Concert takes environmental sustainability seriously throughout all of the company’s operations. In addition to the our commitment to ensuring every new development meets the equivalent of LEED Gold standards, Concert has embraced sustainability within the completed properties it owns and manages.
As a company, we have gone beyond simply encouraging our office and residential tenants to act sustainably. Concert has taken the lead so to speak though our actions within the Vancouver head office. For example, we removed the individual garbage bins from workstations years ago in order to encourage staff to walk to the kitchen to property sort their waste. A composting program has been implemented within the office in order to divert food and other biodegradable materials from landfill. In terms of ordering, we are careful to only select only recyclable office supplies and recycled printing paper. Furthermore, the installation and use of teleconference equipment in both our Vancouver and Toronto offices has reduced the need for travel by providing a platform for face-to-face collaboration. One particularly innovative program the office has instigated revolves around closing blinds each Friday evening. Recognizing that this simple action will serve to reduce heating and cooling demands on the building over the weekend, Concert’s internal Green Team rolled out a “Friday Night Blinds Challenge” to all occupants of the 12-storey office property. Based on the results of random inspections, the winning tenant received a free lunch for all their employees. To this day, Concert has continued to send internal emails each Friday as a gentle reminder to not only close one’s blinds, but to also power off their monitors and lights before leaving for the weekend.
In addition to these efforts aimed at influencing the day-to-day behaviour of our staff, Concert has also invested in sustainability-minded capital improvements to the head office building. These include replacing the film on the windows to reduce heat gained in the building as well as installing high-efficiency boilers and chillers. Together, these initiatives have been successful in reducing the building’s electricity consumption by 25% and gas consumption by an impressive 50%!
More information on Concert’s sustainability initiatives will be released in the company’s fourth annual “Report on Sustainability” later this spring. This annual reporting serves as a method of tracking the company’s overall emissions across all operations. To view reports from previous years, click here.