Corporate Environmental Responsibility: What to do with drawings, specs and shipping material

If you work in the construction industry and especially if you work with drawings you likely have wondered what would be the best thing to do with the paper and shipping material you accumulate. For example, recently we had one project that totaled around 2000 drawings for just one set! Imagine what the design team and contractors had to deal with.

The best way to recycle is to find another use for an unwanted item without having to expend any further energy (to recycle without use of electricity, fuels, etc.). We do this in many ways here at the Nigro Firm, Inc.:

• Save and reuse cardboard boxes and packing materials (peanuts, bags of air, bubble wrap, and even scrunched up paper) for reuse in shipping, we rarely have to purchase packing material.
• Use paper for landscaping. We use extra sets of drawings as weed barriers and soil-amenders in our gardens. To harvest tasty organically grown fruits and veggies with the aid of recycled drawings is a true treat.
• Reuse. Extra specs that are printed on only one side of a page are cut in half and bound to make scratch paper notebooks. Or extra paper can be sent to local schools for scratch paper or art projects (provided that sharing does not violate a non-disclosure agreement).
• Recycle by traditional methods. If we can’t find an immediate, direct use, we do our best to recycle as much as possible through normal recycling channels. Each room has a recycle bin for paper, plastic, soda cans, etc and we have two large curbside recycling containers available for pick up bi-monthly.
  

We also feel strongly about using renewable sources of energy… and have subsequently been getting the majority of our electricity from wind powered sources (Rocky Mountain Power’s Blue Sky Energy program).

We are serious about being green and doing our part to keep our environment as clean as possible.

Author: Natalie Nigro