Green Campus |
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By standardizing and centralizing the purchase of "green" or recycled office supplies, the IHM community is saving over $2,000 a year. A recycling program that pays IHM for recycling inkjet cartridges generated over $3,800 worth of revenue since its inception in July of 2003. Cell phone recycling brought in another $800 and a paper retriever program (Abitibi) on the sisters' property has paid over $2,100 to date for recycling their newspaper, magazines, office paper and junk mail. Evidence of how seriously the sisters take their environmental stewardship lies in the dumpsters behind the Motherhouse. A reduction of two 8-yard dumpsters that used to be emptied three times a week has been offset by the addition of one 8-yard recycling dumpster that's emptied twice a week. The result? A savings of over $11,000 to date. The greening committee is even going entrepreneurial. Last fall the committee bought a lot of 100 T-shirts made out of recycled plastic soda bottles. The white shirts, which showcase the Campus Greening Committee's name and vibrant two-color logo, sell for $13 each. Their goal? To use the profits of the T-shirt sales to support additional recycling initiatives in the Motherhouse.
One of the most recent initiatives has been to implement Green Meeting Guidelines for those planning and attending meetings, both on- an While this is only a smattering of the new and ongoing sustainable initiatives the sisters are pioneering, add it up: The value of investing in sustainable systems benefits the bottom line for both the Earth and the bank account. The committee reported the following results through January 2010:
If you're interested in reading more about green operational initiatives that have been implemented on the IHM campus, you can purchase a 12-page booklet entitled Effective and Cost-Saving Green Business Practices in the IHM Sustainability Shop. If you would like more information or have questions, please e-mail Jackie Willis. To Sustainable Community |
Encouraged by one of the sisters, a number of IHM employees formed a group, the Campus Greening Committee, to find ways of doing business in a more environmentally friendly fashion. The committee's efforts prove that business operations can be done more sustainably and can reduce operational costs at the same time.
