Sustainability Challenge

Friday, January 19, 2024
By Regina Erdman, Interior Designer | Hannah Ayala, Project Architect
In Sustainability

New Year, Fresh Start: A Challenge to be a More Environmentally Friendly Version of Yourself in the New Year

by The SHD Sustainability Committee

We all know that recycling is an important part of reducing your global impact, but recycling centers around the country are closing or being bogged down and rendered ineffective for reasons ranging from funding to general misuse. What steps can we take to do our part? This year the SōL Harris/Day Sustainability Committee would like to invite you to participate in monthly challenges to help you reduce what you use before you recycle and ultimately create new, eco-friendly habits for the new year ahead. Each month we will issue a bite-sized challenge that can be scaled to either a personal level or an entire office. Ultimately, shifting our focus from just recycling to reducing what we need first can make a greater impact and perhaps fix some of the issues facing recycling centers.

As we come through the holiday season, a byproduct of all the joyful consumerism is battery and electronic waste. Did the kids get new tablets, phones, watches, or toys? Is the office considering first quarter technology upgrades? In January, we challenge you to utilize rechargeable batteries when possible to reduce single use battery waste. As a next step, look around your home or office and collect those old batteries and electronics and take them to a recycling center. The Ohio EPA has a website that can be used to locate a recycling center near you for all varieties of materials: Ohio EPA Recycling Directory Materials | RecycleSearch. One aspect of the LEED projects we design in our office is to identify a designated location for the disposal of batteries. Consider identifying a similar drop zone in your space. To do our part, SōL Harris/Day is going to do an office-wide battery and electronic collection to get things out of our “junk drawers” and to the proper disposal location - look for pictures in our next newsletter!

« back to listing