Opportunity Green 2010 Sustainability Report

8/6/2019 Opportunity Green 2010 Sustainability Report

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During the 2010 conerence, attendees1 tossed 3,200 pounds2

o material into our resource recovery bins. Tat’s two-times

what we recovered in 2009. Compared with a 12% increase

in attendance it becomes a telling statistic. We attribute this

jump to clearer communication with vendors and sponsors

regarding how to handle their pre- and post-conerence waste.

Our Diversion Rate3 this year was 96.3% percent -- a 12.5%

improvement rom 2009. Tis initiative was a ocus or us in

2010 so we’re happiest to see that improvement. Diversion

Rate is easy to measure, is ‘material’ to our Materials Manage-

ment eort (a little Global Reporting Initiative humor there),

and its lets us compare year-to-year perormance in a straight-

orward manner.

Compostable materials recovered went down to 400 pounds

in 2010 rom 520 pounds in 2009. We attribute this decrease to better pre-event management and serving meals with

less associated waste and better-trained volunteers.

We captured paper in the same bin as bottles and cans, which helped to limit the number o recycling bins needed

on-site. Since wet paper can’t be recycled we asked attendees to empty

beverage containers beore binning the bottle or can. We captured 175 gal-

lons o this ‘beverage remainder efuent’ (or backwash). Could backwash

be converted into a biouel? At this point that backwash is pure waste, but

we’re hoping that one o you enterprising entrepreneurs will turn it into a

byproduct4 in 2011.

1 We dene “attendees” to include staf sponsors, speakers, volunteers and paid

attendees.

2 Weights are accurate to the nearest 10 pounds.

3 Diversion Rate ormula:((Total Materials Recovered – Material Landlled) / Total Materials Recovered)

4 Products, byproducts, and waste are the three outputs o any business process.

INPUTS & OUTPUTS

MATERIALS MANAGEMENT Los Angeles Center

Studios is designed

to be a lm and tele-

vision production

acility that also pro-

vides on-site oce

space to production

companies and other

tenants. Metering

utilities on their campus is congured to serve those busi-

ness requirements. Sub-metering electricity and water, in a

conguration that suits the interest o this report, serves no

practical business purpose or them, so the spaces we use

or the conerence do not have dedicated sub-metering. Tis

means that we can produce only very rough estimates o how

much electricity and water we pull during the conerence.

With all o this in mind, our apparent electricity consump-

tion in 2010 was not measurable (to estimate rom scratch

will take time). Our apparent water consumption was 1822

cubic eet.

Because the common areas we occupy at Los Angeles Cen-

ter Studios don’t use natural gas we’ve stopped reporting our

consumption o it.

We’re looking closely at ways

to improve our accuracy around

monitoring our consumption o

these resources in 2011.

METERING

ccf kWh



While we understand that CO2 emission is produced by many conerence activities other

than travel, we choose to ocus on attendee travel because it is a large contributor, and we can

make a reasonably educated estimate o what it might be.

Our process or calculating CO2 rom travel begins with a survey sent via email to all at-

tendees. We ask attendees where they came rom (using their ZIP Code) and ask how they

got here through any mode o travel e.g. combination o rideshare, solo car, bike, airplane,

walking, etc. Tis gives us a rough idea o how many miles each respondent traveled or each

type o transportation. 124 people lled out this transportation survey.

We used the inormation provided and multiplied the emissions caused by each mile car

travel, or instance, times the miles driven, and did that or each type o transportation used

by each person. Tis gave us the total emissions per person. Afer osetting, our estimatedaverage CO2 emissions per person was 940 pounds. Multiplying by 798 attendees, that gives

us 414 tons o CO2 or 381.5 tons afer oset rom their travel to and rom the conerence.

Tings we could do to improve or next year would be to incorporate estimates o how

much carbon was probably emitted or the energy and materials need or various other

activities, services and products our attendees and sta engaged in throughout the coner-

ence. Like how much greenhouse gas is emitted through our electricity consumption, or to

produce the various ingredients in our organic cocktails at the afer-party.

Trough sponsorship we oset 32.5 tons o CO2, or 8% o the estimated CO2 that at-

tendees emitted rom traveling to the conerence. Tis oset was produced by generating

59,000 kWh o renewable energy. Afer

this oset, we estimate CO2 emitted per

attendee to be .47 tons.

