Columns Archives - Page 2 of 4

Featured Resource: ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager

January 6, 2016/in Columns /by Two Fish

Energy Star is best known as a product label that indicates to consumers whether or not their appliances are energy efficient, but the U.S. EPA’s ENERGY STAR program goes beyond product labeling. For businesses it offers several tools including the ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager which helps businesses track energy and water consumption, as well as greenhouse gas emission. The Portfolio Manager allows users to track more than 100 different metrics.
It can also be used to benchmark the performance of one building or a whole portfolio of buildings. The tool gives users access to more than 150 different metrics to help them better manage their energy usage as well as make decision on capital investments in energy efficient technologies.
Looking to apply for ENERGY STAR certification or awards the Portfolio Manager is also the portal used to apply for recognition.
Throughout the month of January ENERGY STAR will be hosting a series of webinars on Portfolio Manager. To learn more and sign up for these webinars go to, https://esbuildings.webex.com/mw3000/mywebex/default.do?siteurl=esbuildings.
January 13 at 1 ET – How to Apply for ENERGY STAR
January 26 at 1 ET – Portfolio Manager 101
January 27 at 1 ET – Portfolio Manager 201
January 28 at 1 ET – Portfolio Manager 301

Help Bring Green Business Events to Grand Rapids!

October 20, 2015/in Columns, WMSBF News /by Daniel Schoonmaker

Are you a part of an association that hosts a regional or national convention? Do you know someone who is a member of your association and serves on a national board or committee? Please fill out the information below and Experience Grand Rapids will do the rest. We will work with the national or regional office to gather rates for their next open year. Let’s work together to Bring It To Grand Rapids!

It’s a win-win; a great way for you and fellow Michigan members to attend a regional or national convention and a nice economic boost to Michigan’s economy. Completed forms will be entered to win a premium $100 Grand Rapids Gift Basket!

Please fill out these short 5 questions by clicking this link (https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/BITGR), or simply type your response below and send it to Nichole Steele (nsteele@experiencegr.com).

What is your name, email, phone number and company/employer?
What Regional or National Associations are you a member of?
What Regional or National Associations is your company a member of?
Do you, or someone you know, serve on any National Boards or Committees? If yes, which Association?
Who do you suggest we contact that is involved with any of the Associations mentioned above? Please list contact information if possible.

Experience Grand Rapids is the convention and visitors bureau for Grand Rapids/Kent County. They work to impact the economy of Grand Rapids/Kent County by marketing Grand Rapids to meeting planners and visitors. Learn more at:http://www.experiencegr.com/about-us/bring-it-to-gr/

WMSBF In the News

July 20, 2015/in Columns /by Daniel Schoonmaker

Earlier this summer, West Michigan Sustainable Business Forum spent eight weeks at Michigan landfills and transfer centers for the Trash Research Project, the field operation of the Michigan MSW Characterization and Valuation Study. Read about it in The Grand Rapids Press/mlive here, or in The Grand Rapids Business Journal here.
May’s Green Labs Workshop was featured in the monthly newsletter of the International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories.

New White Paper: LEED Pilot Credit: Local Food Production

February 17, 2015/in Columns, WMSBF News /by Daniel Schoonmaker

West Michigan Sustainable Business Forum and partners are releasing a new white paper as part of the WMSBF’s White Paper Series.
LEED Pilot Credit: Local Food Production examines LEED pilot credit SSpc82 using Grand Rapids Downtown Market as a case study. SSpc82 is an opportunity for new and existing commercial buildings and homes to earn additional LEED points by growing edible plants on the building site, participating in a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm program, or by supporting an existing local farm with financial or material support and staff volunteer time.
Grand Rapids Downtown Market was among the first projects to apply for the SSpc82 pilot credit. This white paper looks at how the Downtown Market implemented the pilot credit.
View the white paper here: WMSBF White Paper LEED Food Production Credit
Previous white papers can be found here.

