We’re excited to launch the first in a series of Employee Engagement surveys, and invite you to be a part of it.

We like to find out about employee attitudes and motivations in companies’ sustainability efforts. Is it being driven by management, or by passionate employees? Results will be posted once a month to our site.

If you would share your thoughts in this short survey, you will be entered for a drawing of a $100 gift card to Amazon.com this month!

Take survey here:

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Employee engagement and brand ambassadors are often mentioned in the same sentence.

But we often see how those who work in Marketing, and those who have ‘Internal Communications’ on their business card don’t seem to breathe the same oxygen. Maybe they eat in the same cafeteria, use a common email server, and are a few degrees of separation from each other. But they appear to have very different marching orders.

But that will soon change.

Internal and External communicators –the former from an HR track, and the latter from marketing communications –now have the tools, and sometimes the permission, to jumped tracks, so to speak.

The best companies don’t put them in different parts of the building anymore. Jay Baer made a great point last week, referring to the problem of ‘information asymmetry’ that businesses face. Basically it means that people outside of the company seem to have more information than those inside. What this means, he says, is that “it really requires companies to have more than one set of antennae for the organization.” Companies today need to unleash host of ‘unofficial marketers’ to represent their brand.

The Org Chart, however, does not let this happen.

Robert Scoble, while he was at Microsoft, used to be part of a video team that profiled employees and products –more or less an internal communicator. Yet he was able to jump tracks, engage with customers, and become the unoffiial voice of Microsoft, despite NOT being in PR or marketing.

Our definition of branding is still stuck in the lock-down model, even though the line between internal and external communication has all but been erased. As Interbrand recommends, internal branding shouldn’t be bogged down in restrictive brand guidelines. A brand ambassador is not just someone who could promote the company via a press release. It is someone who could respond at 2 am in the morning, when a customer has a question –a question that cannot wait for the person with ‘marketing’ on her business card to respond later that day.

It may be time to reprint your business cards, and refresh the org chart. There may be brand ambassadors in your organization just waiting to be tapped!

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SustainAZility.

Get used to the word. It’s a lot more than making Phoenix or Arizona a more sustainable place.  It is about making Arizona a hospitable place for businesses that are profiting from the global shift toward Sustainability.

On this week’s radio show, Your Triple Bottom Line, Derrick Mains officially announced the launch of a Sustainazility grass-roots movement, and the launch of the wiki -at www.Sustainazility.com.

Here’s a segment of that show (just under 10 minutes) where Derrick outlines his plan and a call to action.

Download the podcast at this link. Or listen to it using the player below.

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This is part three of a three-part series on Transforming Your Waste Stream into a Recycling Stream.

America Recycles Day is today! The perfect day for your company to pledge to start or enhance a business recycling program.

Getting Started
Oftentimes, just knowing where to start with an office-recycling program is the biggest barrier; however, it is also the greatest opportunity. There are many ways to begin big five recycling efforts. Here is one simple sample plan:

1. Identify what materials are generated in sufficient quantities within your business to merit recycling with a waste assessment. This can be conducted in-house.

“A simple review of what kind of waste is being generated – a “waste assessment” – will help businesses identify the most prevalent discarded materials that would make the most sense to target in a recycling program,” Scott Mouw, Environmental Supervisor for the North Carolina Division of Pollution Prevention and Environmental Assistance, suggests. “But even if they are only a small part of the waste stream, materials like aluminum, plastic, glass and steel are easy to capture and find outlets for.”

As Mouw suggests, if your company is small, you may decide to focus on paper recycling collection with a service provider and collect and recycle other materials (e.g., aluminum cans, glass and plastic bottles) through individual efforts such as employees taking turns bringing these smaller quantities of materials home and adding them to their residential recycling bins.

2. Set priorities and goals for a big five program.

3. Educate the office about recycling initiative. Explain expectations and responsibilities of the employees.

4. Evaluate progress and adjust the program to maintain successful results over time.

Since paper represents the largest slice of the municipal solid waste pie—especially at work—paper and cardboard are generally the best materials with which to begin recycling efforts. For the commercial sector, paper and aluminum recycling rates seem to support the relative ease of recycling these components of the big five.

