Take Randi's Challenge: Start a food scrap recycling program at your property!

Company: CP Management

Business Sector: Property Management

Published: July 2008

Highlights:

• Randi Pierson is challenging all property managers to begin food scrap recycling at their properties.
• Pierson started by challenging tenants at one of her properties to start food waste collection-and successfully expanded food waste collection to all three of her managed properties.
• This food waste collection program will save over $3,000 this year for three buildings under Pierson's management.
• Pierson earned Energy Star certification for two of her properties.
• Pierson signed CP Management on with the Seattle Climate Partnership, pledging to reduce emissions for the buildings she manages and helping the city reach its target reduction goals.
• Pierson is a LEED Accredited Professional which signifies that she has mastered the understanding of green building techniques and the LEED certification process. 

Background

Established in 2001, CP Management, LLC is a property management company which currently manages over one million square feet of Class A office, technology, and industrial space in the Seattle area. These properties include 605, 625, and 705 Union Station, and Building C at Emerald Corporate Park. CP Management strives to build long-standing, positive relationships with the tenants, owners, and service vendors affiliated with the properties they manage. 

CP Property Manager, Randi Pierson, manages three of these properties and utilizes these close relationships to encourage tenants and service vendors to participate in sustainability initiatives.  

Going Green

"I am an eater," declares Randi Pierson, with a twinkle in her eye. "I know I have at least two meals and two snacks at work every day. If I am eating most of my meals here, then there's food waste. With 2,000 people onsite, there's an obvious opportunity!"

And one that she was not willing to pass up. She decided to start small-challenging tenants on two floors of one of the three buildings she manages to see who could collect the most organic waste that typically comes out of an office kitchenette. Their only reward was earning bragging rights to being the most conscientious recyclers. It worked! And so she took the program to all three buildings, helping tenants to overcome both logistical issues and reluctance. It is not uncommon for Randi to roll up her sleeves and dig through her tenants' waste bins to show them how they could recycle more and cut down on their waste.

Food Waste Collection                                                                                        

By implementing food waste collection in all three buildings, thereby reducing the garbage service level, Randi will save $3,000 throughout the course of the year. She redirects these savings towards buying approved compostable bin liners for this program. These savings are not unusual- a food scrap recycling program is exempt from the approximately 17% of additional taxes and fees that garbage collection and disposal incurs. Businesses can save between 20 and 30% on the cost of their garbage bills.  

Her advice to colleagues in the field:

1. Start small and phase it in,

2. Find a way to get tenants excited about the new program- "sometimes what makes a program successful is finding one or two people who are really passionate about it."

3. Follow-up: on her tenant walkthroughs with her custodial crew, she points out materials that can be recycled and helps them navigate the mysteries of recycling and composting.

Green Building and Climate Change

For her own buildings, Randi has already moved on to "greener" fields. Two of her buildings have recently been Energy Star certified. This means that these buildings rate more than 75 points on a 1-100 scale in terms of energy performance. Randi is currently working on a lighting retrofit on the third building to hopefully bring it up to Energy Star status.

Randi has also expanded sustainability efforts by signing CP Management up as a member of the Seattle Climate Partnership, making a commitment to reduce CO2 emissions form the buildings that they manage.

Randi's Challenge

Randi describes CP Management as a "boutique" property management firm with a small portfolio of commercial downtown properties. This leaves her in the unique position of being free to experiment with different programs. Being a relatively small firm, however, poses a challenge in that, unlike larger property management firms where inter-building competition is common and an easy way to spread effective programs, she doesn't have anyone within her own company to spur on to be green. Randi is undeterred -she has instead chosen to challenge all of the city's property management firms-she asks,

"Why wouldn't you compost?"                  

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