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Last month, the Green Biz Wichita (GBW) executive team met to discuss several agenda items that would further sustainability efforts and green practices in the business community.
Roger Carvalho from Pen Publishing has joined the Executive group of Green Biz Wichita and will serve as its membership chair.
A Lunch-N-Learn was held July 20 at the National Center for Aviation Training (NCAT), with guest speakers Kay Johnson, from the city of Wichita, and Elizabeth Ablah, assistant professor at the University of Kansas' School of Medicine Department of Preventative Medicine and Public Health. Attendees received a tour of the NCAT facility prior to lunch. Carolyn Koehn, Via Christi, and Audra Dinell, Kennedy and Coe, handled logistics and registration for the event.
The team approved a $1,000 sponsorship of the Wichita Chamber of Commerce Exposure's "Green Zone" and is encouraging other local businesses to host a booth and participate in the September event.
The following month, GBW will once again have a presence at the Kansas Energy Conference, Oct. 4-5. The organization booth will focus on October as Energy Efficiency Month.
A tour of Cargill Meat Solutions is planned as a member activity this fall. In addition, a membership survey is being created to determine event preferences, education requests, committee work and suggestions for the organization. These resultswill be shared with Green Biz Wichita members in the fall. --
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MEMBER PROFILE:
Steve Hermann,
Central Mechanical Wichita
For Central Mechanical Wichita (CMW), going green was an easy and obvious plan for the future. Since 1990, the company has performed installation and repair of mechanical systems, plumbing, heating, air conditioning and medical gas systems, provided energy service audits and recomm
ended practices that ensure
positive client solutions.
Most
of CMW clients are within a 150-mile radius of Wichita but Steve Hermann, business development manager, says the company has worked across the U.S. to provide energy services.
In the past decade, CMW has seen growth in its service department. This, Hermann says, can be attributed to clients making the decision to improve their business with sustainable, green practices. Specifically, medical, institutional, industrial, governmental, religious and commercial companies ask CMW to help them use less energy and become efficient.
"The primary driver for our clients is dollars and cents," Hermann says. "More often than not, the clients we work with want to use less utilities like gas, electric and water and turn that capital investment back over time. Every efficiency project can have a payback related to it."
Hermann serves as the green team leader for CMW, serving on Green Biz Wichita's executive committee and helping drive membership for the organization. During last month's Lunch-N-Learn event, Hermann was introduced to WasteWise, a free, voluntary program from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) through which organizations eliminate costly municipal solid waste.
He says this meeting and the WasteWise program opened his eyes to the potential CMW has to reduce its frequency of waste collection.
Currently, CMW goes green by using occupancy sensors for light control and controllable thermostats at the office. The comapny also uses power factor correction to lower electrical usage. Thanks to Green Biz Wichita's lunch topic, Hermann says he believes the WasteWise program can offer additional solutions to incorporating sustainability at CMW.
"We have recycled our scrap metals from construction projects for a long time before the modern idea of sustainability came into people's radars," he says. "WasteWise can help us pinpoint new areas of recycling, from establishing a company roadmap to encouraging individuals to use fewer paper products in the office."
CMW has recognized from the start that a membership with Green Biz Wichita just made sense. Hermann says the knowledge he gains from fellow Wichita companies provides a heightened sense of awareness that natural resources are a finite commodity and that it will require companies and individuals to make better choices and create positive habits in order to protect Planet Earth.
"Technology moves at a rapid pace," he says. "And not everyone know the correct practices out there. Habits are hard to break and the knowledge we've gained from Green Biz Wichita allows our own andother local companies to talk about what they know, which benefits everyone." --
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August 2011
Volume I, Issue I
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The Aluminum Challenge
Business vs. Business
The aluminum can may be the most recycleable package in the U.S. Each year more than half of the 100 billion cans sold are recycled and reused, which means the other 50 million are placed in landfills or incinerated.
