ICNC Members Receive GreenWorks Awards
by Burt Klein

Thursday, November 29th  was a great day in Chicago for ICNC! 
 

At Thursday's award ceremony for Mayor Daley's GreenWorks Awards three ICNC member companies were recognized with awards.  These awards are unique, very meaningful and a project of the Mayor's to recognize and reward the city's business leaders.  The award winners come from a cross section of the city's business.  44 projects applied for the awards and only 10 received awards.  The recipients were selected by panels of independent local sustainability leaders.

 

Christy Webber Landscaping was recognized for Rancho Verde, a great accomplishment and a great story for our corridor.  Rancho Verde is a LEED Certified Platinum building which is amazingly difficult to achieve.  There are 3 LEED Platinum buildings in Chicago and just a handful in the nation.  In addition, the location was a brownsfield site having been the location of an dump that is now cleaned up and developed.  Taking a dump, which is an environmental sore and transforming it into a state of the art environmental building hosting a business that is greening our city is the ultimate story but it also is just one story of how the businesses in this corridor have taken this once run down part of town and anchored the resurgence of this city neighborhood by investing in our businesses and providing stability and jobs.

 

PortionPac won a second award for our Shared Savings Program With this program we charge our customers a flat monthly fee for all the cleaning materials they need, manage their inventory, educate their staff on proper use and sanitation and provide documentation for management.  In this process, we turn the traditional sales model upside down.  Traditional sales processes are rewarded for selling more materials where in our Shared Savings Program the economic reward is when the customers uses less products/chemicals.  We teach our customers to use the least amount of product to achieve the sanitation they need.

 

Waste to Profit Network was recognized for promoting business collaboration to find new ways of transforming business waste into more profitable and innovative uses.  Simply put, instead of paying to have garbage hauled away, the Network finds other companies that can use the waste as raw materials.  Goose Island Brewery and Christy Webber Landscaping were recognized as part of the Waste to Profit Network.