April 2009 Archives

Green Your Offices
It takes an inside champion to get an organization started on a greener pathway.  You can practice your leadership skills at the same time you develop new job skills AND green your own workplace environment by initiating a green program.  And you don't have to do it alone.  The San Francisco based Connect the Dots nonprofit is making it easy for you by providing an easy to implement system just for nonprofits!

Green Your Community Services
Connect the Dots disseminates environmental sustainability practices to nonprofit organizations to help organizations meet their social missions in an environmentally responsible manner. They provide the guidance nonprofit organizations need to realize their desire for environmental responsibility. Now nonprofit organizations can undertake the path towards sustainability and truly maximize their care for the communities they serve.
 

The Green Start Program

The Connect the Dots consulting program, the Green Start program, concentrates on high impact, minimal effort conservation practices to "jumpstart" organizations towards sustainability.

Initially, they act as an extension of an organization's staff, planning and taking action on its behalf, including scheduling audits with existing programs, creating action lists and implementing them, setting up and/or facilitating an internal "green team" group, developing a strategy, and setting up and monitoring savings.

Over time, as organizations acclimate to using our tools (e.g. action worksheets, monitoring tools, etc.), they take over their own planning, execution, and tracking of their green program.

For 3 months, Connect The Dots partners with nonprofits to serve as "personal trainers" to address the most beneficial greening processes:

• Waste Management

• Energy & Utilities

• Environmentally-Preferred Purchasing Policy

• Education & Outreach

• Tracking & Reporting

To promote ongoing changes, the Connect The Dots' methodology integrates planning and tracking tools to help nonprofits make informed decisions about environmental sustainability.

CONTACT:
Connect The Dots
1442 Florida Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415.830.5858 or 888.666.0031
www.connectthedotsnetwork.org

CGS Training Directory Review the green and sustainable training courses and resources available to our readers. Check back often, new green job/career training courses are added frequently. TRAINING CATALOG

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Green Directory: SolutionsForGreen.com ~ Certification Programs: GreenJobWizard.com

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Solid waste reduction efforts are being made by continually removing items from the trash stream and diverting them to recycling.

The California Integrated Waste Management Board documents how the benefits of switching from non-recycled paper products to 100% recycled products yields the following additional savings:

NAPKINS and TOWELS

One hospital converted virgin napkins and towels to recycled content and the results were:

• 33.80 tons of recycled paper used
• 189,000 gallons of water saved
• 81 cubic yards of landfill space saved
• 110,700 kilowatts of energy saved
• 1,620.00 pounds of air pollutants saved
  

BLUE WRAP

Isolation of recyclable materials from an office or hospitals' various waste streams and observing strict guidelines have allowed one hospital, St. Mary's Medical Center, to develop a system over three years of collection, packaging, storing and shipping that has reduced over 85 % of their purchased "Blue Wrap" plastic that is used to protect sterilized or "clean" health care equipment without a single incident of contamination in the shipped material. 

All of this recycling was conducted within a footprint of less than 20 square feet including processing and storage.

Recycling of "Blue Wrap' is a huge opportunity for medical offices and facilities to reduce landfill, reduce their costs for disposable plastic supplies, and provide additional environmental benefits with no loss of quality in service.

Blue Wrap may not be the largest segment of the waste stream for hospitals, but it is a unifying product they all use; and by establishing networking opportunities with local governments, recyclers and haulers, other materials can be targeted. 

Blue Wrap purchasing for 2005 in a representative sample of 60 various sized facilities found that  424,563 pounds or 212 tons of non-reusable plastic was used.  Recyclers estimate that this represents 1/3 of the combined amount of blue wrap and stretch wrap for the facilities.

It's possible to achieve a 20% reduction in the volume of waste from surgical suites.  That's significant.  
 
 

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Green Directory: SolutionsForGreen.com ~ Certification Programs: GreenJobWizard.com

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