Administrative Stuff, Buildings, Conservation and Recycling, Pollution Prevention

A Teachable Moment and My Thanks

February 1, 2012

This week’s blog is about improvements to the Resources page on GreenWorksGov. It’s the tab to the upper right of the current blog on the home page. Over the past two years, I’ve added a few new Internet resource links. I am sure I have hundreds of Internet links that you can find on the weekly blogs, but I haven’t added them all to the Resources page. I’m happy to announce that the Resources page and the Internet links are being reorganized to include new links and eventually, to include all the major links from previous blogs.

The new Internet Resources are organized under major subject headings—Climate Change, General Resources, the Green Lawyer, Key Congressional Committees Addressing Climate Change, and By the Categories, which is broken down by the blog’s major categories of Buildings, Conservation and Recycling, Pollution Prevention, and Administrative Stuff.

You’ll find that the Internet resources are now organized by these headings, making it easier, I hope, to search for resources and to locate links you read about and want to refer to again.

I want to take the opportunity to thank the students and Ms. Otylia Baranowski, tutor and Captain of Team Nemo and Team Planet, from the 9th grade science class at the Colonial Academy. They were my inspiration to upgrade the Internet resources listings on GreenWorksGov. The students undertook a project to identify resources that they found would be helpful to add to the GreenWorksGov Internet resources. Ms. Baranowski sent me the students’ recommendations, and they collectively form a valuable enhancement to the Internet site listings. I am so proud of their diligence and achievement. With environmentally-aware students like these, I know that we can be optimistic that they and future generations can meet the challenges of climate change.

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Administrative Stuff

Is There a Champion in Your Corner?

January 25, 2012

Last week, I wrote about the Natural Step process that helps guide organizations to go green. One of the references in the Natural Step’s Sustainability Primer is Bob Willard’s 2009 book, “The Sustainability Champion’s Guidebook”. Bob Willard, a resident of Toronto, Canada, is a well-known author and presenter on sustainability for business settings. The Natural Step Primer stresses the importance of organizations having individuals who will step up and be champions for sustainability.

When our office undertook the effort to apply for LEED existing building certifications for several of our legal office buildings, I recall that we were asked, “Who are your champions who will help collect the information needed to complete the applications?” That stuck with me—the notion that it takes the vision coupled with the commitment to achieve a greener office. For each of our green objectives, we have been fortunate to have one or more people volunteer to serve as leads on the projects, in effect they were the champions.

People are willing to be champions when they share a vision and are comfortable that they have the knowledge and ability to succeed at achieving an objective that moves the organization closer to its vision. When I reflect on the objectives our team set for our green efforts in the past few years, we went through a process that made our team aware of our starting point and the benefits we could realize if we advocated changes in our business practices, supported new measures, or sponsored events to engage our employees in reducing our carbon footprint. I think the time we took to educate ourselves and others so that we shared a common understanding was important to the ultimate successes we’ve attained.

Like other organizations which have been engaged in going green for some time, we’ve picked the “low hanging fruit”. To further advance our sustainability goals, we need to tackle policies and practices that are more complex. For example, it’s one thing to buy office supplies with recycled content-- Done! Check! It’s quite another thing to set a policy standard that suppliers implement sustainable policies all the way up their supply chain (from sourcing, to production, to transport, to packaging and disposal). Or, it’s one thing to offer discounted mass transit passes to encourage employees to commute by bus or train, but it’s not so simple to institute a teleworking program that allows a large portion of the workforce to avoid commuting to the office once a week. Yet, these and other alternatives to lower our carbon footprint are the “next up on the agenda” issues for offices who espouse sustainability as a worthy imperative.

There is no straight line to green; there are many different ways to be greener. Remember, this is a journey and what will work for one office may not work in another. We need to understand the unique culture of our offices before we can prioritize which measures are most likely to garner support and have the greatest positive impact. And we need champions. We need people on our green teams who have the desire and determination to undertake the work of marshalling the facts and the figures and present compelling proposals to decision-makers. To learn more about the “Sustainability Champion’s Guidebook”, click here.

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Administrative Stuff

The Science of Climate Change in Plain English

January 18, 2012

The majority of blogs I write are practical; they are about greening office business policies and operations. That is, after all, the point of GreenWorksGov. I believe that going green makes sense on several levels and there’s something for everyone to support. Cut back on spending and save money, prioritize limited resources, increase efficiencies, leverage rebates, demonstrate environmental stewardship, and step up to mitigate the effects of climate change. Any or all of these are reasons, and good ones, for going green.

Green teams and the leaders of green office efforts spend a good deal of time staying current with trends and practices around the country and the globe and identifying resources that offer ideas and practical alternatives to achieve a greener workplace. There is less time to delve into scientific papers on climate change itself, nor do many of us possess the educational grounding to digest them. As chair of our Green Office team and author of this blog, I feel an obligation to become as well-informed as I can on the underpinnings of climate change, its impacts, and the effects of our choices on the trajectory of climate change impacts on various sectors—economic, environmental, and societal.

The most recent report from the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) is as advertized—an authoritative scientific report written in plain language. Entitled, “Global Climate Change Impacts in the US”, it summarizes the current and likely effects of climate change and reports on strategies and actions being taken or that can be taken to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change. The report makes clear it is not evaluating the various options, leaving that task to other scientific agencies and organizations and future research.