According to the Paper Industry Association Council, “A record-high 63.4 percent of the paper consumed in the U.S. was recovered for recycling in 2009.” The Aluminum Association reported 54.2 percent of used aluminum beverage cans were recycled. 2008 EPA Recycling Facts and Figures report recycling rates for HDPE (#2) plastics at 29.3 percent, glass containers at 28.0 percent and PET (#1) bottles and jars recovered for recycling at 27.2 percent.

According to Mouw, “Often the weight and volume of paper offers the best opportunity for substantial waste reduction and cost avoidance.” He adds, “Still, recycling markets and the environmental benefits of diverting the other [big five] materials are also substantial in their own right and should not be overlooked, especially if there is an ability to operate a very simple commingled recycling program where paper and the other materials can be combined in collection.”

The overall goal with starting or enhancing a big five recycling program should be to work toward reducing your waste stream and replacing it with a recycling stream.  To this end, you not only improve your triple bottom line accounting, but also the environment – efforts well worth the investment on the road to zero waste and sustainability.

Start the conversation…^™
Since 1960, EPA data has shown steady increases in recycling; however, overall recycling rates seemed to have leveled out just over the 30% mark in the past few years. What actions can your company use to start or improve recycling of the big five in your office and help increase national recycling rates?

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This is part two of a three-part series on Transforming Your Waste Stream into a Recycling Stream.

America Recycles Day is November 15^th — the perfect day for your company to pledge to start or enhance a business recycling program.

Implementing a plan for recycling the big five at work can be challenging. Four common barriers include:

Availability
While most communities with residential curbside recycling programs also offer commercial recycling programs, communities in more rural areas may only have access to drop-off programs where users must bring their materials to a facility for recycling.

However, when it comes to paper recycling, which is often the largest component of the waste stream in the workplace, the outlook is promising.  According to a 2007 American Forest and Paper Association Community Survey, there has been marked growth in curbside recycling for paper in both small and large communities since 2005. Access to curbside recycling certainly makes it easier to recycle materials from work; however, drop-off recycling programs can still be feasible if you are located in a small community or remote location with no recycling service providers available to pick up materials.

Collection
Finding space for not only interior and exterior collection bins, but also for such equipment as a baler to compact cardboard or cans, can be a challenge to some businesses. Further, initial investments for equipment may be required if not supported or supplied from community recycling programs and recycling vendors. For example, you may find that you generate enough cardboard and/or aluminum cans to warrant the investments into special interior collection bins and/or a compacting baler.

One solution to consider if you are tight for space or funding is to work with other businesses in your area.  For instance, if your business is a part of a strip mall or office complex, devising a cooperative plan may save not only on equipment space and investment costs, but also on waste removal and recycling costs as well. If large quantities of recyclables are generated by collective efforts, you may even increase your market share of profits.

Negotiations
When negotiating for waste and recycling services, be sure that you are not paying for waste hauling services and then tacking recycling services on to that cost. When you begin or enhance a recycling program, your waste generation should go down and in turn your waste hauling charges as well.  Scott Mouw, Environmental Supervisor for the North Carolina Division of Pollution Prevention and Environmental Assistance, explains, “depending on an individual business’s situation, there could be a marginal cost of recycling if the service provider needs to charge for collection (which is often the case).”

Mouw goes on, “Businesses must sharpen their pencil on the waste side to make sure they take advantage of waste service cost savings when they implement recycling. In general, finding a service provider is a big step in the process but businesses can often get help from local and state government recycling programs in helping find recycling service companies.”

Most communities have local- or state-government recycling coordinators (check the listings in the government pages of your phonebook under Recycling, Public Works, Environmental Protection or Solid Waste Management) who can assist with information about equipment and markets and information about community recycling service providers. If you do not have a recycling coordinator to help you, check with your current trash hauler to see if they offer recycling pickup. This may be the most economical option when you are already an established customer with them, but not always.  The question you want to ask is, ‘What type of package deal can I get to reduce waste hauling charges and include recycling pickup?’ Ideally, you want to keep your costs the same or reduce them by adding on recycling services.

Engaging Employees
When starting or improving a recycling program, involvement and education of all employees is key.

“It is important to involve all parties in the company that take part in the generation and management of waste – production workers, the business office, shipping/receiving staff, etc,” says Mouw, who works to expand recycling markets in North Carolina as well as the southeast.