Luncheon Sustainability Report for January

January 14, 2015/in Columns /by Daniel Schoonmaker

The January luncheon at Prince Conference Center catered by WMSBF member Creative Dining Services incorporated products from several local companies, including Living Foods, Grassfields Cheese, Gavin Orchards, Momma Mucci, Otto’s Chicken, RW Bakers and Victory Farms. The event also earned significant points for its use of reusable utensils and place settings, finishing with a sustainability score of 23.

The first two-course meal at a forum lunch in quite some time, CDS offered attendees an exceptional value for the price, sponsoring a portion of the food cost in order to deliver a higher quality sustainable option. Approximately 70% of attendees answering the feedback survey indicated the lunch was better or much better than previous forum luncheons they had attended.
The menu: Michigan Apple Cheddar Salad or an alternative vegan salad. Maple Pecan Gouda Airline Chicken Breast with Michigan Four-Bean Medley and Beets with Bleu Cheese Crumble, or Roasted Bell Peppers stuffed with Rice, Vegetables, and Beans with a Balsamic Glaze, Roast Tomatoes, and Beets.
This is the third month that WMSBF has tracked the sustainability of its luncheons using its Green Lunch Scorecard. The high score to date was the December luncheon at Kendall College of Art & Design, which earned significant additional points by featuring an all-vegan menu.
View all scores here.

New Tool Measures Corporate Progress Towards Safer Chemicals

January 9, 2015/in Columns /by Daniel Schoonmaker

A group of corporate and NGO leaders have released a new tool for assessing leadership in corporate chemicals management. The Chemical Footprint Project (CFP) provides the first-ever common metric of its kind for publicly benchmarking corporate chemicals management and profiling leadership companies.
“You can’t manage what you don’t measure,” said Dr. Mark Rossi, Co-Director of the nonprofit Clean Production Action and Chair and Founder of BizNGO, who released the Chemical Footprint Project with the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production and Pure Strategies. “The CFP finally establishes a meaningful measurement of overall corporate performance to safer chemicals in products and supply chains. We look forward to engaging business leaders in tracking and disclosing their Chemical Footprints.”
Business leaders are moving ahead of regulations to avoid chemicals of high concern to human health or the environment in their products and supply chains. They are meeting the needs of customers large and small who are concerned with toxic chemicals in products. From health care to retail, purchasers are seeking products made with inherently safer chemicals. Now these purchasers will have a tool to quickly compare and benchmark suppliers. In addition, socially responsible investment firms can use this new tool to evaluate companies on their chemical management and select companies for investment.
Similar to Carbon Footprinting, Chemical Footprinting can apply to any business sector. Retailers, health care organizations, governments, and investors all see value in a comprehensive measure of business progress to safer chemicals. “CFP is a market differentiator and provides a competitive advantage for business leaders,” said Roger McFadden of Staples, Inc. “This new tool will add a level of transparency and help companies mitigate reputational and regulatory risks and exploit opportunities afforded by moving to safer chemicals.”
The CFP will enable purchasers to preferentially select suppliers and investors to integrate chemical risk into their sustainability analyses and investments. The CFP results enable brands to market their progress and success in using safer chemicals.
The CFP Steering Committee members include representatives from: Boston Common Asset Management, ChemSec, Dignity Health, Environmental Defense Fund, Investor Environmental Health Network, Kaiser Permanente, Partners Healthcare, Staples, Inc., Target Corporation, Trillium Asset Management, LLC, and the U.S. Green Building Council, among others.
The CFP is the first initiative to publicly measure overall corporate chemicals management performance by evaluating:

Management Strategy
Chemical Inventory
Progress Measurement
Public Disclosure

For more information about the Chemical Footprint Project, see www.chemicalfootprint.org.
A webinar to introduce the tool is scheduled for Wednesday, January 21 at 1 p.m.

