Softchoice is officially registered for the Chicago Green Office Challenge! We started by signing up online at www.chicagogreenofficechallenge.org and we entered in our baseline data. With a rating system they provided and thanks to the great work from the 2009 Softchoice GreenTeam we are already considered a tier 1 company in this challenge. However, the contest is based on growth so it will take a lot of us to come up with some changes to grow an already great score. Please let me know if you have any ideas that can help!
Featured Posts:
Green Office Challenge
Softchoice is officially registered for the Chicago Green Office Challenge! We started … [Read More...]
Bring a Lunch to Work Day
Before my time on the Softchoice GreenTeam comes to an end I would like to finish with one … [Read More...]
PUE Calculator Update
In a previous post I talked about the project I was going to take on to find out PUE … [Read More...]
3 Rules for Crowdsourcing Your Sustainability Projects
In the last few weeks I've been thinking about ways to take our green strategy to the next … [Read More...]
Green Office Challenge
March 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Bring a Lunch to Work Day
February 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Before my time on the Softchoice GreenTeam comes to an end I would like to finish with one last project. Hopefully this is something that will become more of an annual event. My goal is to try and take as many Softchoice employee cars off the road as I can during lunch. We would like to set up a day for everyone to either bring in a lunch and have lunch together or they should use some form of green transportation to go get lunch, like walking.
After some very early discussions in our GreenTeam meeting yesterday we thought it would be easiest to start this year with only our four main offices, Toronto, Chicago, Seattle and Atlanta. These offices all have at least 40 employees in them, so if we can get a lot of participation I think it would be a lot of fun and very effective.
Another idea that came up in our meeting was tracking it, which might be tough. Not only am I the only GreenTeam member outside of the Toronto office, I am also the only member in the U.S. So we will need to lean on management to help us get a lot of participation. This goes back to another idea we had which was setting up regional ambassadors in each office to help us in events like this. (but that is a whole different topic!). But to track this event we would allow managers in the four offices access to this blog to log in and post how many people they had participate and even pictures of their event.
Stay tuned for more info as I work out some of the kinks in setting this up. Please let me know if you have done anything similar in your own office.
Even Dilbert is on board!
PUE Calculator Update
January 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment
In a previous post I talked about the project I was going to take on to find out PUE number. Well it turns out that it wasn’t nearly as easy as I thought it was going to be. Softchoice’s main data center is managed out of a co-location, so no matter how much power and cooling we actually use, we are still going to pay for a specific amount. It sounds like unless we can consolidate enough to remove an entire rack of equipment, our price and power won’t change.
We also have a smaller back up data center in our Toronto office as well. So again I worked with a very nice person in our IT department who took the time out to talk to me again. Unfortunately I got the same answer out of him. Our Toronto office is on a monthly plan with our power company that allows us to pay the same amount every month regardless of what we use.
Now I am kind of stuck for ideas. Even if we measure and find our PUE number there isn’t anything we can do about it. Has anyone else run into this yet? We have consolidated on the newest equipment in the industry already so I don’t think we can shrink our data center footprints any further. But now what?
3 Rules for Crowdsourcing Your Sustainability Projects
December 20, 2010 By Leave a Comment
In the last few weeks I’ve been thinking about ways to take our green strategy to the next level. We’ve done a bunch of great projects and have a passionate green team, but how do we do more and get more employees involved? We have a blog and a twitter account, so we are utilizing social media. But it’s been more of a communication vehicle than something that “engages” our stakeholders. I came across this article today, and it’s an interesting way to get people involved. We don’t have the brand recognition of GE or eBay, so I’m not sure how well it would work for us. But I want to add it to the things to do list for next year:
A new trend in the corporate pursuit of sustainability has emerged: crowd-sourcing via social media. While adoption has been easy, gaining useful ideas has not. By looking at three recent efforts — GE’s Smart Grid challenge, eBay’s Green Team, and a leading European retailer’s green customer foray — three rules for companies considering crowd-sourcing of sustainability ideas are coming into focus. Read more
Greener Meetings
December 15, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Working in a remote office I have seen the good and the bad of attending webinars. The good parts being that of course it is much greener and easier to attend than having to drive and fly somewhere. But sometimes it is hard to hear or be heard and our video isn’t always the best. Overall I would say that the good outweighs the bad. Obviously for a company of our size it doesn’t make sense to have everyone travel to 1 location.
The Chicago conference room
To take costs down one step further, as well as make our meetings even greener, we only give the meeting link and the phone numbers to managers instead of every employee. This means we are using a lot less phone lines and computers to have everyone attend the meeting. I actually prefer this way because everyone in their own offices gets together to view the meeting in Toronto on their projectors so its like we are all coming together for our own meetings.
PUE Calculator
December 10, 2010 By Leave a Comment
The Power Usage Effectiveness Estimator or PUE Calculator is a tool that we are going to attempt to use here at Softchoice. This tool will give us a numbered result that we can work into our reports at the end of the year and compare against future years to see how effectively we are using our power. I will post more as I learn about this tool and make sure to detail the best ways to use it. So far the most challenging part is getting a member of our IT team to sit down and help me out! Check out the tool and let me know if you have used it before or have any quicker results.