“Time and time again, the most successful waste-reducing businesses are those who take a team approach to the problem and get ideas from everyone involved.”

Recyclers will be interested in quality and quantity of your materials. Keep them clean and free of contamination to receive the best share of market revenues if available to you and to avoid your recycling efforts ending up in your dumpster where they will waste resources and increase waste hauling charges.

Involvement of all employees from the start, and initial training and signage reminding everyone of your policies and procedures will go a long way in making your big five recycling programs successful. Use signs to clearly indicate recycling bin locations and instructions about what, where, how and why they should recycle. Consider mass e-mails to keep employees abreast of recycling goals met or ones the company is striving to achieve.

An online guide from The Center for Research on Environmental Decisions at Columbia University says, “Giving people an immediate incentive, if possible, also makes behavior change easier.”  Posting the department with the highest recycling rate each month can help foster team spirit, motivate friendly competition and increase recycling rates within your organization.

Monday in Part 3, starting a business recycling program.

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What is it?

A vision to position Arizona as the “Silicon Valley” of the emerging multi-trillion dollar sustainability industry.

According to a World Watch Institute 2008 study, annual revenue from sustainable products and services will double to $2.74 TRILLION by 2020 with 50% of that revenue going to energy and process efficiency.

This isn’t about “going green” – it’s more than that. It’s about resource and process efficiency, risk mitigation and long-term financial profitability.

According to a 2010 UN Global Compact study titled “A New Era of Sustainability,” global CEO thinking has gone through a dramatic shift in the past two years: a full 96% of global CEOs believe that sustainability should be fully integrated into the strategy and operations of their companies (and that survey was done before the BP disaster), and 91% say that their companies will be investing significantly in new technologies over the next 5 years.

Someone somewhere will profit from this rush toward greater sustainability.

Arizona is a land of pioneers, risk takers. It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to settle and live in this area and many of us here have that same pioneering spirit. The native peoples who first settled in the desert birthed it, those born here inherited it, and those of us who immigrated here did so because we followed the call.

In recent times, Arizona was in the grip of a real estate gold rush; but the reality is, times have changed. The real estate market is bust, and the truth is, the boom we had is probably never coming back.

What are we going to replace it with? Yes, aerospace, the biosciences, and defense can help, BUT we have an opportunity – a TRILLION dollar a year opportunity – to create an environment where companies that develop technologies for greater sustainability can be created and thrive.

This challenge isn’t just about solar or bio-fuels.

They are part of the challenge, a big part. But why stop there. The trillion dollar challenge is about making Arizona the Silicon Valley of Sustainability, a center for the development of the full range of products and services that businesses worldwide will be buying to improve their sustainability..

The competition with other regions over aerospace, biosciences and defense is going to be fierce – and most of them have a big head start over Arizona, BUT there is currently no Silicon Valley of Sustainability. As a community, as a State, let’s be the first mover and own the space.

To get there we need three things.

Show up. First, we need to show up and step up to the plate. This movement needs innovators who raise the bar and challenge each other to step up our game.

Sell the sizzle. Next, we need to sell the vision. We have been selling tactics for too long when we should have been selling a trillion dollar vision.

Brew the right mix. Then, we need the Silicon Valley environment. Not its buildings, but its attitude, its vision and its focus. It takes the right mix which includes:

• Entrepreneurs and Geeks – this is not just tech geeks, its sustainable geeks as well. Those who work in the field, those who understand it and those who have a passion for it.
• Investors – investors invest in what they know and understand and the truth is we need to help them to understand sustainability; we need to sell the vision and provide education for investors to help them really analyze and understand the landscape, risks and trillion dollar upside that is reality.
• Educators – From Northern Arizona University, University of Arizona , Grand Canyon and Thunderbird to Arizona State University’s Global Institute of Sustainability, we have the education infrastructure and we are even home to the pioneers in online learning – University of Phoenix.
• Legislators – This isn’t about red or blue its about a “capitalist call” to create a friendly and favorable economic environment to nurture a trillion dollar a year center of revenue, jobs and tax base.
• Community – Everyone wants to live in a mecca. Silicon Valley is a destination for technology which benefits the community through security, jobs, pride and a legacy.

The right mix is what created Silicon Valley. But two of these really started the movement . . . investors and geeks.