INPUTS & OUTPUTS

TRAVELCO2E

Formula for Calculating Total [estimated] CO2 Emissions from Travel for

the 2010 Conference A = (total miles traveled by survey respondent using each given mode) * (average CO2

emitted per mile from each given mode), or CO2 Emissions for Survey Respondents for

Each Travel Mode

B = (A / Number of Survey Respondents), or Average CO2 Emissions per Survey

Respondent

C = (B * Number of Attendees) = Total [estimated] CO2 Emissions from Travel for the

2010 Conference



Stakeholders are the most important

part o any business. Tey’re the custom-

ers, the vendors, the sta – everyone who

touches or adds value to a business. Tat

makes you one o our stakeholders.

Te question we continuously ask

ourselves in this regard is, , “How do we

engage our large attendee, sponsor and

partner community in a dialogue that is

both practical and mutually benecial?”

In the last two years we’ve run online surveys, onsite whiteboards, Linkedin &

Facebook threads, callin hotlines, and had ace-to-ace dialogue beore, during and

afer the conerence.

You’ve pointed out areas where we can improve specic aspects our corporate sustainability

program. You’ve shared lots o interesting ideas. And some o you have even volunteered to

help us implement those ideas.

Measuring success regarding our stakeholder engagement process has been one o ourmost interesting challenges. Resource-based initiatives have more easily quantiable targets,

like boosting return-on- investment by 10%, or reducing consumption by 10,000 units, We’re

still exploring which metrics make the most sense - or us and or you.

So keep your ideas coming! Te best way or you to keep an eye on how well we’re engag-

ing with you is to watch how our sustainability program changes based on your input.

Send your thoughts and ideas to [email protected] , with the subject line

“stakeholder eedback”.

INPUTS & OUTPUTS

STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT

So, what doyou think?

Why don’tyou...



2009 2010

DIVERSION PER ATTENDEE (POUNDS)

16.5%

32.5%

51.25%

12.5%

83.8%3.7%

DIVERSION RATE(RECYCLED + COMPOSTED)83.8% 96.3% DIVERSION RATE

(RECYCLED + COMPOSTED)

WATER(CUBIC FEET)

POWER(kWh)

1822

95.84

2096

(2010)

(2009)

(2010)

(2009)

RECYCLED(GLASS, PLASTIC,

ALUMINIUM,

PAPER)

COMPOSTED(ORGANIC

MATTER)

LANDFILLED(NOT RECYCLED

OR COMPOSTED)

*see Metering on page 3 for apparent discrepancies

1.03 .15.65 3.36 .50 .33

CO2 FROM TRAVEL (TONS OF CO2)

414 (2010)

NOT MEASURED (2009)

.47 PERATTENDEE

?

OFFSET

?*

32.5

SUSTAINABILITY REPORTNUMBERS



First, a little backstory on our new home,Los Angeles Center Studios.In 2005 the executives o Los Angeles

Center Studios purchased the headquar-ters o a deunct petroleum exporter andmarketer, and began retrotting the cam-pus into a lm and television productionacility. Teir makeover included install-ing VFD-ower Fans (variable-requency drive), a boiler retrot, lighting controls inoces, replacing carpet with recycled car-pet tiles, installing low-fow water aucetsand toilets and waterless urinals, l aunch-

ing a recycling program that includes pa-per, plastic bottles, cans, glass and e-waste.Low-water landscaping was planted andcomposting initiatives were added. FlixCaé, the studio’s on-site commissary, ea-tures organic produce, uses compostableand recycled materials in ood production,and recycles ryer oil into uel.

