Through this site, we will
crowd-source an online book
that showcases best practices
in Corporate Social Responsibility & Sustainability.
Share a 'Best Practice'
project of your good work
and receive a chance to be
published in our book:

My best practice is for:

And it is related to:

Summarize your best practice here:
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Our Workplace

A home should match its occupants and our Burlington office expansion reflects the heart of our company. Thanks to William Maclay Architects & Planners for “bringing nature inside” in their design for our 14,000 sq ft addition. The same principles that guided our first expansion, such as using FSC wood, Vermont stone, and working with LEED-trained professionals, drove our efforts again this time. We were even able to upgrade by using products that weren’t available earlier, like PVC-free edging. We expect to obtain LEED Gold certification for our interior space in 2009.

The architects and our office furniture suppliers, Business Interiors, used impressive ingenuity to ensure that every desk space has some natural light. “I love the open, airy feel of the building,” says Facilities Manager Anita Lavoie. “The office gave me free reign on the look and fabrics. I’m a closet interior decorator so that was a blast. The best part was everyone seemed to like what we did. I’m working on educational plaques now for our office walls that will tell the story about the materials we chose to use. Not everything went according to plan, though. We’re still working on finalizing our plant wall and will be planting our green roof in the spring of 2009.”

Burlington Office Environmental Footprint

Our Office Product Guidelines

Paper Product Purchasing:

  • Office printing materials (letterhead, envelopes, business cards, marketing materials, etc.) use 100% recycled, PCF (processed chlorine-free) paper and soy based inks.
  • Copy paper is 100% PCW (post-consumer waste), certified PCF (processed chlorine-free), endorsed by CFPA (Chlorine Free Products Association), and produced with bio gas energy.

Paper Recycling:

  • Paper recycler provides validation that all used paper from our office will be recycled into something else.

For other products, we look at:

  • the highest content post consumer/recycled product
  • products whose sales support a worthy cause
  • refillable options
  • non-toxic or dye-free products
  • like-minded businesses
  • local community businesses
  • shipping methods, distances, and shipping sizes (full vs. partial loads) that have the least environmental impact.

Office Hardware

The energy associated with computers, monitors and other office equipment is a large part of any company’s environmental footprint — not just in the operation of these machines but in their manufacturing and all too frequent disposal. Unfortunately it’s not as simple as finding Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) rated products, we’ve had to show a little Yankee ingenuity to make meaningful changes. We want to make sure our choices are good for the earth, not just our bottom line.

Office Trend Data

  2008 2007 2006
Square Footage 36,489 sq. ft. 22,186 sq. ft. 22,186
Electricity 150,600 KWH (High electrical use due to building project) 102,662 KWH 102,392 KWH
Natural Gas 15,179 CCF 7,216 CCF 6,394 CCF
CO2e Emissions 146 MT 81 MT 76 MT
CO2e MT/employee 0.59 MT 0.57 MT 0.74 MT
Composted Food Waste 780 gallons (service disrupted for part of year) 3,000 gallons Not available
Recycled Cardboard 5,120 pounds 3,120 pounds Not available
Other Recycling (glass, plastic, metal, cardboard) 141,180 Gallons 108,108 gallons Not available

Dan O’Shaughnessy, Senior IT Technical Analyst on IT’s Energy Reductions:

The first thing you need to know about me is that I grew up on a farm. On a farm, you use everything. So, I really hate waste.

That’s the way we all think here in IT. Normally, 50 percent of IT costs are due to cooling the server. Ours is in a 12’ x 12’ space. We dropped the ceiling two feet and added a door reducing the air volume that needs to be cooled by 60 percent. Most servers involve separate boxes for firewall, router, CSU/DSU and intrusion detection. We put all that in one box by using virtual server technology. We went from eight servers down to two (allowing for redundancy). Then we saved disk space by using a storage array system. Overall, we cut the carbon footprint of our server room by at least half. Now we’re trying to figure out how to bring all that cold Vermont air inside in the winter so we can cool our server naturally. The whole department is working towards our zero carbon IT goal.

Our motto here is “cap and grow.” We try not to throw anything away so only the new hires get computer upgrades. Right now we’re buying 25Watt desktop Lenovo monitors. These Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) Gold monitors use half the electricity of a standard monitor. Also, we don’t buy phones. We’re trying to reduce our workstations so we’ll just use headsets and computer number pads. If we ever have to retire any computers, they go to a Lenovo vendor that refurbishes them for charity or to a RecycleNorth training program that reuses them or sells the parts.

I thought I’d challenge myself and see if I could go off-grid for three months at work last summer. I got two off-the-shelf 7-watt solar panels (sold for RV use) and propped them up at my desk pointing toward the sun. They charged a marine battery clipped to a 400-watt converter. I plugged in a Kill-A-Watt meter and my desktop power strip. The entire set-up cost less than $300. With my laptop and monitor plugged in, I drew about 50-60 watts. I did pretty well running off the sun until we had a stretch of ten days of cloudy weather.

I’m doing the same kinds of things at home and have cut my electrical use by 60%. I’ve taken full advantage of the Seventh Generation $5000 loan to replace windows and I use the $500 that’s offered per year to upgrade appliances. I truly believe we need to reinvent our lifestyles if we are going to address climate and resource issues. We really don’t have time to waste.

Download Previous Reports (pdf)
2007 | 2006
Best Practice in Operations
Operations management is an area of business concerned with the production of goods and services, and involves the responsibility of ensuring that business operations are efficient in terms of using as little resource as needed, and effective in terms of meeting customer requirements. It is concerned with managing the process that converts inputs (in the forms of materials, labour and energy) into outputs (in the form of goods and services).
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