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The Sustainable Office – Part 9: Food

February 13, 2009 – 2:15 pm by Keenan

Choosing a sustainable diet is not only one of the best ways to reduce your impact on the environment, but it can also substantially improve your health and quality of life. Encouraging your employees to eat green will reduce your organization's impact on the environment, and just may give you a happier and more productive team. Here are some recommendations for reducing your impact through food. 1. Go organic Providing your employees with organic food has many benefits. Substituting organic food for other food reduces your organization's impact because organic farming, due to its emphasis on natural processes, uses natural pesticides and less water while enhancing soil quality and biodiversity. In many cases, organic produce is healthier than non-organic because fewer pesticides are used. 2. Go local/seasonal Buying food that is produced locally reduces the emissions associated with transportation. Because it has to travel less distance, less time passes between harvesting and selling, ...

Posted in Business, Environment | 1 Comment »

6 feet greener with your sustainability report

February 10, 2009 – 12:24 pm by Roy

Hello, I'm Roy. I have been working at Verteego for only and already one week as a sales consultant. I think it is time to share my first insights on the company, the industry and our customers. First of all, I have to tell how amazing the Verteego team is. They are, we are, a bench of passionate young guys striving to turn the economy more sustainable. As a business developer, the first question running through my head is: Why SME’s should use Verteego? What are the benefits of creating a Sustainability Report for your firm? Answers are as numerous as different depending what you are looking for. For SMEs already very concerned by sustainable development, the value is pretty straightforward: a Sustainability Report will enhance all the efforts they make for being sustainable. You are behaving well; let Verteego communicate your commitment to social responsibility to your clients. For SMEs not already involved in depth ...

Posted in Business, Take action, Verteego | 1 Comment »

The Sustainable Office – Part 8: Furniture

January 28, 2009 – 2:45 pm by Keenan

Remember when you were a kid, and you had that one friend who had all the cool, crazy furniture all over his house like car seats for chairs and couches, road signs for coffee tables, and tobacco spittoons for water pitchers? Well that furniture is still cool because not only is it fun to actually be in a driver's seat when playing Mario Kart, but it's all a form of sustainable furniture as well. Before you completely write off this sustainable furniture idea as nothing more than home decorating through petty crime or being too lazy to take a trip to the landfill, you should know that there are other, more elegant ways to deck your house out sustainably. Here are a few tips to reduce your impact on the environment while sitting on your derrière. 1. Buy Bamboo/Certified sustainable wood Maybe it's stealing food from pandas, but using bamboo still sustainable. ...

Posted in Business, Environment | 3 Comments »

10 reasons SMEs must embrace Sustainability

January 22, 2009 – 1:57 pm by Jeremy

We speak to many small & medium business owners who come and ask us: why should my company execute a sustainability strategy? Isn't sustainability a waste of time & money in these difficult economic times? Our answer is usually the following: SMEs who are not committed to expanding sustainably will die. Sustainability isn't an option, but a duty, a matter of survival, and also a huge business opportunity. The ongoing economic turmoil tolls the bell of XXth century way of conducting business. In the new millenium, the greatest entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, leaders and pioneer business managers have been reinventing business practices by taking into account environmental and social criteria as much as the economic criterion in decision-making processes. Here are 10 reasons small and medium business owners and managers should think for a sec about redefining their strategy and values around the notion of sustainability: 1- Strengthen your brand power 2- Avoid the cost of crisis ...

Posted in Business, Debate, Policy, Take action, Trendwatching, Verteego | No Comments »

New features on Verteego Report: Make your sustainability report public!

January 20, 2009 – 1:34 pm by Keenan

Team Verteego has just released the Public Report feature for Verteego Report which allows you to publish your organization's sustainability report online at a personalized URL. Now, on top of managing and sharing your practices with your employees, you can increase your organization's online presence while positioning it as a leader in sustainable business by promoting your sustainable practices. Creating your public report is done in three very simple steps: 1. Go to the "Tools" section and enter your custom URL. 2. Choose the topics you would like to share publicly. 3. Publish your sustainability report. Once your sustainability report is published, your organization will be added to Verteego's organization directory, which can be accessed from Verteego's home page. Note that at any time, you can go back and add or remove topics from your sustainability report or unpublish your report. Other new features: The new version of Verteego offers more advanced ways to personalize your report. You ...

