InkHouse Launches Sustainability Program

You can call us “green,” we’re cool with it, because in this case the term applies: establishing a sustainability program at InkHouse. While over the years we’ve taken steps to become more eco-friendly and responsible, today we’re looking to take a giant leap in our commitment for going – but more importantly – staying green as a company.

Led by Tina Cassidy as Chief Sustainability Officer, our bi-coastal “Green Team” is in the process of benchmarking our carbon footprint and identifying resources to figure out how we can do better in 2016 and beyond. Here are some of the main ways we’re looking to experiment and hopefully make some big improvements:

Waste:

• The recent switch to our beloved seltzer machine cuts down on recycling (also see Beth talk about how “life changing” it’s been in USA Today) and our fruit’s delivered through Boston Organics; however there are a host of others things we’d like to explore: How can we reduce the amount of packaging in our grocery delivery? Can we compost in a commercial building?
• Did you know the average office employee goes through 10,000 sheets of paper annually? While we don’t think this stat applies to us, we know we can do better to reduce our usage – like only using laptops in meetings for note taking (instead of the option to also use paper notebooks).

Procurement:

• If all computers sold in the United States were ENERGY STARcertified, the savings would grow to approximately 15 billion pounds of annual greenhouse gas emissions, equivalent to the emissions from more than 1.4 million vehicles. While we always recycle our electronics, are there new or better processes in place that we are not aware of?
• Evaluating catering options. There’s the local shop (which may not source its food locally) versus the national chain (which promises that it does) – which is better? This seems like a math problem on the scale of real versus fake Christmas trees. Anyway, we are interested is seeing how Paneratackles the issue.

Travel:

• Transportation accounts for nearly 30% of Boston’s greenhouse gas emissions. Carpooling to work (for those employees who live close to one another) or meetings are two easy to cut down on our emissions. What’s even better: our work-from-home Fridays double as car-free Fridays! We’ll be using firm-wide Google sheet to collect estimates of miles traveled in all forms.

We’re big believers in this mission, so this is a journey we will be sharing publicly as we go. Please be sure to check back in!