West Michigan Clean Air Action Program Seeks Local Business Partnerships

October 29, 2014/in Columns /by Daniel Schoonmaker

The Clean Air Action program, which was known as the Ozone Action! Program until 2009, declares Action Days when air pollution is expected to reach or exceed levels where people who are sensitive to it, such as children, the elderly, and anyone with heart or lung disease or who is active outdoors, might start to experience symptoms.
On those days, the public is encouraged to take part in voluntary emission reduction activities in order to reduce air pollution and protect public health and the environment. According to the last public survey, which judged the program’s effectiveness, just over 88% of the respondents were aware, or somewhat aware, of Action Days, with 81% stating that they participated on at least some of the Action Days.
While these numbers are encouraging, the West Michigan Clean Air Coalition (WMCAC), which oversees the Clean Air Action program and works to achieve cleaner air in the region through the education and promotion of voluntary emission reduction activities, is always looking for additional opportunities to inform the public about the program. That’s where you come in.
The Coalition is reaching out to local businesses hoping that companies will partner with it in any of the following ways:

Signing up to receive Action Day notifications and forwarding them on to your employees
Sending a representative to serve on the West Michigan Clean Air Coalition to help provide program guidance from a business perspective (meetings are quarterly)
Agreeing to host the Clean Air Action table-top display for a week at your location (the display comes with a number of promotional “freebies” that can be given away to employees)
Or by allowing WMCAC members to staff a booth at company events, including lunch and learns, etc.

These partnership opportunities are free, and if you’re interested, please contact Andrea Faber by phone at (616) 776-7603 or email at andrea.faber@gvmc.org.
For more information about the West Michigan Clean Air Coalition and Clean Air Action Days, please visit www.wmcac.org.

Looking Back: Paul Murray on Sharing Ideas Beyond West Michigan

September 10, 2014/in Columns /by Matt Kuczynski

A long-time participant in sustainable business in West Michigan and beyond, Paul Murray, Vice President of Sustainability and Environmental Affairs at Shaw Industries, has seen the ideas of the West Michigan Sustainable Business Forum develop and spread to communities across the nation—an impact that the original members of the forum may not have seen coming 20 years ago.

“The Forum has really allowed both large and small companies to share best practices in a way that not many other groups have,” said Murray.

At the founding of the West Michigan Sustainable Business Forum, Murray was working at Herman Miller as the Director of Environmental Safety and Sustainability. At a lunch with Bill Stough and the director of the West Michigan Environmental Action Council, Murray was introduced to the idea of a forum for idea-sharing and collaborative education in the West Michigan community. “Bill had a novel concept to get businesses together to talk about the environment and sustainability—which was a relatively new concept at the time,” he said. “There were five or six of us that decided this was worth pursuing after talking about how good it would be to have environmental groups working with businesses rather than against them.”

“That seemed like a good idea, and that intrigued me to get involved,” he said.

In the first year, meetings could be difficult and filled with bylaw writing and compiling rules and regulations, said Murray. “It blossomed very quickly though, and there were some very effective business-to-business discussions. After those first meetings, we started having a lot more fun,” he said. “Since there was no real barrier to entry, there was no reason that any company in the West Michigan area could not join.”

The diversity of members in WMSBF allowed Murray and others to not only share best practices with some smaller up-and-coming companies in the West Michigan region, but also to gather ideas from businesses that normally would not have communicated with larger organizations. For Murray, productive interaction and education between businesses was one of the most important aspects of the forum—and one that has allowed the business forum concept to expand beyond West Michigan.

“For example, at Shaw in Georgia, people knew about cradle-to-cradle thinking,” he said. “Gabe Wing at Herman Miller had presented it way before the rest of the company had even heard of it. It wasn’t a protected idea, it was something that Herman Miller felt was a gift to the community.”

“I think that the concept of a forum is the biggest and best idea we have shared,” he continued. “There are other communities that have benefited. Some of them are still operating, others have discontinued, but every community that has shared the vision of having a business-to-business sustainability forum has leveraged improvements based on each others’ performance.”

