotional materials.  The plan for next year’s event is looking to change things up by building custom notebooks for the attendees.

“We are trying to present and display a model that is a paradigm shift,” says Robert.  He describes BolderPath’s business model in this way “There is no recycling market for everything we work with primarily, so we’re creating reuse markets and it’s our job to integrate it into designs that people want to buy.”  This model has certainly worked for BolderPath.  The company has grown to the point that it now receives 5- and 6-figure contracts from key clients.  And their unique approach has captured the attention of some A-list companies, such as Microsoft mentioned above, Aveda, and Qdoba Mexican Grill.  BolderPath is set to make a lasting impact on the manufacturing industry.

Written by Kristin Friedery, CORE Intern