Blog Archive

Friday, March 6, 2009

Going Green in the Central Plains

*** Today's post comes to us from Emily Forrester, Campus Recruiter based at our Des Moines, IA location***

Reduce, reuse, recycle. Three little words that are used with increasing frequency these days, as we all know. A number of our offices in the Central Plains Economic Unit (EU), including Cedar Rapids, Davenport and Des Moines, Iowa, St. Louis, Missouri and Champaign, Illinois, are taking this mantra to the next level by introducing office ‘Green Teams’ to help McGladrey reduce its footprint.

Overall the ‘Green’ changes have included:
1) The entire EU has gone paperless in the tax and audit practices through use of customized software.
2) Eliminated disposable cups and silverware and replaced them with reusable coffee cups and silverware.
3) Removed 5 gallon water coolers because they were shipped by diesel burning trucks and made of plastic. Replaced those by adding filter systems to existing tap water dispensers.
4) Additional recycling bins designated for magazines and books have been added in each office.
5) Recycled newspapers are used for packaging instead of bubble wrap or foam peanuts.
6) Distributed information to employees on bus routes and their nearest recycling centers, along with information on how they can increase their ‘Green’ efforts at home.
7) Asked our property managers to partner with us in our efforts. Examples include requests to turn off our lights at night sooner, replacing our florescent bulbs with more efficient ones, and setting up additional recycling bins in the building.
8) As we go forward with office renovations we are asking for programmable thermostats, lights on timers, and more efficient paper towel dispensers.
9) All electronic waste is taken to a recycling center for de-commissioning.
10) Recyclable building material was used to create an IT consulting room in the Davenport, Iowa office. This room consists of walls made from aluminum which can be disassembled and relocated. In the past, the room would have been made of wood and drywall, and if we wanted to eliminate the room all of the waste would have ended up in the landfill.
11) We are sending out Green Tips, a monthly e-reminder how all of us can be more environmentally friendly.

Our employees have been very excited about these changes and we are seeing a significant reduction in the amount of waste each office is producing. We look forward to additional offices getting on board and increasing the impact of this initiative.

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