See the list our office team members came up with of various steps we take to preserve precious resources. We are “Committed to being a truly Green Company”.
Reduce:Photovoltaic grid tie system: We sell electricity back to the grid. We may be the only off the grid manufacturing place in Pagosa Springs. We minimize our phantom loads by routing all computers through power strips and turning power strips off each night. - Extra insulation has been installed on the shop ceiling: foam board with foil paper.
Solar powered shop heater: hot air and antifreeze in a radiator. Cuts our heating bill from $300 to $160 using free energy! Solar powered forklift is a big deal in manufacturing, it isn’t a wimpy one, it lifts heavy loads. We use high mpg vehicles when possible. Our domes are entirely solar powered by design, including solar cooling fans, undersoil fans, solar water fountain, and passive solar water tank. - Low impact/cost storage spaces.
- Cottage industry: lumber kits cut at home locations to reduce the size of the facility needed.
Some employees bicycle to work. - Carpooling by owners and employees as often as possible.
- The bulk of our promotional and instructional materials are handled electronically rather than paper copy.
- Employee planting beds provide “locally grown food”.
Lunchroom has real dishes, cups, glasses and silverware to avoid use of paper plates, plastic silverware, etc. Lunchroom has a water filter on the tap to avoid the use of bottled water. Lunch provided one to two times a week, reduces employee expense and car use to go get lunch. Many ingredients for the lunch are from the domes. - Salad greens grown in the on-site domes are used for employee lunches.
- Using electronic fax program at our satellite office to minimize paper/ink usage.
Reuse:- Composting our vegetable and plant waste on site in the garden beds.
Feeding the pests to the fish: sow bugs, slugs. Rainwater catchments for irrigation. Office furniture is secondhand wherever possible, buy locally and reuse. - We reuse every file folder, envelope, flip-side of paper.
Recycle: At a recent Green Festival instead of passing out paper brochures, we handed out small pea seed packets with our website address. Utilize pre-owned/recycled domes as “models/demonstrations” on site, even though they aren’t the newest example of our complete beauty. Recycling crates received for shipments going out and recycling crate materials in other construction projects. - Practice recycling (not offered on a residential basis in our town) on site.
- Two sizes of our Growing Domes are available in recycled glazing option.
- Brochures are printed on recycled paper.
- The printer bypass tray is filled with recycled paper at all times, for non customer documents.
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6 Comments
Recycling is very very important in order to preserve mother earth…`
we should always think about recycling our waste products to help the environment.-.:
We forgot to mention that when the conversation came up between tea drinkers (who heat water in a hot pot that shuts off automatically) and coffee drinkers who make coffee and like to have the pot stay on and warm, how quickly a decision was made to get a coffee carafe, so coffee could be made and then poured into the carafe and the pot turned off!
power strips are very useful but they octopus connection is dangerous:*’
recycling is very necessary so that we could reduce the waste that we dump on our environment;’:
recycling should always be implemented to avoid to much pollution in the environment ~~;