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.
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 ~~;