Green Collar Blog

I just ran across this site, thanks to SmartPlanet .  It is by Streetfilms.org and is called Moving Beyond the Automobile .  It has excellent, high quality short films educating you on proven  methods for streamlining municipal transportation and helping the environment.  

 I watched the one on Rapid Transit Busses (it won't work in Boston because our roads are old cowpaths, but very cool idea in cities with lots of land). Scroll down below the first video to see all of their videos.

 

 
Sorry for not embedding it, my antique CMS doesn't play nice with iframes.

Let me know what you think. 

 

This interview with Jim Nolan, the SVP of Finance, Administration and Operations for the Kraft Entertainment Group (they own the New England Patriots, Gillette Stadium, the New England Revolution soccer team and Patriot's Place) is  a must listen if you are interested in how a leading company made sustainability a strategic asset for their organization.  The Kraft Group is a very forward thinking company and has enviromental sensitivity baked into their DNA.  When they were starting to build Gillette Stadium in 2002, they made green decisions every step of the way, and as you'll hear in the interview, their efforts did not stop with the completion of the stadium.  They have continued to execute on efficiency projects and when they built Patriot's Place in 2007, they leveraged all their learning to make the new 1.3 million square foot retail, dining and entertainment complex as green as possible.

Here are some of the initiatives they have in place.

Water

• An on-site wastewater reuse system treats 60 percent of non-potable water from handwashing, laudering and bathing and reuses it for toilet flushing and in the stadium's cooling plant.  They save over 11 Million gallons of water a year and growing as they add more events.

Energy Efficiency

• Initiatives: Building automation, electric and heat zoning, lighting, energy efficient hand dryers, white roofs in Patriot's Place, best practice development for visitor comfort.
• Results:  Between 2004 and 2oo7, electric use was reduced by 27% and natural gas use by 33%.
• Results:  Reduced electric consumption by 7.7 Million kw/hr annually as compared to stadium opening.
• Results: Between 2006 and current day (slight overlap), the average energy reduction has been 30%.

 Renewable Energy

• Showing their commitment to the environment, the Kraft Group purchases wind energy credits from Constellation Energy for all events at Gillette Stadium.  It costs slightly more, but they are committed to minimizing their impact, and it has allowed them to deepen relationships with additional customers like the NCAA that want to do business with companies committed to carbon reduction.
• They have installed a 525 kilowatt solar array on top of Patriots Place.  This generates 625,000 kilowatt hours of electricity annually or about 30 % of the power required for Patriot's Place.  It is break even cost-wise, but as energy prices continue to rise, this installation will provide fixed, low-cost energy for 20 years.

Recycling and Waste Management

• In-stadium recycling efforts encouraged for all plastic and glass have succeeded well beyond initial estimates
• They hand out recycling bags to all tailgaters and encourage them to leave behind all recyclable materials for collection and recycling.
• Post-event, all recyclables are collected from the stadium bowl and centralized prior to any additional cleaning taking place
• All clean cardboard packaging from the products arriving on-site is centrally recycled and goes through the Kraft Group's cardboard recycling company.
• Big Belly solar trash compactors are available throughout Patriots' Place, lowering the waste removal costs.
• The recycling efforts have generated several financial benefits, including reduction in hauling costs, income from sale of recyclables and tremendous feedback from customers.

Environment

• A 3000 foot stretch of the Naponset River, which had been running underground for 50 years, was daylighted during site renovation and is now an important part of the site experience.
• In partnership with Bass Pro Shops and  Ocean Spray, they created the Nature Trail and Ocean Spray Bog, a 32-acre wetland and wooded area that features the only functioning cranberry bog in Foxborough as well as a nature walking trail for visitors to experience rural New England.

 Green Building

• All debris from the demolition of the old Foxborough Stadium was crushed and re-used on site during the construction of Gillette Stadium.

The effectiveness of these types of projects highlight the benefits to an organization of considering green in the early planning stages of every upcoming project.  As Jim mentions in the interview, there may or may not be an immediate financial return on every project, but it is the right thing to do, lowers operation costs and acts like an annuity for the organization as they continue to operate a centerpiece of New England culture for years to come. 

 

Listen to the Full Interview!

One of our favorite sayings at  Green Collar is "You can't improve what you can't measure".  That is why we were so excited for this interview with Amit Chaterjee, CEO of Hara.  Hara is the leading and fastest growing provider of environmental and energy management software. Their mission is to enable organizations to grow and profit while optimizing resource utilization and minimizing environmental impact.