The spirit of collaboration found in West Michigan is something that Murray is working on replicating in other areas. “In West Michigan, we had the office furniture industry as our main business. But we had other industries in town participating, like Amway and Cascade Engineering, that were in different fields,” he said. “In Northwest Georgia, it’s carpet and floor coverings as the main industry—but that spirit of collaboration really isn’t as developed as it was in Michigan.”

“I hope that this forum helps people understand that collaboration can yield dividends for everyone,” he added.

Looking Back: David Rinard on West Michigan Community and Sustainability

September 9, 2014/in Columns /by Matt Kuczynski

Throughout the 20th century, building collaboration between business and the sustainability movement has been a challenge. Governmental regulations and activism were often seen as a threat to manufacturers’ bottom line, and early environmentalists conflicted with the corporate world. However, in West Michigan, a common connection between the community and business leaders has been a unique characteristic that has allowed the sustainable business movement to thrive, according to David Rinard, Director of Global Environmental Performance at Steelcase.

“There is this trade—craftsman mentality in our area,” he said. “People built their companies here, they live here, and they have their families here. They were connected to the land and committed to giving back to their communities. Even as companies have transitioned from family-owned to publicly traded, that ethic and culture still lives on.”

“People are proud to live here in West Michigan,” he continued.

Rinard has seen the environmentalist and sustainability cultures grow hand-in-hand with the business community in the area—an important factor in the success of the West Michigan Sustainable Business Forum. “Many of us from the business side were equally involved in environmental organizations at that time,” he said. “Part of it was that most of us grew up in the environmental movement. Silent Spring and Love Canal were there—we got into this profession because those stories stirred something in us.”

For Rinard, however, the road to a career in sustainable business began with the goal of becoming an orthodontist. After majoring in microbiology and public health at Michigan State, Rinard realized that his less-than-perfect artistic capabilities would be a stumbling block in his orthodontics career. Rinard moved back in with his parents, searching for employment to hold him over for the time, and eventually found a job as a process chemist with a company that did chrome plating on plastics. “Part of my responsibilities was to deal with all of the waste water and waste generation issues for the company,” he said. This early exposure to environmental management issues led Rinard to a position in Steelcase’s environmental department two years later—a career that has spanned 35 years.

At Steelcase, Rinard stepped into a business culture with strong environmental roots. The families that founded the company had a strong sense of values and beliefs on how their company would conduct itself in the community. They quietly and without fanfare incorporated that mentality into the work culture of the company. Even in those early years when no one was talking about environmentalism, there was still a strong sense of responsibility for employees, the community and the environment. Rinard noted that this support for sustainability helped to guide the business forum’s work in its early days. “As we talked about getting together as businesses in the environmental communities, some of it was the sheer persistence from the business community. There was an attitude of coming together: Let me help you understand understand my challenges, I will work to understand your challenges, and together let’s try to come up with solutions.”

The unique connections between West Michigan’s business and environmental communities made founding the Business Forum easier than it could have been, according to Rinard. “The ability for peers from different companies, even competitors to get together and work to support a shared value is something I believe is unique to West Michigan.” he said. “It is because we are not just colleagues and peers but also friends that gave us that shared sense of purpose. Founding the Forum took a lot of legwork—there was apprehension on some people’s parts, so it took persistence and determination, but it wasn’t the terribly difficult sell that many people might think.”

In some cases, however, there was conflict. Tom Leonard, Executive Director of the West Michigan Environmental Action Council at the time, was accused of selling out in his collaboration with businesses by other environmental groups. “People said he let the fox in the henhouse,” said Rinard, “but he stood his ground and proved those naysayers wrong. Now we’re a strong, robust group, and the model for the forum has been replicated in other communities. ”

“One of the biggest success stories about the Forum is that it still exists, and it is still relevant today,” said Rinard. “It has stayed stable as an organization, and it still matters. The fact that it has spun off organizations in other communities shows how the West Michigan Sustainable Business Forum serves as a model for cooperation—and that’s a huge deal.”

