On April 29, 2009 Robert Houser's studio will be receiving an award for becoming a Bay Area Certified Green Business.
For the past year the studio has been working on policies that would reduce the impact on the environment. This effort culminated this past January when solar panels were interconnected to the PGE grid. Now, each day the studio generates more than the studio uses – feeding the surplus back to the grid, which Robert's home uses in the evening hours.
This past February, Houser applied for Green Business status after learning about the program while shooting an editorial project. The application includes requirements for businesses to meet in all areas, from water use, to recycling, to electricity use. Robert's studio implemented a number of programs that met or exceeded the requirements, including:
* Reducing paper use – seems obvious but they've seen great benefits with two-sided office printing. Reusing junk paper – a couple years ago we began making pads at a local copy shop from all the one-sided paper scraps we had around the office. Now these pads are everywhere in the studio – new life to what would have hit the recycle bin long ago.
* Purchasing software as downloads whenever possible.
* Meals on location – an area often neglected, it’s too easy to just throw everything away while on a shoot. The Houser team is now instructed to recycle all that they can, and even try to bring back green waste to put into the studio’s green bin. Water bottles are another huge area – on our last studio shoot we set out glasses instead of single use water bottles.
* Recycle – everything they can!
* Environmentally preferable purchasing – when you go to buy something these days, you often have a greener option – the studio has instituted a policy to purchase these greener options whenever possible.
* Recycled paper - all promotional printing is down on recycled paper, 100% post consumer when possible. Although the studio trys to keep mailings to a minimum, opting for online sourcebooks and email campaigns.
* Monitoring of electricity use – although the solar panels generate more than they need, they still turn off all the computers at night, and back-up RAID systems are powered up only when needed. CFLs replaced all incandescent lighting – indoors and out.
* Home-made green cleaners are replacing all chemical cleaners – these are made with simple ingredients like baking soda, vinegar and borax.
* Carbon offsets - purchased for all car mileage, as well as all business flights.
* Digital image delivery – ten years ago, producing a job meant 3-4 individual trips to the lab for film processing, then the whole take was packaged up and overnight’ed across the country. Now, all jobs are completed and delivered without leaving the studio – all digital processing is done onsite and all jobs are delivered via ftp, even if that means transferring gigabytes of images via FTP
One thing the inspectors really liked was that the studio wasn’t just implementing these measures in a vacuum. Instead the studio has actively promoted the changes they're making to clients via blogs and email campaigns. And Houser even writes a weekly column on green tips for the local paper, which gets posted to their green blog as well: http://green.roberthouser.com
For more information, please contact:
Robert Houser
415 252 7818
Congratulations Robert for giving back!
