DETROIT -- Last week, the Detroit Office celebrated Earth Day not just on April 22nd, but throughout the course of last week.  Earth Day was all about giving back....  To the environment, that is.

Festivities began with the planning and preparation for Organic, Inc.'s first vegetable garden!  A few areas just outside of our downstairs conference rooms were transformed, tilled, and planted with veggies and herbs.  The soil is even organic.  Apropos, don't you think?

We took on a sort of "pay-to-play" approach with the garden.  If you take time to weed and water, you may reap the rewards.  Because Michigan weather is fickle and finicky, just a few plants have already found their way to the earth so far.  The rest will find their new homes in our Organic garden as we inch into summer when the danger of a frost has subsided.  (more pics after the jump)

--Erin Patterson

As you all have seen with the previous emails regarding making Organic a Green office; below is an update on where Detroit stands in this process.

• Switched all of our cleaning products to organic, biodegradable products (Method/Seventh Generation).
• Switched from Styrofoam to all paper products: all bio-degradable or recycled when possible.
• Switched to recycled paper.
• Recycling ink cartridges and batteries.
• Working with an organization (Youth Environmental Recycle) to recycle all empty cans and bottles.
• Brought in more recycling containers throughout the office for both confidential shredding and recycling.
• Much of the office lights have been switched to energy efficient light bulbs (working with building management to change the rest).
• Switched fruit to all organic and/or locally grown when in season and available.
• Junk mail stopped/recycled:  attached you will find a flyer on how to stop receiving junk mail at the office and your home. (I’ve actually done this in the past and love not receiving all the extra mail each day!).
• All garbage and waste that goes in our dumpsters are 100% recycled.  That includes paper, plastic, etc.

We are currently still working on:

• Establishing recycling bins for paper at every workstation (to be emptied nightly by cleaning staff).
• Installing timers on all the lights (some of our conference rooms/office have this already…we are working with building management to have the rest changed over).
• Recycling all old computers/electronics.
• Switching all cutlery to recycled/bio-degradable material.
• Installing a bike rack for those interested in riding a bike to work.

Here’s what you can do:

• Please turn OFF lights when conference rooms and offices are not in use.
• Turn off desk lamps when leaving for the evening.
• Print/copy two sided when possible.
• Print only what is needed and remember to pick up your printed material (the amount of unclaimed paper tossed each day is huge!).
• Turn off computer monitors when finished for the day (make sure to leave your computer running as IT runs updates and the network performs back ups at night…only turn the monitor off!).
• Use washable items for coffee, drinks and meals…..glasses, mugs, silverware, etc.  (Our office does have a dishwasher on site, as well as, dish soap for cleaning your items….please remember to clean your items and not to leave them in the sinks!).

Through our research to become a more ECO-Friendly office we have found that our garbage/waste service (Capital Waste, Inc) recycles everything that leaves this office.   (http://www.capitalwasteusa.com/)

Capital Waste is a local company who hand sorts all the materials in the dumpster, recycles what they can and sends the rest to the Greater Detroit Resource Recovery Authority for incineration. 

The steam generated produces electricity and is sold to Detroit Edison.  This process completes the recycling chain and ensures that 100% of Organic Detroit’s garbage/waste is recycled.

Toni

Organic has embarked on a journey to improve our environmental impact.  In June, we began by measuring our carbon footprint from utility use, business flights, and employee commutes for all of our offices around our network.  At the same time, we investigated the market for carbon credits.

We identified three main sources of carbon credits:  renewable energy, forestry, and energy efficiency.  We decided to go with the energy efficiency type of credits, because these are produced by actual reductions in carbon emissions by big business; as a result, the credits are more quantifiable and verifiable than the other kinds of credit as they incentivize industry to reduce their carbon footprint.

There are an ever-increasing number of players in the carbon credit market, and it was critical to us to choose a vendor whose practices we could be assured were optimally responsible.   After much consideration and much appreciated input from experts in the field, we selected LiveNeutral (formerly DriveNeutral) as our carbon credit vendor.

LiveNeutral is a San Francisco-based non-profit organization sponsored by the Presidio School of Management, which is an MBA program focused on raising the bar for green business practices, and whose involvement lends additional stature and quality control to LiveNeutral’s program.  Through LiveNeutral, we are purchasing Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) carbon credits to offset 100% of our carbon dioxide emissions. These credits represent real and permanent emissions reductions that were achieved by CCX members who adopted efficient and/or sustainable energy practices. In effect, Organic is now a carbon neutral workplace; as a point of reference, Organic has offset an amount of emissions equivalent to taking 750 cars off the road for a year. 

We have also begun taking efforts to significantly reduce our emissions such as by switching to recyclables and being more efficient with our energy usage, so that next year we will have a cleaner footprint and will need to offset fewer emissions.  Interested in finding out your own carbon footprint from driving or flying? Calculate it and take action at www.LiveNeutral.org <http://www.liveneutral.org/> . This is just one more way that Organic has acted creatively, cooperatively, and with integrity to solve a complex problem.   

I personally want to thank Jocelyn for reviewing and performing a thorough due diligence process on the companies in this space. 

More updates will be coming along as we make changes!

Marita