Helping Business Go GreenIt’s lights out promptly...
Helping Business Go Green
It’s lights out promptly at 5 p.m. at San Francisco-based Esprit de Corp. Employees burning the midnight oil at the clothing company must turn on a small lamp at their desks. The firm’s claim to $4,000-a-month savings from the practice earned it a mention in “The Global File: Successful Ecological Practices in Business and Government.” The series of reports is put out by the Elmwood Institute, a nonprofit “green” think tank that has offices in Berkeley and Kyoto, Japan.
Global File reports, which describe environmentally sound business practices around the planet, are aimed at U.S. and foreign businesses and governments that may not be up to speed environmentally. “Countries all over the world are proceeding at a different pace in their ecological practices,” said Philippa Winkler, executive director of the Elmwood Institute.
“Global File shares the information so individual countries don’t have to recreate the wheel each time.” Examples include a Swiss brewery powered by solar energy. The institute has published five reports so far, the largest the Elmwood Guide to Eco-Auditing and Ecologically Conscious Management. The mouthful of a guide offers a 13-point checklist to help U.S. businesses shift to greener practices.
Buyers so far have included the Consumer Affairs department of the City of New York, Stanford University’s Commission on Investment Responsibility and the Global Environmental Management Initiative, a business group that includes IBM, Dow Chemical and AT&T.;
Three-Day Weekend as Lure
Ah, the three-day weekend.
Time to go skiing. Or maybe just sit around the house with a good book.
Trouble is, for most workers, there aren’t enough in the year. But the San Francisco-based Bechtel Group offers 26 three-day weekends a year to its employees in Los Angeles and Houston.
Beginning today, the engineering firm’s 4,000 workers in San Francisco will also be able to take part in the program. Bechtel managers said the company is extending the program to the Bay Area to try to attract scarce engineering talent.
It is promoting the plan as environmentally sound--since it reduces workers’ commuting time on clogged Bay Area freeways by 10% a year.
Under the new schedule, employees will work nine-hour days Monday through Thursday. On the first Friday, about half the employees will work eight hours, while the other half are off. The next week, the first group is off and the second group works.
Coney Island in Valencia
The Six Flags Magic Mountain theme park in Valencia will introduce a replica of the Coney Island Cyclone wooden roller coaster this spring.
The Psychlone ride, which will last two minutes over 2,970 feet of track, will provide “an unnerving, unforgiving and unforgettable experience,” Six Flags said.
Price tag for the roller coaster, which will use locking lap bars, is $5 million. The area around the roller coaster will be remodeled as a beachfront boardwalk called Cyclone Bay.