Hara's software helps companies track their "organizational metabolism" and centralize data about their energy, water, carbon and waste in order to use that information to create opportunity.  Generally selling to Fortune 5000 companies, Hara has been proving itself to be a solution that creates "substantial cost savings" and "massive energy reductions".  These often come as a surprise to many of their customers, who may have never taken a hard (or holistic) look at this information before.  Amit tells us of one client who thought their enterprise energy expenditure was around $50 to $80 million per year, but with Hara they realized it was closer to $250 million.  After the shocked expressions wore off (which probably took a while), they got to work and started slashing those numbers.  Amit used a line which I loved..."it is better to lay off energy, than people."  Amen to that.

The insight they are providing and working with their clients on exploiting is rapidly becoming respected and considered vital.  As you will hear, Hara believes it is almost to the point where 'Sustainable" finance could be considered a critical discipline in a Fortune 5000 company.

Hara echoes the refrain we have heard Green Collar on many occasions, that the huge majority of businesses - even large businesses - do not have someone who is responsible for energy usage (not to mention carbon) across the enterprise.  Shocking but true.  My guess is that as Hara continues to accelerate and provide the data companies need to make good decisions, you are going to see a lot more companies who have someone responsible for ensuring the company makes smart decisions.

Listen to the Full Interview!

Paul Baier, the VP of Sustainability Strategy with Groom Energy, has been helping Fortune 500 companies with their green initiatives for several years and he has noticed some trends. When we discussed what he has identified as areas of consistent green return-on-investment, he didn't hesitate, and quickly rattled off 5 key projects:

1. Lighting upgrades
2. Building Re-commissioning (examining and repairing all building systems so they work optimally, thereby vastly lowering energy consumption and waste)
3. Capitalizing on government financial incentives to improve energy efficiency (Federal, State, even local)
4. Lowering reliance on peak load energy usage (mid-day)
5. Instituting behavioral changes inside a company

Groom Energy is lazer focused on ROI producing energy management initiatives, as well as helping companies lower their carbon footprint. They are providing thought leadership in the new field of enterprise carbon accounting. ECA is the process a company goes through to get a complete and on-going picture of their carbon footprint so that they can improve it and eliminate energy waste and wasted money. In the interview, we discuss the explosion in large companies reporting their carbon emissions (from 5% five years ago to over 75% today) and the benefits they are reaping from having this data at their fingertips. A few months ago, I spoke with the VP of a large company (and one of Groom's clients) that had recently completed the first draft of their carbon footprint, and he said to me that now everywhere he goes in the company he sees $100 bills lying on the floor. The company had no idea how much money they were wasting and are recouping tremendous returns on the project.

Take a listen to the interview. If you are interested in how to get moving in taking your company green, this conversation is going to give you some great ideas....

In this interview with Jeff Cohen, the CEO of Intergis, we discuss the sustainability and business upside of GPS solutions for fleet managers. This is a particular area of interest for Green Collar as we absolutely love the ROI numbers associated with the implementation of these types of solutions.
Try these on for size:

• Estimated average 3 month ROI for straight GPS solutions
• Estimated average 6 month ROI for GPS plus routing and scheduling software deployment
• 70% reduced operational time spent managing, analyzing and monitoring per vehicle

With numbers like these, the tremendous growth in this space is sure to continue and will be a key area of low-hanging-sustainability-fruit for any fleet operator's sustainability initiative. Take a listen, and if you want more information, check out this Aberdeen Group White Paper detailing the 'green' benefits of deploying these types of solutions.

Check out this  interview from a VP at Oracle about the benefits of sustainability for organizations.  He makes a strong case about the need to create competitive differentiation by using the philosophy of sustainability to improve your product and solution, and he gives the example of how Ikea and Shell have accomplished this.

I certainly agree with this as it is terrific to see R&D and top-line growth coming out of an enterprise-level 'green' strategy.  One area where I disagree with him is his discounting of sustainability as a legitimate cost-cutting opportunity.  Based on the numbers and the enthusiasm being thrown around at the Groom Conference a couple of weeks ago (by companies like SAP, Lucent, Raytheon, Diebold, National Grid, Akamai and others - see this post for a wrap up of the conference), there is a lot of opportunity to use sustainability for both product improvement and cost savings.

 Take a look and let us know if you agree.