Without those groups buying into the vision, the rest is irrelevant. Entrepreneurial Geeks need to get connected and buy into creating the vision, and then sell that vision to rich people.

Once those visions are aligned, we have something to sell to the legislators, the educators and the community.

But, first we need to show up and step up. We need a gathering of determined pioneers to collaborate and generate the sizzle of our vision to be a part of something bigger than all of us (heck at a trillion bucks, it’s bigger than an act of Congress).

So who’s with me? Who wants to be a Trillionaire?

Let me know, and email me here: derrick@greennurture.com

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Two days after from being named a Green Pioneer by the Phoenix Business Journal, Derrick Mains called on entrepreneurs and thought-leaders in Arizona to raise the bar if they want to turn the state into a Silicon Valley for Sustainability!

On his radio show, Your Triple Bottom Line, Derrick spent some time outlining the opportunity, and his call to action.

Sustainability will be a 2.7 trillion industry, with 50 percent of that in energy and process efficiency.

The keyword is efficiency.

Arizona is a land of pioneers and risk-takers, he noted. This pioneering spirit needs to be challenged, as we are sitting on a trillion dollar opportunity for ‘holistic sustainability.’

Listen to the podcast using the player below. Connect with Derrick via email.

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This is part one of a three-part series on Transforming Your Waste Stream into a Recycling Stream.

America Recycles Day is November 15^th — the perfect day for your company to pledge to start or enhance a business recycling program.

In today’s green economy the goal for the business waste stream should be zero waste. To get there, businesses are increasingly diving into their waste stream to really understand what it is comprised of and how they can properly, and successfully, reduce, reuse and recycle it.

“In 2008, Americans generated about 250 million tons of trash,“ according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Waste from commercial and institutional locations, such as schools, hospitals, and businesses, amounted to 35 to 45 percent of total waste generation.” On the path toward zero waste, recycling still plays an important part of the “three R’s” equation.

For years recycling programs have focused on reducing residential waste. Now it is time for businesses to focus on their recycling efforts as well. If your business does not have a recycling program, it is time to start. If you have one, it is time to re-evaluate and enhance it. In either case, begin with the basic building-block materials of recycling…

Aluminum, glass, paper, plastic and steel are the crux of most recycling programs. Collectively, these materials are known as the “big five” in the recycling industry as they comprise more than half of the municipal (combined residential and commercial) solid waste stream. They also are easily collected and recycled through most established recycling programs in the United States.

Recycling saves energy, resources and landfill space as well as reduces the environmental impacts caused when creating new material from virgin resources. The big five commodities are prime candidates for helping businesses reduce waste and improve sustainability because aluminum, steel and glass can be recycled infinitely; paper, which is so prevalent in the workplace, can be recycled from its highest-quality form seven times before fibers are too short to recycle further; and virgin plastic is made from non-renewable petroleum resources.

“It is important for businesses to participate in sustainable solutions, and recycling is often the easiest and one of the most powerful ways to start,” says Scott Mouw, Environmental Supervisor for the North Carolina Division of Pollution Prevention and Environmental Assistance. “By feeding valuable materials back into the economy, they help other companies grow and create jobs, helping expand our economy and feeding manufacturers who rely on recycled materials to make the products we use every day.”

Six Reasons Businesses Should Recycle the Big Five

The environmental impacts of a carefully formulated solid waste management plan can do more for the environment, and your business, than you might think. There are multiple beneficial and compelling reasons to recycle the big five—in general and at work.

1. Lower Cost for Waste Removal – Reducing your waste stream through recycling can lead to lower waste removal costs. Recycling services may still cost; however, rates can be negotiated to equal or better than waste removal costs alone.

“Many businesses that start comprehensive recycling programs also find that they can avoid waste collection and disposal costs that can only be expected to rise over time,” Mouw adds.

2. Income – When markets are good—especially for paper and old corrugated cardboard—recycling contracts can be negotiated with your recycling service provider to create income for your business as well.

3. Tax Credits – Twenty-five states offer tax credits for recycling market development. This means that if you work for a recycling industry or manufacturing business that uses recycled materials, you may qualify.

4. Recognition– Many communities and trade associations have recognition and awards programs for companies that recycle. Waste Wi$e, and the American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA) Paper Recycling Awards are good places to start.

