Burnham Receives the Tenant Excellence Award
On July 1, 2010 the first annual Chicago Green Office Challenge Awards & Recognition Ceremony with Mayor Richard M. Daley was held to celebrate the success and achievements of the Round 1 participants in the Green Office Challenge.
Carson Kyhl and Diana Urlaub attended this event on behalf of Burnham along with 106 other tenants and 30 property managers within the central business district.
The Green Office Challenge (GOC) was started as a way to engage the business community in the implementation of the Chicago Climate Action Plan. To guarantee success, the City partnered with the International Council for Local Environmental Initatives (ICLEI) to develop and deliver the program. The ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability is an international association of local governments as well as national and regional local government organizations who have made a commitment to sustainable development.
The provided tenant scorecard was broken down into 5 categories: Outreach, Energy, Waste, Transportation and Property Manager Engagement. There is a maximum of 100 points, which are broken down into 4 tiers. In the beginning Burnham started with a total of 31 points (Tier 3), because some initiatives were already in place such as: providing reusable dishes in the break room, on-site bicycle parking for employees and a pre-tax transit benefit program.
For 12 months, Burnham’s Green Team looked for greener alternatives to implement and brought awareness to our coworkers on what they could do in the office and at home. We adjusted many settings on our computers and printers to save energy and encouraged everyone to turn off their monitors at the end of the day. Burnham participated in the World Wildlife Foundation’s (WWF) Earth Hour. Active Transportation Alliance’s Bike to Work Week, the Ronald McDonald House Pop Tab Collection Program and created the Burnham Nationwide Green Office Policy to ensure our initatives continue beyond the GOC. During this time we discovered that our building, The Burnham Center, was about to expand their recycling program from just paper to include plastic, glass and aluminum. One initative we’re particularly proud of here is our Electronic Waste (e-Waste) Recycling Day, which we plan on making an annual event. For this event we collected batteries, cell phones, computers and hard drives from the office and home, diverting a total of 750 pounds of electronic waste from the landfill.
At the ceremony, Burnham was recognized with the Tenant Excellence Award for completing the challenge with a total score of 54 points placing them in Tier 2.
The Green Office Challenge was the perfect opportunity for Burnham to look at ways to make operations more sustainable. The suggested strategies are reasonable, affordable and do not require a lot of time. Although we’ve completed the 1st round our green efforts will not stop here. Burnham looks forward to being a part of Round 2 in September to achieve Tier 1 recognition.
A thought for today:
"Myth: we have to save the earth. Frankly, the earth doesn’t need to be saved. Nature doesn’t give a hoot if human beings are here or not. The planet has survived cataclysmic and catastrophic changes for millions upon millions of years. Over that time, it is widely believed, 99% of all species have come and gone while the planet has remained. Saving the environment is really about saving our environment – making it safe for ourselves, our children, and the world as we know it. If more people saw the issue as one of saving themselves, we would probably see increased motivation and commitment to actually do so." -Robert M Lilienfeld and William L. Rathje