The 2013 National Apartment Association’s (NAA) Green Conference is April 15 to 17 in Baltimore, and I am lucky enough to be attending this year. The NAA Green Conference is dedicated to educating multifamily professionals on environmentally preferable products and practices that will lower utility bills, reduce their impact, and attract (and keep) new residents who care about sustainability. 

Although not lodging-focused, the results of a recent survey conducted by MIT Sloan Management Review (MIT SMR) and The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) should interest lodging executives. In their survey, entitled “The Innovation Bottom Line,” 2,600 executives and managers from companies around the world were asked how their sustainability efforts have impacted their companies’ bottom line. Thirty-seven percent of respondents said that sustainability-related actions have added to their company’s profit, up 23 percent from the previous year. Nearly half of the companies have changed their business models as a result of sustainability opportunities—a 20 percent jump over last year. The report calls these companies that have made business-model innovations “Sustainability-Driven Innovators.”

We are excited to announce that HD Supply and our customers have reused more than 7,000 boxes since the “Reuse Me” program began late 2011! Dedicated delivery drivers in Phoenix and San Antonio log the number of boxes returned on their handheld computers, and we now have enough data to quantify how often each property is participating in the program. One of our largest customers in those two markets and a leader in the multifamily industry has worked with us to return the most boxes thus far and is looking to increase the amount even more.

Do you know what happens to your trash after you throw it in the garbage? Yes, it goes to landfill, but do you really know what happens to your waste?

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) “Hazardous waste is waste that is dangerous or potentially harmful to our health or the environment. Hazardous wastes can be liquids, solids, gases, or sludges.”

I was lucky enough to attend the 2012 Greenbuild International Conference and Expo, which was held in San Francisco in November. A little bit about the conference: Greenbuild was first launched in 2002 by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) to focus on increasing sustainable and efficient building practices. Over the past 10 years, as the green movement has continued to gain momentum, the conference and topics covered have grown remarkably.

Have you encountered the term “VOC” and wondered what it means or how it affects you? Or have you seen products touting to be no or low-VOC? Let’s take a look at what VOCs are, why they are bad for you and your staff, and the agencies that test for them. 

On September 28th, our sustainability coordinator, Kyle Hyman, and I participated in the first Green Apple Day of Service. The event, hosted by the Center for Green Schools (which was established by the U.S. Green Building Council), brings people and organizations from across the globe together to better local schools.

Recently, a Green Blogic subscriber contacted us to find out how we can help make his property more attractive to current and future residents with green products. The associate manager of sustainability, Kelly Thompson, and I had the pleasure of walking the multifamily property to look for efficiencies. I’ll start by saying that it was very attractive to begin with, inside and out, but we were able to identify some great opportunities to help the owner, property manager, and renters save money on utility bills.

It’s time for an update on the box reuse program we discussed on this blog last January. In that article, titled “Thinking Outside the Box – Sustainability Through a Reuse Program,” we talked about our pilot program in Phoenix and how to participate if you are in that territory.