5. Corporate Social Responsibility: Recycling is a long-term sustainability investment with triple-bottom-line rewards. Aside from the environmental ones, benefits also include improved public image, reaching new markets and improved employee morale.

6. Creates Green Jobs – In today’s economic climate, this speaks volumes. The EPA Jobs Through Recycling program estimates that recycling creates almost five times as many jobs as landfilling. That is 103,000 jobs in the northeastern United States alone, according to the EPA. Jobs created through recycling include collection and hauling, brokering of recovered materials and processing as well as the manufacturing and distribution of the new recycled-content products.

Tomorrow in Part 2, a look at common challenges encountered with business recycling programs.

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Most people don’t have ‘e-waste’ on their radar. In fact most people can’t visualize what it is.

It sounds a bit like some industrial effluent problem that we keep hearing about, or something that happens ‘over there’ -in developing countries.  But e-waste is something we contribute to whether we know about it or not. It’s time local governments and business leaders addressed this knowledge gap.

For instance, the volume of e-waste climbed by 8.6% between 2005 and 2006 (as opposed 1.2 percent. for the volume of regular municipal waste).

But what does that look like? Where do the thousands of  keyboards, computer monitors, obsolete phones and laptop batteries end up? You may not see an used PlayStation controller floating down a river when you’re out Trout fishing…

Jeff Rassas had a great idea one day. He decided to incentivize people to solve the problem locally. His company, YouChange.com, is not just another do-good company. It’s a robust business model. Audio systems, old gaming consoles, PDAs, optical drives and hundreds of other home electronics and business equipment can be turned into cash.

The web site lets you do it in three simple steps: Find out how much your gadget is worth – instant evaluation online by entering a model number. Send it to youchange.com (they take care of shipping & handling), and collect cash and reward points.

Here’s a short segment where Derrick Mains and Jeff Rassas talk about how businesses could be part of the solution. A longer version of this podcast could be found here at Your Triple Bottom Line.

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Sustainability often strikes people as being a six-dollar word for a collection of little things they do. So-called ’sustainability practitioners’ are not always the ones who have written a paper on carbon footprints or ‘food miles.’

They are people you meet every day in the coffee shop, the church group, or the post office. Sometimes they are a bit weird –in a good way.

Two articles crossed my path that made me think about this. The first was an article by Gareth Kane who makes an interesting point ‘getting green out of the boardroom’ in his article in Management Issues. The second was by Park Howell, who applies the lens of ‘Rudolph Thinking’ to look inward for managing business tough times.

Park’s blog post, “The 15 characteristics of Rudolphs and how they can help steer your company thru the fog of the recession” addresses one of our favorite books, The Rudolph Factor by Cindy Laurin who was a guest on our radio  show.

You see Rudolphs are a bit ‘weird’ to most people just doing their thing. But in any business, in any generation, they are the ones who get it, who stick their snouts out, and are quickly labeled misfits. It reminds me of the line Apple used when it celebrated the ‘rebels’ and misfits’ who believed in the personal computer back in 1997.

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.”

To bring sustainability into the workplace, we need to recruit –meaning motivate, or hire– more of these square pegs’ and Rudolphs. Because, as the Apple ad had it, “You can ..disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things.”

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We had our lens trained on health care, when we spoke about Green Teams on the radio show last week.

Hospitals and healthcare systems are just that -systems. Applying triple bottom line thinking to a large system takes an enormous degree of organization. But it also takes something that’s hard to bolt-on -passion.

Our conversation revolved around the invisible thread of human motivation that runs through those three overlapping entities: employees, patients and the community.

How do they communicate with each other? Dr. Joan Plisko, Technical Director of Maryland Hospitals for a Healthy Environment (MD H2E) and Colleen Cusick of Johns Hopkins talked about the decentralized, yet coordinated team activity they lead. What came out, however, was the huge communication part of the equation.

Communication?

In the age of so many easy-to-implement tools from enterprise email to ad-hoc Facebook Groups?  Sometimes different parts of a company don’t know what each other is doing, and rather than see this as a problem, this is an opportunity for a Green Team, said Dr. Plisko. She used the example of eWaste in healthcare systems.

Here’s a snippet of our conversation about communications for Green Teams.

Download Interview. Or use the player below.

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