Just how green is your facility? Do you need to improve its green rating? And, if so, why?
Well, according to a recently-released survey, facility managers need to go green to benefit their facility, the environment, and their own careers. In fact, the survey found that facility management will be one of the top green jobs of 2014. The good news is that CMMS Software can help you do it.
Completed by the Ecotech Institute, the survey, “The Ecotech Institute Clean Jobs Index” found that of the 21,000-something green jobs advertised in the last 30 days in the U.S., 6,470 were facility management postings. The authors of the study credited this strong showing to companies looking for energy savings. Overall, there were more than one million green jobs advertised in the U.S. in the second quarter of 2013, a 54 percent year-over-year increase.
Also fueling the increase in the green job market are subsidies and grants offered by local and federal governmental agencies and private organizations. “States now offer more sustainability and renewable incentives than we’ve ever seen before, which proves that they’re taking the power of the industry seriously,” said Kyle Crider, Ecotech Institute’s Program Chair and Manager of Environmental Operations. “In the state of the current economy, over 1 million job opportunities is a truly incredible statistic.”
Is Your Facility Green?
Perhaps you don’t know just how green your facility is. If you don’t, the folks over at Practice Greenhealth have a checklist you can use to determine just how green your organization is. While the checklist was made to evaluate healthcare organizations, it really can be used to evaluate all sorts of places to include nursing homes, office buildings, schools, and retail locations.
Though not all of the sections of the check list deal with areas of responsibility of a facility manager plenty do and many of these can be implemented as part of your workflows within your CMMS. These are:
- Waste Management and Reduction
- Mercury Elimination (this is a healthcare-specific area)
- Energy, Water, and Climate
- Environmental Services
- Sustainable Sites Management
- Chemical Management
As you work through this checklist, you should come to find that going green can do more than put a smile on the planet’s face. It can also save your client money. Loads of money. Energy Star, a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency voluntary program that helps businesses and individuals save money and protect the climate, says that a hospital in Portland, Oregon saved close to $20,000 a year just by installing low-flow showerheads and faucets in its sinks, while the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government is saving nearly $15,000 a year by having its 800 computer monitors to go into sleep mode when they are not being used.
Getting Started
Maybe you and your facility simply are not ready to go green all out. That’s fine. There are some steps that any facility manager anywhere can take to at least get started going green.
- Cut Down on Water Usage by installing low-flow faucets, toilets and showerheads. Doing this will help your facility save water and money today and also help protect it from future price hikes.
- Replace General Lighting with Task Specific Lighting. “There is too much general lighting in offices. What you need is task lighting,” said Joshua Arias, a certified eco-consultant and vice president of Green Mojo Eco Consulting, who added that general lighting is one of the largest wasters of energy in buildings.
- Increase your Facility’s Recycling Rate by educating everyone on the need to reduce, reuse, and recycle. Also, make sure that bins are color coded or clearly marked, so that people know where to dispose of recyclables.
Just by doing these three things, facility managers can save their clients money, protect the environment, and prepare for their own professional futures by demonstrating that they can indeed go green.
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