Month: October 2010

I know that this is really random, but my uncle re-did the SAS office in Toronto and I thought it was pretty cool. Everything is super sustainable, all businesses should be doing things like these. Sustainable business shouldn’t always have to be what you sell to your customers or how you market yourself, it should be the impact that you are making on the community around you.

SAS Canada wins recognition for environmental leadership

City of Toronto honours SAS as runner up for the Green Toronto Award for Energy Conservation, and Maclean’smagazine names SAS one of Canada’s Greenest Employers

Toronto  (Apr. 24, 2009)  –  SAS Canada, the leader in business analytics, has been honoured for its initiatives in environmental sustainability by both the City of Toronto and Maclean’s magazine.

The City of Toronto named SAS as runner up for the 2009 Green Toronto Award for Energy Conservation at a public ceremony on April 23, held at the Direct Energy Centre in Exhibition Place.  In 2008, the SAS Canada building consumed 62% less energy than the equivalent typical Ontario office building.

“When we broke ground on our headquarters in 2005 we didn’t set out to build Canada’s first LEED-certified newly constructed commercial office building – our goal was to build the best working environment for our staff and tenants, and to integrate into the community,” said Carl Farrell, Executive Vice President, SAS Americas. “But we are an employee-driven culture and green initiatives are an important priority for our staff; so it was common sense for us to take a leadership role in reducing our environmental footprint.”

It is this eco-conscious corporate culture that also compelled Canada’s national news magazine, Maclean’s, to name SAS one of Canada’s Greenest Employers for 2009. The special designation recognizes employers that lead the nation in making environmental values part of their organization’s culture. SAS was selected on the strengths of its LEED-certified Toronto headquarters, as well as sustainability policies such as providing filtered drinking water instead of bottled water; providing plates, cutlery, mugs and glasses to discourage the use of disposable items; and donating used laptops and personal computers to schools and charitable organizations.

SAS Canada headquarters facts

• LEED Silver certification: the SAS building is the first new commercial office building in Canada to be certified LEED Silver. The building meets LEED Canada’s five criteria for environmentally innovative building methods – Sustainable Site, Water Efficiency, Energy & Atmosphere, Materials & Resources and Indoor Environmental Quality.
• Rainwater harvesting system: collects more than one million litres of water each year for toilet and urinal flushing, and landscaping purposes; reduces load on city sewer system and demand for municipal potable water; low-flow hands-free washroom fixtures prevent waste.
• Reduced energy consumption and intensity (electricity and natural gas): SAS Canada building used 62% less energy per square metre in 2008 than a typical Ontario office building – 269 Kilowatt hours per square meter per year versus the average Ontario office building’s 719 Kilowatt hours per square meter per year; the Building Automation System allows constant monitoring to identify and resolve excess energy uses, and implement load-shedding strategies to operate only the devices necessary.
• Reduced heat island effect: heat reflective roof reduces ambient temperature in the immediate neighbourhood, and within the building.
• Lighting: floor-to-ceiling windows on south and west sides allow optimal levels of interior daylight and a three-storey high atrium topped with a skylight admits additional daylight into the interior top three floors. Low E glass coatings reduce amount of heat entering through windows while allowing 95% of light through. Indirect lighting uses 30% less energy and distributes up to 50% more light than typical overhead fixtures. Totally indirect overhead lighting means no computer screen glare or lighting “hotspots”; lighting uses T5HO light tubes (highest efficiency/lowest CO2 emissions) versus T12 or T8 fluorescent tubes.
• Air quality: under-floor air distribution saves cooling energy and adds enhanced comfort through improved air quality; workspaces equipped with manually adjustable floor air diffusers; ultra-efficient air filtering (95%) ensures optimal air quality; all materials used in building construction and interior design are low-VOC (i.e. emit little or no volatile organic compounds, toxins or odours).
• Recyclable materials content: carpet tiles are made from more than 90% recycled content and are 100% recyclable; almost all office chairs are 100% recyclable and were made in a factory powered by wind-generated electricity; building structure is made of concrete with a high percentage of recycled material which can be recycled at its end of life.
• Recycling program: all desks and workspaces are supplied with normal waste and recycling bins. The collected building waste is further sorted into three streams by contracted staff before entering the external waste stream. The SAS Building diverts more than 85% of its generated waste from landfills; all SAS printers are set to default double-side printing to reduce paper use.
• Kitchen areas: SAS supplies reusable cups, plates and utensils to eliminate paper or plastic waste; serveries on each floor are equipped with chilled and filtered water from special faucets rather than bottled water.
• Transportation: 9 transit routes within ¼ mile of building; free employee shuttle bus to Union Station during morning and evening rush hours; secure indoor bicycle storage and shower/changing facilities.