Teir eorts resulted in a:68% reduction in uel consumption32% reduction in electricity consumption

26% reduction in water consumption

In just one year, LACS’s recycling initia-tives saved an estimated:2,640 trees159 tons o paper and plastic

1,000,000 gallons o water$450,000

For more…http://portal.lacenterstudios.com/SUS-

AINABILIY/MonthlyEnergyGraphs/tabid/100/Deault.aspx

Now, on to the 2010 conerence…

WHAT WENT WELLTe experience we’ve gained since launch-

ing our corporate sustainability programin 2008 has greatly increased our team’seciency, so in 2010 we needed 20% ewer volunteers we did than 2009. Tis meantthat our volunteer training went smootherand that the ront line G-eam was gener-ally better inormed. Aer three years o managing our conerence ootprint, therewere no big surprises - we’ve already expe-rienced a lot o the gotchas. We’re pleasedto have comparison data rom 2009 and

2008, and even though the comparison isa bit apples-to-oranges, having that datamakes it easier to get new partners up-to-speed and ocusing on how to help us dobetter. And we’re especially pleased thatour diversion rate went rom 84% in 2009to 96% in 2010. Tat’s the equivalent o more than 3000 pounds o materials keptout o a landll in 2010 alone.

WHAT NEEDS WORKTe accuracy o our meter readings is a big

question that we’d like to resolve or 2011.Because our spaces don’t have dedicated

sub-metering, lots o other people outside o the conerence wind up impacting our ap-parent usage. Tat means we’re stuck tryingto unravel who used what and when, which

is extra tricky on a lot that has top-secretproductions running on it. We’ll do our bestto do better but or this year we were stuck using a less-than-perect methodology.Another place we can make improvements

is a deeper coordination and understandingo heating/ventilation/air conditioning in amajor motion picture sounds stage! Beingin the sound stage in 2010, we learned thereare two settings or A/C, “on” and “o”.Since typical lighting or a movie shootproduces a lot o heat, our situation was abit dierent. In the uture we would work tomake sure we could have a way to throttlethe A/C more eectively, or comort andenergy savings.We received responses that our public

transportation inormation could be better.So i you know o a transit expert that wouldlike to help us improve our means o com-municating mass transit options in LA, dropus a line at [email protected] a avorite story o ours came rom

our volunteer Jared, who was part o the G-eam ront line. Jared shared with us that“…when we were pouring-o the ‘bever-age remainder efuent’ we realized that thedrains weren’t handling our capacity very well, and suddenly I ound mysel shin deepin a blend o cold coee, tea, and soda.”Aer he dried o, Jared kept right on withhis duties. He learned rst-hand that properdisposal o our waste liquids will require alarger drain. Tanks or being such a goodsport Jared! And thank you to all our volun-

teers as well.

WHAT’S NEXT?First we’d like to announce a leadership

transition on our team. As o June 1, 2011Je Hayes stepped down rom our topsustainability post, with Natacha Arnaud-Battandier taking on the role o Sustain-ability Director. Welcome Natacha! Andthanks Je, or all the hard work you putgetting our program o the ground. Je will stay on the team, in the newly createdrole o Reporting Manager.For a couple years we’ve been exploring

how to apply the Global Reporting Initia-tive ramework (GRI) to our conerence.We’re in the discovery phase o this large

and complicated undertaking, and we’rehoping to produce 2011’s report using the

GRI ormat.We’ll sharemore on ourprogress withGRI once we’vemoved out o discovery andinto implemen-tation.As o this

report’spublicationour corporatesustainability goals or 2011are still beingnalized. Tey will be avail-able soon, stay tuned!

IN 2010 OUR

DIVERSION RATE WAS

96.3%

Coffee?



Sponsors

THANKSOpportunity Green’s Corporate Sustainability program is a collaboration that includes

many individuals and several key organizations. Without the thousands o man-hours

they contribute, and the materials and resources they provide, this eort would stall very quickly.

Let us begin by oering a huge Tank You to all our G-eam volunteers. We rely onyou and appreciate your energy, commitment, and your great ideas.Our sta is top-notch. Some are mentioned in the box to the right. Many others also

made signicant contributions. We grateully acknowledge the passion that you bringto the G-eam, and we appreciate you more than we can express in words.Our sponsors provide us with many key resources. Tank you, each o you, or all that

you bring to the table.

We’ll look orward to seeing you in November or the 2011 conerence!

Yours very truly,Te G-eam

CREDITSSustainability Director:Jeff Hayes

Sustainable Event

Director: Edward Pakdaman

Sustainable Event Coordinator:Neha Sharma

Materials Recovery Manager:Ruth Grant

Photos:Adrian Sidney, Geoffrey

Nicholson

Report Layout &Inforgraphics Design:

Barbara Astrini

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Opportunity Green 2010 Sustainability Report

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