DIVERSE GROUP SHARES SAME GREEN GOALS
Five nominated for Environmental Stewardship honour
Running a business with an eye on the environment has helped these five companies earn nominations at the Calgary Chamber of Commerce’s Small Business Week Calgary Awards, to be handed out on Thursday, Oct. 22.
While the nominees for the Environmental Stewardship honour, one of seven categories included in the awards, are a diverse group, they share the same goal.
Colin Smith said he founded Green Event Services Inc., “specifically to address the wastefulness of events in Calgary and beyond.”
The company sets up bins at event venues to collect items for recycling and composting.
“Since we started, we’ve diverted approximately 90 tonnes ( of waste) from landfills and have an average diversion rate of 73 per cent kept out of landfills,” Smith said.
Major clients include the Lilac Festival, Stampede Roundup, Sled Island and Marda Gras.
River Cafe takes its location, centred in Prince’s Island Park, to heart with its environmental initiatives.
“We started with a comprehensive recycling program and that moved into taking a closer look at the carbon footprint of our food purchases,” said director of operations Kristi Peters Snider. This included encouraging Alberta producers to be more energy- efficient.
Other initiatives included reducing energy consumption by introducing “daylight dining” to take advantage of the cafe’s expansive windows, and vegetable- waste composting.
SkyFire Energy Inc. is a leader in Alberta’s solar industry, installing and designing solar- power systems used by residences and businesses. SkyFire’s solar- powered trailers at events around Calgary do double duty by promoting solar technology while also helping power those events.
“( We) have grown from a small residential solar- energy company to Western Canada’s leading solar EPC ( engineering, procurement and construction) firm,” said Vilasini P. Pillay, marketing and communications.
“We have … installed four out of six megawatts of solar in Alberta, making this province greener than ever. We can proudly say that solar power is now actually cheaper than grid power on a good roof today.”
SkyFire employees have also volunteered hundreds of hours in schools, raising awareness of solar power.
Not every salon or spa has its own environmental officer, but SwizzleSticks SalonSpa breaks the mould. Since opening in 1989, the business has always had an environmental focus, said vice- president Tim Neist.
“We’ve always been conscious of the environment and wanting to look for ways to run the business that were green,” he said.
One was switching to Bullfrog Power — now all SwizzleSticks’ electric and gas consumption is 100 per cent green. The salon also recycles 95 per cent of its waste — down to the foils used for hair colouring.
Boxwood Cafe in the Beltline is a cousin restaurant to River Cafe. Boxwood was the first restaurant in Canada to receive Level 3 certification from Leaders in Environmentally Accountable Foodservice ( LEAF). Kristi Peters Snider, Boxwood’s director of operations, said the certification takes factors like the percentage of vegetable items on the menu into account. Boxwood also sources seasonal ingredients close to home when possible.
Like River Cafe, bottled water is not served at Boxwood and the cafe has an extensive recycling program.
“We’ve been experimenting with what we call ‘ table- to- farm,’ a comprehensive composting program,” said Peters Snider. “We work with a local company that picks up almost all our waste. It allows us to reduce landfill waste by 77 per cent.”