PHOENIX—As part of a company-wide movement toward sustainable business practices, Alliance Residential released its first citizenship and sustainability report. Within the effort, the company's Focus Green program is designed to minimize the company's impact on the environment, provide healthy and efficient homes and offices, control operating expenses, drive savings and promote environmental awareness to stakeholders.
This is achieved through the seven ways to focus green program launched in January 2012 at Alliance communities across the US. Some of the ways include energy efficiency, water conservation, waste management and recycling, sustainable purchasing, environmental air quality, sustainable construction and redevelopment, and education and awareness.
Kelly Vickers, Alliance national director of sustainability, tells GlobeSt.com: "There were a number of drivers behind our decision to produce an annual Citizenship + Sustainability report. We wanted to share our story to engage all of our stakeholders. But we also wanted to pull together everything we've done since we originally launched our Focus Green program so that we could celebrate our successes, examine lessons learned and identify other opportunities for improvement. It's a great exercise in and of itself to analyze and compile all of the report content. It's also a great communications tool to help us drive performance across our organization and with our third party owners."
The Alliance sustainability report highlights include:
Smart-irrigation practices to conserve water (participating communities are experiencing water savings of 25 to 38% with the installation of WeatherTRAK systems)
Online payment options offered by 36% of communities in support of a paperless initiative
Eco-friendly zero-VOC paint used at 68% of properties for better indoor air quality
Carpet-recycling practices portfolio-wide (96% of all carpet removed from communities is recycled and 68% of that is used to make new carpet)
In addition to detail on current efforts and findings, the report shares goals for future initiatives, such as going 100% paperless with the use of the cloud, reducing overall portfolio energy consumption by 10% or more, and the conversion and development of smoke-free communities to promote healthier air quality. Furthermore, Alliance is committed to having its communities adopt sustainable construction and redevelopment practices in pursuit of national and regional green certifications. Currently, 37 properties nationwide are actively pursuing certifications and Broadstone Camelback in Phoenix has led the charge having achieved LEED-H Platinum certification, representing the first property to attain this designation for Alliance.
"During the past three years, we've established a company-wide sustainability policy, quarterly reporting to track green metrics, several annual campaigns and Focus Green-specific on-boarding curriculum for associates," said Vickers. "This report presents, for the first time, an in-depth look at all of our efforts and progress to date. Seeing what we've accomplished as a company thus far and what is underway makes me very proud of this company-wide effort."
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Lisa Brown
Lisa Brown is an editor for the south and west regions of GlobeSt.com. She has 25-plus years of real estate experience, with a regional PR role at Grubb & Ellis and a national communications position at MMI. Brown also spent 10 years as executive director at NAIOP San Francisco Bay Area chapter, where she led the organization to achieving its first national award honors and recognition on Capitol Hill. She has written extensively on commercial real estate topics and edited numerous pieces on the subject.