I find the report easy to read on-line. It is comprehensive, however, and best digested in bite-sized chunks. For example, there are separate chapters devoted to geographical impacts of climate change on the United States by region. I read the chapter on Coasts, and will work my way around the country and globe. Also, the impacts are divided into sectors: water, energy, transportation, agriculture, ecosystems, human health and society. By writing and organizing the report to examine impacts through various lenses as well as ensuring it is written in clear and understandable language, the USGCRP has done a very good job. Excerpts could be the topics of green newsletter columns and Intranet articles to increase employee awareness for months to come.

The US Global Change Research Program was mandated by Congress in 1990 to be an integrated research program “to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change.” The program coordinates and integrates the research work of 13 federal agencies and departments. Click here to learn more.

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Administrative Stuff, Buildings, Conservation and Recycling, Pollution Prevention

Wendel Rosen Takes The Natural Step to Going Green

January 11, 2012

One of my objectives in writing GreenWorksGov is to profile the successful green business practices of law firms, public agencies, and businesses. Wendel Rosen is a law firm in the Bay Area that has been involved in going green for nearly ten years. That’s impressive, but even more so is what the firm has accomplished. In 2003, Wendel Rosen became a certified Bay Area Green Business, and in recognition of their continuing commitment to sustainable business practices, has been the recipient of numerous awards and commendations.

Here are some of the steps the firm has taken to reduce its carbon footprint:

· Moving to all "Energy Star" electronics

· Worked with building on waste separation and recycling programs

· Give purchasing preferences to items with high recycled content

· Converted many internal memos and reports to email versions

· Set default copying procedure for double-sided wherever feasible

· Shifted to 100% post-consumer content, chlorine-free paper

Wendel Rosen formed a Sustainability Team comprised of attorneys and staff to tackle the challenge of identifying actions the firm could take to meet the high standards of Bay Area Green Business certification. The firm follows The Natural Step Sustainability Framework, created by Karl-Henrik Robert, a Swedish physician and cancer specialist. If you haven’t heard of The Natural Step, neither had I. According to their website, the Framework “builds on a basic understanding of what makes life possible, how our biosphere functions and how we are part of the earth’s natural systems. Rather than get lost in abstract definitions and causes, it builds on a platform of basic science and is designed to allow true interdisciplinary, cross sector cooperation for concrete and measurable change towards sustainability.”

As I understand it, The Natural Step provides that tangible link between “sustainability” and the actions we ask of employees, for example, printing back to back. It provides the larger framework of the natural world around us and our relationship to all living things and helps us to understand how the choices we make in our daily lives, at work and at home, impact our environment for better or worse.

There are some very helpful resources on the website, and one I think should be required reading for every member of a green team is the sustainability primer. This is an excellent resource to link to on your Intranets. Click here for a pdf of the primer for the US. The website has other versions for other languages and countries. The Natural Step is headquartered in Sweden, with offices around the world.

The Wendel Rosen team and the firm continue to look for ways to conserve energy, reduce waste, and increase staff’s use of mass transit. I really like their commitment to work within their larger communities to improve the environment and promote sustainable economies. Learn more about Wendel Rosen by clicking here.

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Administrative Stuff

Leaner is Greener

January 4, 2012

A lot of people kick off the New Year and head to the gym with firm resolve to lose weight and get fit. I’m one of them. In recent years, I’ve given more thought to weight loss and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and more specifically how our fondness for meat is a major factor in global emissions. Green office teams can tie in to health and safety units’ promotion of healthy lifestyles, weight loss clinics, and double the savings of pounds and greenhouse gases by making information available to employees on the advantages to health and the environment when we cut down on the amounts of certain foods, particularly beef.

Google “obesity and greenhouse gases” and you’ll find plenty of “food for thought” about the harmful effects that raising animals and eating them have on our environment and state of health. I read one startling fact in Scientific American that eating a hamburger patty is the ghg emissions equivalent of driving a car for 10 miles. Many of the articles have a common theme and prescriptive—eat less meat. And more than a few attempt to persuade the reader to become a vegetarian. Today’s blog isn’t about telling anybody else what to eat, but in the spirit of honoring my New Year’s intention, I found this list of 5 dietary principles from Livewell to be worth clipping to my refrigerator:

Five simple rules can make a difference to our health and the planet

1) Eat more plants - enjoy fruit and vegetables

2) Waste less food - up to 30% of what is brought home is wasted

3) Eat less meat - Meat, be it red or white, can be a tasty complement rather than just a center piece of a good meal

4) Eat less processed food - as they tend to be more resource intensive to produce and often contain high levels of sugar, fat and salt

5) Eat certified food - buy food that meets a credible certified standard - like MSC for fish or RSPO for palm oil or RSPCA Freedom Foods for meat and eggs. (These are UK certifications. In the US, to be certified organic approximately means a product has met the standards of the USDA and is certified by a state, federal, or third-party independent organization that adheres to USDA standards. Learn more by clicking here.)

I live in a city where we have a good selection of organic food products and fresh produce in our supermarkets and specialty stores. In the spring and summer months, we have an abundance of farmers’ markets held in parks and mall parking lots. Consider making information available on your Intranet websites on where employees can find organic foods.

Another idea is for green teams to partner with health and safety units to sponsor a pledge campaign that invites employees to volunteer to give up eating meat one day a week. Or organize an office weight loss campaign and encourage employees to volunteer to weigh in weekly. At the end of the campaign, host a party to celebrate the collective savings of pounds and greenhouse gases.

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