At Travel Portland, we realized that we needed to “walk the talk” as well. If we were promoting Portland as the best place for green meetings, we needed to operate sustainably ourselves.
First we looked at our own internal operations- We worked with the City Office of Sustainability to achieve their Recycle at Work award. This included looking at both our purchase stream and our waste stream. We enacted a purchasing policy that says whenever possible we should use equipment and products that are recyclable, made of recycled content and/or reduce waste. And we should work only with vendors who will meet our waste minimization requirements.
We also increased our recycling―now, in addition to making sure we recycle all the materials our building’s waste hauler picks up, we also have staff who have volunteered to collect specialty recycling items the hauler doesn’t take, and to take them to recycling centers that do use them.
We are increasing our purchase of renewable energy to 50%, we use compact fluorescent bulbs, and we’re working on getting computer software to turn off our computers after night-time update are done. We’ve put flow restrictors on our faucets, and a host of other little things that all add up.
We also offer transportation options for our staff and clients―we have two hybrid vehicles for company use, we also provide car-share memberships for our staff, staff can purchase transit passes with pre-tax dollars, and we encourage bicycle riding through the annual Bicycle Commute Challenge event, and by allowing staff to bring their bikes into their offices for secure and dry parking.
We just had a staff training by the Natural Step, an international non-profit that is dedicated to education, advisory work and research in sustainable development. They teach a process that is very systems-oriented. So we hope to now get more strategic about how we move to the next level.