After living in Australia during the drought and summer water restrictions and going up to my cabin where we use rain water, I have learned some good little tricks to personally save water.

In Australia you are limited to four minute showers. Turn off the tap when you’re lathering up. My shower had a timer in it – four minutes is not a long time. We would collect the water in a bucket when we turned it on and the water was warming up. We would then use this water to water our vegetable garden. And only water the vegetable garden in the morning and evening – its too hot during the day and will just make it evaporate!

Australian toilets actually have two flushes. A light flush and a ‘heavier’ flush. At my cabin if it yellow let it mellow if its brown flush it down… you know the saying…

Turn off the tap when you’re brushing your teeth! The shower water at my cabin is heated on the fire, so there is only so much you can have. Its amazing how efficient you can become in the shower when you don’t have a lot of water.

Some other tips:

Adjust sprinklers so only your lawn is watered and not the house, sidewalk, or street. A lot of people do this…

Use the garbage disposal sparingly. Compost vegetable food waste instead and save gallons every time.

For cold drinks keep a pitcher of water in the refrigerator instead of running the tap. This way, every drop goes down you and not the drain.

Wash your fruits and vegetables in a pan of water instead of running water from the tap.

When washing dishes by hand, fill the sink basin or a large container and rinse when all of the dishes have been soaped and scrubbed.

Washing dark clothes in cold water saves both on water and energy while it helps your clothes to keep their colors.

Run your clothes washer and dishwasher only when they are full. You can save up to 1,000 gallons a month.

It shouldn’t be a new thing. Businesses should make reducing their water footprint fundamental. They need to figure out what their current footprint is and then figure out a plan to reduce it.

I thought this was an interesting article:

In doing water footprint inventory, the ultimate goal is to understand how water resources may be used to arrive at efficient ways of allocating such in the production of goods and services. This could be in the “work in progress” production phase or during transportation and the company needs to take responsibility for the fact that this happens. While it may well be beyond the borders of the organization, the fact is that the company’s demand for the supplier’s product is the cause of this water usage.

Fundamentally, in the production stage, water used should be from a renewable source, where at all possible. Water is likely to be as volatile a political subject as carbon emissions in the future. We need to consider how stakeholders and consumers become increasingly aware that water is taken from common resources which could get depleted or contaminated.

Water can become a very critical issue for any industry or business. Questions will govern its efficient use, but it can also be a potentially inflammatory issue after the fact as well. There should be efforts done to recycle water as discharge and runoff from water use can become one of the biggest pollution concerns.

For any related risks attributed to water use and resources, any company that understands such issues well would find the urgency to take action to reduce water consumption when possible. So many factors can combine to place a premium on water. For instance, local ground and weather conditions which cause temporary drought. Consider how market conditions could cause energy fluctuations and a corresponding demand for water generated power and so on.

Water related risks can change significantly depending on the geographical location of a company facility. Therefore, for distributed organizations, an assessment of such risks must take in to account regional disparities, local political positions and attitudes.

The corporate approach must be modified to reduce water consumption from a global perspective. Essentially, we have not increased our water efficiency over the last couple of decades, choosing to place most emphasis on energy efficiency and carbon emissions. Sustainability is multifaceted and cannot be polarized.

Register your blog on the Blog Action Day site. The theme today is water! So everyone blog about water!

Its something that you might not normally think about, but we were discussing it in my Geog class and I thought it was pretty interesting… and shocking…

The water footprint is an indicator of water use that includes both direct and indirect water use of a consumer or producer. The water footprint of an individual, community or business is defined as the total volume of freshwater that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by the individual or community or produced by the business.

Would never have guessed:
70 litres of water for one apple.
15500 litres of water for one kg of beef.
75 litres of water for one beer.
140 litres of water for one cup of coffee.

Crazy huh?

This is the best: (maybe don’t eat hamburgers anymore…)

This is kind of neat: http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=cal/WaterFootprintCalculator
Figure out what your water footprint is!

Facebook: Unfriend Coal

A ‘cute’ perspective on Sustainable Business. Something you might not always think about when sitting for hours on facebook…