Sustainable Business Awards Recognize Leading Bay Area Companies

On Friday, Feb. 25, Earth Charter U.S. will hold its third annual Sustainable Business Awards luncheon in partnership with The University of Tampa Sykes College of Business Center for Ethics.

Eighteen local businesses will be honored in a ceremony from 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. on the 9th floor of Vaughn Center on the UT campus. To register for the luncheon, which costs $50 per person, visit www.earthcharterus.org.

There will also be a free forum before the luncheon, from 9 to 11 a.m. titled “The Green Economy and the Earth Charter.” The keynote speech will be given by Herman Mulder, senior advisor to the UN Global Compact, to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and to Earth Charter International.

The 18 awardees are:

Large Business Category, 251 or more employees:

Skanska
Sweetbay

Medium Business Category, 51 to 250 employees:

Creative Signs Design
EVOS
IKEA Tampa
Nature’s Food Patch
MJM Electric Inc.
Accusoft Pegasus

Small Business Category, 50 or fewer employees:

PPI Technologies
Clark Environmental Inc.
ShredPro (U.S.) Limited Inc.
Baldwin Krystyn Sherman Insurance
Marketing Arm International Inc.
OttLite Technologies Inc.
Eco2Assets
Alvarez New Concepts

Award for Innovation

Parke Family HydroFarms
Valet Cleaners

The following case studies show what three businesses did to earn the Sustainable Business Award.

In the small business company it was Clark Environmental Inc., a family-owned company located in Mulberry, FL. Established in 1991, Clark Environmental has four divisions: waste processing, transportation of hazardous and non-hazardous materials, hazardous waste disposal, and a thermal treatment division that produces clean soil. In 2005, they switched to using reclaimed oil as their fuel source in the Thermal Treatment plant and in 2009 used more than 530,000 gallons of recycled waste oil with nary a smoke stack in sight. The motto at Clark Environmental is “cleaning the Earth…one ton at a time.”

The medium company is EVOS, whose founders are committed to being America's healthier fast food leader. EVOS cooks with 100 percent pure air vs. oil. They purchase Fair Trade Certified products, which guarantee a better deal for third-world producers. EVOS supports sustainable family farming by using Certified Organic ingredients whenever possible. They affect their supply chain by using only biodegradable plastic cups and bags made of vegetables vs. petroleum.

The large company is Skanska, a multinational construction company recognized in 2010 as the number one global leader of green building by the US Green Building Council. More than half of waste material from construction sites is diverted from landfills through recycling or reuse. Skanska believes that the next important step in sustainability must include ‘greening’ the existing buildings that account for 99 percent of the planet’s buildings. The company was the main influence on the greening of the Empire State Building when they made their own office a LEED certified platinum space.

The Sustainable Business Awards are an initiative of The Earth Charter U.S., a nonprofit organization that provides an ethical framework to building a caring, sustainable and peaceful global society. It is a global declaration of our interdependence and shared responsibility to inspire, educate and engage people in respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, participatory democracy and a culture of peace. More than 6,000 individuals and organizations in the U.S. have endorsed the Earth Charter, and gatherings are taking place in countries across the globe, including Mexico, Holland, Australia, India, Brazil, Italy, Spain, Taiwan and Costa Rica.