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'Green' coordinators a growing trend at U.S. companies

By Joyzelle Davis, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published April 21, 2008 at 7 p.m.

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Adam Bratter, the mail room coordinator at White Wave Foods in Broomfield, shovels compost last week. The company composts all its cafeteria waste, which is then available to employees.

Photo by George Kochaniec Jr. / The Rocky

Adam Bratter, the mail room coordinator at White Wave Foods in Broomfield, shovels compost last week. The company composts all its cafeteria waste, which is then available to employees.

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After each meal at White Wave Foods' Broomfield headquarters, employees diligently sort their food scraps, balled-up biodegradable napkins and soda cans into containers for composting, recycling or trash.

Once a year, White Wave's nearly 400 employees hit pay dirt - literally - in return when a dump truck delivers the now nutrient-rich composting soil to the parking lot for workers to bring home for their own gardens.

"It's a great symbolic gesture that composting comes full circle," said Ellen Feeney, White Wave's vice president of responsible livelihood.

White Wave's composting program is one of several eco-friendly programs the maker of Silk soy milk and Horizon organic dairy put into place after creating the "responsible livelihood" position some three years ago. That job title and its various permutations - ranging from sustainability manager to green mission coordinator - are popping up everywhere from Fortune 500 companies like Wal-Mart to local institutions like Children's Hospital.

Paul Jerde, executive director of the center for entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado's Leeds School of Business, said that interest among employers and students alike in environmental issues prompted the school to require this year's entering MBA class to take a sustainability course as a core class.

"We liken what's going on with sustainability to what happened in terms of the world of quality assurance," Jerde said. "Fifteen years ago, quality assurance was its own box in business. Now it's inculcated into every stage, from design on up."

Children's Hospital added the position of sustainability manager late last year, after the hospital relocated to Aurora. Employees had long asked the hospital's management if the new campus could implement a recycling program and other eco-friendly measures, said John Hudgens, who started as sustainability manager in November.

"We want to be an employer of choice, so upper management dedicated the resources to create this position," he said.

First on Hudgen's list is creating the requested recycling program, but he's exploring everything from wind power to organizing employee van pools.

Boulder Community Hospital was one of the first hospitals nationwide to have a sustainability coordinator when it created the post in the mid-1990s. The nonprofit hospital's waste reduction efforts have helped to bolster its finances, trimming some $300,000 a year in waste management and $100,000 from reprocessing single-use sleeves on medical devices.

"We've really made people aware that sustainability benefits not only the community at large but, bottom line, it saves us money," said Kai Abelkis, the hospital's sustainability coordinator.

Whole Foods earlier this year hired Robin Burton as its first green mission coordinator for the Rocky Mountain region. Burton's job includes trying to reduce waste at some 30 supermarkets through everything from recycling used cooking oil to be used as biodiesel fuel, composting trimmings from the meat counter and donating day-old bread to local food banks.

"We look at everything that comes in the front door and goes out the back door," Burton said.

At White Wave, the company's sustainability program gives prizes to employees who log energy-saving measures like hitting the stairs instead of the elevator or riding their bikes to work.

"Our point of view is this is everyone's job," Feeney said. "I may be planting the seeds, but it's everyone's job to water them."

davisj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2514

Comments

  • April 22, 2008

    6:02 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    greenleaf writes:

    Happy Earth Day everybody! I celebrated my first Earth Day as young botany student on the lawn in front of Norlin library on the University of Colorado campus. It was a beautiful spring day much like this one.

    So... stir the compost, plant a tree, buy a CFL bulb, walk or bike to work and think about how fortunate we are to live in this beautiful world. Do something to keep it that way for all of us.

    Again: Happy Earth Day!

  • April 22, 2008

    7:48 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    Ottis writes:

    Just don't throw out that CFL bulb; many contain mercury. Treat it as hazardous waste.

  • April 22, 2008

    7:56 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    greenleaf writes:

    Otis,

    You are right, CFLs do contain small amounts of mercury. They also last as long as 10 years, in fact, I have 2 that are now 18 years old. By the time they need replacement, convenient ways to do so will be available. People have thrown out long tube shop and office lights that contain even more mercury for years and without any thought! The CFL revolution will make it easier to recycle them as well.

  • April 22, 2008

    9:34 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    greenleaf writes:

    Squatch,

    keep working on the humour angle, one of these days you might say something clever and worth laughing at. The funniest thing I've heard from you is your "window test" - what a hoot!

  • April 22, 2008

    11:14 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    ftssoad writes:

    Adam! Congratts on making the paper!

  • April 22, 2008

    5:37 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    greenleaf writes:

    Squatch,

    I agree totally with your statements regarding the food-based ethanols and biodiesels made from corn, soybeans and palm oil( I have to say though that palm oil is very high in saturated fats and not good for old apes such as yourself).

    Where you are totally wrong is in blaming environmentalist for the problem. In this country, we have a very powerful agricultural lobby backed by Con Agra and ADM. It was they and corn-belt politicians who hatched the ideas of corn ethanol and soy diesel. It was a windfall that our all business all the time president was glad to approve of. For the environmental community, these were never intended to be more than test bed and demonstration products. It took Con Agra, politicians and commodity traders to put us in the mess we are now with these products.

    Environmentalists want ethanol and biodiesel to be made from switch grass, landscape waste, algae, forest thinnings and other cellulosic waste products not human and animal food.

  • April 23, 2008

    12:22 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    Civility writes:

    Happy Earth Day to you, Greenleaf. I took the bus and the Light Rail into work and did not use my car at all. I figure that not only will it help the environment, it will lessen the demand for foreign oil and it will lessen traffic. It will also drive gas prices down which in turn will drive the prices down for everything else including food.

    One of the other things that I'm pushing for those who are able to, is to use the technology that we have, to be able to work from home most of the time. I have have replaced all of the bulbs in my home with CFL bulbs. 60 minutes had a special on Global Warming and it was pretty frightening.

    I appreciate YOUR comments and keep up good work. We need young people like you to save our planet.

  • April 23, 2008

    6:28 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    greenleaf writes:

    Civility,

    Thanks for your kind comments. Although I should let you in on the fact that I am 57 years young!