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The Sustainable Office - Part 7: Air

January 13, 2009 – 8:34 pm by Keenan

On average adults spend over 90% of their time indoors, and the air indoors is almost always more polluted than outdoor air due to dust, mold, radon, and other chemicals. Recently, it has been recognized that poor indoor air quality can lead to lower productivity, missed work days, and illness - something called sick building syndrome. Unless you are employing Jerome Kerviel, lower productivity and more sick days among your employees is not good for your business. To ensure that you have happy and healthy employees, here are some things you can do to improve the quality of the air in your office. 1. Buy low VOC carpet and furnishings Paint, rugs, adhesives, furnishings - all these things emit VOCs, formaldehyde, ozone, and other fun things into the air in your office, particularly when they are new. Most of the bad stuff from normal furniture is off-gassed in the first 24-72 hours, so ...

Posted in Business, Environment | 4 Comments »

The Sustainable Office - Part 6: Water

January 6, 2009 – 11:18 am by Keenan

From pollution dilution to cleaning and hydration, water is pretty darn useful. And, at less than a third of a cent per gallon in the US, water is basically free. That's got to be the best bang for your buck I have ever heard of. Inexpensive water does not come without some hidden costs, however, as the low price leads many people to overuse and abuse water as though there were an endless supply. Even though water is so cheap, there are still some money and water saving ideas out there. Here are a few that you can use around your office. 1. Install water-efficient fixtures/toilets Toilets used to use up to 9 gallons per flush. Nowadays, toilets only use about 1.6 gallons per flush, and there are dual flush toilets that use less water for onesies than twosies. If the toilets in your office haven't been updated in the last quarter ...

Posted in Environment, Take action | 5 Comments »

Verteego at Pollutec

December 10, 2008 – 1:04 pm by Keenan

Verteego shared a booth with Durapole this year at Pollutec, a tradeshow in Lyon that is dedicated to the all things green and clean(tech). The tradeshow itself was big. Really big. Companies involved in every aspect of sustainable development from France, Europe, and the rest of the world were there. There were literally thousands of booths, companies, and people there, which made Pollutec well worth the cost of attending. With so many organizations there, all of which are involved in sustainability, Pollutec was the perfect place to advertise Verteego Report and Verteego Carbon. Both products went over very well with the people we met there. Verteego Carbon was particularly well received, and we got a lot of great feedback on the product. In general, people were very impressed and intrigued by what Verteego Carbon offered them. It is always nice to get some real world feedback on our products, and ...

Posted in Verteego | 1 Comment »

The Sustainable Office - Part 5: Packaging

December 8, 2008 – 9:32 pm by Keenan

If you look at the waste in your office's trash bin, I would bet the vast majority of it, aside from paper, is packaging: disposable coffee cups, yogurt containers, single serving food wrapping, cardboard boxes, etc. A friend of mine once spent a year in Africa, and when he came back the first thing he noticed was how much waste we generate in America. The big difference, he said, was that the people in the village where he was staying did not buy anything that came in packaging. In general, they grew their own food and bought nothing at all, so the only waste they had was food waste. Packaging can be anything from palettes, boxes, and packing peanuts used in transporting products to water bottles, candy wrappers, and toy boxes. Among many other purposes, packaging is used to protect items from damage and contamination, to make dangerous substances child-resistant, and ...

Posted in Business, Environment, Take action | 4 Comments »

Dongtan: Eco-City or Greenwashing?

November 28, 2008 – 4:17 pm by Raluca

Labelled as the world's first sustainable city, the Dongtan Eco-city project in China is meant to be sustainable not only environmentally, but also socially, economically and culturally. It is the ambition of the Chinese government and UK engineering and construction giant Arup. So what is this visionary eco-city supposed to look like? First of all, you should know that Dongtan is situated on the island of Chongming, 15km north of Shangai. The future eco-city is located on the third largest island in China at the mouth of the Yangtze River. The 86 km² site is adjacent to a wetland of global importance. The urban area should occupy only one third of the site, with the remaining land retained for agriculture and used to create a buffer zone of ‘managed’ wetland between the city and the ‘natural’ wetland. Dongtan was presented at the United Nations World Urban Forum by China as ...

Posted in Trendwatching | 4 Comments »