Looking Back: Tom Newhouse on Design for the Environment and Collaboration

September 7, 2014/in Columns /by Matt Kuczynski

When Tom Newhouse of Thomas J. Newhouse -Design began his career in industrial design in the 1970’s, sustainable features were not easy to market to customers. While industrial design leaders such as Herman Miller and Steelcase had been operating their businesses with a sense of environmental and social stewardship from their beginnings, their practices were not the norm. “It was a battle for a while to design—to even mention to a client—that something was going to be greener,” he said. “’It’s going to cost more,’ they’d say, ‘And nobody cares!’ Mention it to the marketing department, and they’d balk.”

Since that time, however, Newhouse has seen the idea of “Designing for the Environment” grow hand in hand with the sustainable business movement—and the work of the West Michigan Sustainable Business Forum. “It started to be—and this is pure triple bottom line thinking—potentially profitable to be greener,” said Newhouse.

At the time WMSBF was founded in the early 1990s, Newhouse had already dedicated not only his design practice, but his lifestyle to reducing his impact on the environment: his home and studio, designed and built in 1978 by Tom and his wife Jill, was conceived to be as energy efficient and low-impact as possible; much like the objects he was designing. The idea of business collaboration, especially in the field of ecological design and sustainability, pulled in Newhouse. “Sustainability cannot be accomplished alone, the whole society has to pull together to make it happen,” said Newhouse. “The Business Forum is the same sort of idea, but with the opportunity to network within West Michigan about sustainability. That local-mindedness—that’s what intrigued me.”

“The main idea was to learn from each other,” continued Newhouse.

Soon after the first initial meetings of the Forum, several members consolidated their efforts as the WMSBF Design Work Group, later becoming the Design Committee. With a focus on continuing and developing the idea of sustainable product development in West Michigan, they worked to design a guide that could provide a tangible tool for product manufacturers and designers to be more sustainable.

The result of this brainstorming and collaboration was the West Michigan Sustainable Businesses Forum’s “Designing Products with Sustainable Attributes” guide. First released in 1999, following up the Concise Self Assessment Guide to Sustainable Commerce, this guidebook provided an environmental impact matrix [EIM] through which a product could be comprehensively graded on its design from a life cycle thinking focus, taking factors such as raw materials specification and energy use, hazardous materials generated from manufacture, recycling possibilities for the product at the end of life, and even worker safety into consideration. The end result of such study would be a quantitative score that product designers and companies could use to benchmark the impact of their products.

While today, many software systems can assist with doing life cycle assessments and developing such analyses, the WMSBF Environmental Impact Matrix was an important development at the time for quantifying environmental data about products and companies. Over time, “Designing Products with Sustainable Attributes” has been utilized by many businesses and shared through numerous organizations, including the Network for Business Innovation and Sustainability and the University of Illinois.

“In some ways, these tools were rudimentary, but not for the time they weren’t—we were that early in adopting these concepts,” said Newhouse, who served on the committee when the Matrix was developed. “Our little old West Michigan forum was turning out stuff as good or better than what anybody else had going on.”

According to Newhouse, the spirit of collaboration around sustainability that allowed such collaboration to happen is an inherent, important quality that’s unique to WMSBF that allows it to produce results. “I’ll never forget a Nike guy spoke at one of our annual conferences,” said Newhouse. “He was just completely blown away about the collaborative relationship between direct competitors to a sustainable West Michigan. Similar industry leaders, like Chrysler, General Motors, and Ford at the time—they weren’t talking to each other It was anathema in those early days to talk to anyone you were in direct competition with, to talk to somebody at GM when you were at Ford. You just couldn’t do that.”

“Sustainability is a whole systems thinking issue, and we have to apply these changes as a market segment,” he continued. “We’ve been able to do that with the furniture industry in West Michigan, and the recycling industry. Those things happen because all of us are doing these things together.”