Softchoice Joins Green Challenge
November 23, 2010 By Leave a Comment
It is still in the very early stages but I wanted to get a post out there to let you all know that Softchoice will be participating in Chicago’s Green Office Challenge. We will need to allow the city access to some of our electricity and water bills to participate but I think we really have a great chance at winning if everyone in the office is up to the challenge.
I will post plenty more on this as we begin and go through the contest so you are aware of how these challeneges work but it sounds like it will be a lot of fun. Our first meeting is next Tuesday so I will know a lot more after that. For more information or to sign your own company up go here http://www.chicagogreenofficechallenge.org/
Getting it there green
November 16, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Following a monthly Softchoice Green Team meeting I’d like to share with you some of the projects I am working on.
Supply Chain Analysis from a sustainability perspective: This is a report I had done for one of our clients looking at where their suppliers are located, the frequency of deliveries, the CO2 generated by all deliveries, distance traveled, and total number of deliveries to their various locations, etc. What I’m trying to uncover is no different from that of other business cases. I’d like to know where waste exists and how to eliminate it. The only difference is that the factor of time is weighted against the amount of pollution caused. Having things JIT (Just in Time) may cause more pollution and that is an important thing to consider.
Vendor Auditing: Looking at our own supply chain, we need to look at things like, how far our are suppliers traveling, are they using sustainable methods and products in their goods and services? The goal here is to find win-win scenarios where a supplier is not only better but closer and more sustainable.
Greener paper and coffee selection: Here I am looking at ways to further reduce waste in the paper and coffee consumption within the building. I am researching the various types of paper and coffee and looking at other solutions.
Reporting on warehouses: I will be putting together a report on the practices of our warehouses in the current state.
In addition to these projects I will continue to promote shipping complete when ever possible.
Please sign on the electronic line.
November 5, 2010 By Leave a Comment
When I joined the Softchoice gym over a year ago I had to sign a 3-page form to release Softchoice from any liability. At this time we had quite a few employees sign up to use the new workout facilities, and therefore went through a ton of paper getting everyone on board.
Over the last year we’ve been talking about trying to get some of our internal paper processes to be done electronically instead. And it’s no easy feat. Our first email back from HR on the topic was:
So I put this forward to the team and unfortunately we were unable to think of anything that we could do without. Everything that we print we print because we have to (from a legal perspective we have to have paper copies, often signed, in employee files). Everything that does not require printing is stored in the database.
So then we approached legal. I was utilizing electronic signatures for a variety of contracts that I was signing for marketing and they were being accepted. And I had been to many conferences and trainings that showed many governments using electronic processes. (and they are the ones that make the laws!) So I had a hunch that it wasn’t legal that would hold us back.
So our meeting with our legal team was today, and they don’t have a problem with electronic contracts and signatures at all. In most cases, it more out of habit and because “that’s the way we’ve always done it” that organizations hold tight to paper copies. So then we started getting at the real reasons why we weren’t moving to electronic forms. The main reasons, time and resources were a WAY bigger concern than the legal.
It was overwhelming to the HR team to take on a new project, when they were already swamped with current ones. Why would anyone take on more work? Even if it was for a good cause. We felt their pain and didn’t want our green efforts to come across as something that created work for people.
But then again, how much work would it be? We actually didn’t know. It seemed like it would take a lot to change all the forms, find electronic ways to store and secure them and educate employees on how to do it. But we didn’t really know. So what we did agree on was that we’d build a project plan. We’d bring in an expert from Adobe that could scope out the project for us and really inform us on how much work it would be.
Now that was something that HR was willing to commit to. They were willing to spend 1hr to understand the scope of this project more and we made a bit of progress today. A big learning is that all great green ideas can come across as being “work” to others. So it’s important to find out the real reasons holding people back, and take the time to give people what they need to make informed decisions.
Oh yeah, there was another cool win. We did decide to make the gym waiver electronic, and even though I already signed one a year ago, I just couldn’t help but sign it again electronically!
Bring Lunch to Work Day
November 5, 2010 By Leave a Comment
The project I am currently working on for the Softchoice GreenTeam is arranging a day where everyone brings their lunch to work or uses some kind of green transportation to get their lunch. For the purpose of the day though I am asking that everyone either walks or bikes to go out to lunch in order to maximize the effect of the day. Even though there are green cars or taking a bus etc we can make an even bigger difference just by walking.
Some of the challenges I am running into are finding a day that works for all of our offices and then finding a way to get participation. Also, since I am only in the Chicago office and the rest of the GreenTeam is in the Toronto office, how can we make sure everyone else is participating? I first thought that by choosing a day in the winter that people would be more likely to bring in a lunch and stay in the office. Now I am thinking that since even I don’t like packing my own lunch maybe I should have it sooner than later so that people can catch a nice day to walk somewhere.
With our main branches being Toronto, Chicago, Seattle and Atlanta I don’t really have concerns with getting people to meet up for lunch together in a green way but I am a little concerned about our smaller sales offices. Softchoice has quite a few offices with only 2 sales people in them. How can we keep tabs on them? Hopefully everyone will see the purpose behind the day and join in with our green efforts. I would love for this to be so successful that we can have it every year.
I will update this as I schedule a day and with any thing we do to encourage participation. Wish me luck.
By eating at our desk Softchoice can take a lot of cars off the road.