The numbers are the same in other counties making a grand total of 1.5 million tons of wasted cans on our planet each year. And though waste is never a good thing, the real environmental damage occurs when new cans are made from entirely new materials.
With this in mind, Green Biz Wichita would like to issue a challenge for each member business to organize an aluminum can drive in the office. Cans brought from home, collected from friends and neighbors and especially those consumed in the workplace could be bagged and counted by the business' green team leader. The total number can then be shared among businesses for a friendly competition.
Cans can be taken to a local recycling center with the money received donated to a charity. The winner of the Aluminum Challenge would not only enjoy bragging rights but  also will reduce its carbon footprint. For example, one aluminum can will run a computer for three hours.
Besides cans, other aluminum sources are important to recycle. World-famous chocolate manufacturer Hershey Chocolate Company makes 20 million Hershey's Kisses every day. This requires nearly 133-square miles of aluminum to wrap the chocolates. Aluminum wrap on a Hershey Kiss is recycleable but most of it reaches the trash cans instead of recycle bins.
Did you know aluminum cans can be recycled and reused within 60 days for various products like vehicle parts, sliding shutters for windows and doors? Recycling aluminum saves money, energy and manpower because preparing aluminum products from raw metal consumes close to 100 times the power required to recycle aluminum. If all aluminum produced is regularly recycled, the energy saved is enough to light up a medium-sized city for close to five years.
So before you trash them, collect them - aluminum cans that is. As Wichita's green business leaders, let's take charge in making our planet a cleaner, better place to live. If you are interested in taking part in the Aluminum Challenge, let the GBW executive team know by Sept. 1. --
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Connect with New Green Biz
Members at EXPOSURE
Your green business organization will be present at Wichita's largest networking event. On Sept. 22, the city's Chamber of Commerce will host EXPOsure, a target-rich environment that allows businesses to connect with customers in a dynamic setting. Local businesses are asked to purchase a booth to help meet an anticipated 180 company prospects and provide an opportunity to showcase their products and services at the one-day event.
As part of the Green Zone section of trade show, Green Biz Wichita's executive team will host a booth to promote membership in the organization. As an extra incentive, GBW will give away an iPad - a big attraction for businesses and companies to sign up for membership that day.
EXPOsure will be from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sept. 22 at Century II Expo Hall. GBW is encouraging all member businesses to host a booth as a way to expand brand recognition, build its company network, meet key decision-makers, launch new products and services and generate multiple contacts.
This year, EXPOsure has a theme of Connect, Expand, Target, Promote, Succeed. To purchase a booth and interact with 1,700 attendees, click below:
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Mark Your Calendar for
the State's Energy Event
The leadership of Green Biz Wichita encourages local businesses to attend the Kansas Energy Conference (KEC), Oct. 4-5, to learn more about alternative energy options. Green Biz Wichita is a involved as a financial sponsor of the event and is hosting a booth to feature the organization's educational purpose of making local businesses aware of ways to become sustainable.
A message from Gov. Sam Brownback will open the KEC on Wed. afternoon then breakout sessions are planned on community/small wind, transmission and biomass/biofuels. An evening reception will be held featuring booth vendors, including Green Biz Wichita.
Following the Oct. 5 general session, morning workshops will focus on topics including wind farm development, efficiency, solar energy, transportation and wind component manufacturing. During the trade show reception, the executive team of GBW will once again promote the organization with applications and information to help grow its membership.
GBW Chair Dixie Larson says it is important for the organization to be part of the city's annual energy sustainability event. She also hopes attendees take home a positive message about green practices in the workplace, specifically an emphasis on recycling, reusing and reducing the impact on the plant.
"Being green is not just a fad anymore, it is up front and center and important to the future of our city," she says. "Green initiatives create jobs and help retain young leaders who often make decisions on where to live based on a city's environmental awareness."
For more information or to reserve booth space, contact Susan NeuPoth Cadoret at scadoret@kansascommerce.com or (785) 296-7198. --
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