This past summer I spent ten weeks in Los Angeles, California interning at a sustainability consulting firm. You may be thinking, what in the world does sustainable consulting mean? Let's break it down: sustainable- "a means of configuring civilization and human activity so that society, its members and its economies are able to meet their needs and express their greatest potential in the present, while preserving biodiversity and natural ecosystems, planning and acting for the ability to maintain these ideals in the very long term" and consulting- "to seek the opinion or advice of another; to take counsel; to deliberate together; to confer" (Wiktionary)
Basically a business hired my company to make recommendations in order for their practices to be more environmentally conscious and also to save them money on utilities. The firm I worked for was a non-profit organization called Tech Go Green. Our consulting could be broken down into five steps: auditing, walk through, analyzing, research and proposal.
1. Auditing- After a business hired Tech Go Green we would request at least one year up to three years of previous electricity, waste management, gas, and water bills. All these bills would be put into spread sheets and often graphs to isolate which months would cost the most. We also requested blue prints in order to map out the walk through, see where lighting fixtures were placed, and to see where water using devices were located. This gave us a background on how the business was ran and it was preliminary analysis.
2. Walk Through- One walk through usually took about one business day depending on the size of the building and was usually tackled by two small teams. The two teams had their routes mapped out and would enter every room or area to take certain measurements and jot down notes. We would mark down how many lights were in the room, type of light bulb, any water using devices (toilets, sinks, drinking fountains, etc), windows, temperature on the thermostat compared to the actual temperature, trash cans, recycling bins, and the amount of light in the room in foot candles. Foot candles is a way of measuring light and we could see if the bulbs and/or natural lighting needed to be adjusted. For water using devices we also had to record gallons per flush on toilets, if the sinks were on timers, and if any water was leaking.
3. Analyzing- After all the data was complied we would also put this information into spread sheets to analyze any areas where the business could improve environmentally. We would look to see if natural lighting was used versus artificial lighting, if they were recycling, or if the thermostat temperatures were not reflected in the actual temperature.
4. Researching- Once the weak areas were isolated we did vast amounts of research in areas which the business could improve. We would research to see if putting timers on lights, installing dual-flush toilets, providing more recycling bins, or installing solar panels would help the business impact the environment less. We would research how much it would cost to install any green technologies, provide a list of contractors, and a list of vendors who sold the items.
5. Proposal- This is the final and most important step of the entire project. In this step would type up a large proposal with an introduction, recommendations, and conclusion. The introduction would consist of a small description of the company, areas of weakness, and an explanation of green technologies to be later recommended. In the recommendations section we would explain each recommendation, where these items could be purchased, who would install these devices, and how much it would cost the company. An important part of this section was we provide a time line of how the company would benefit from the particular recommendation. An example would be putting sensors on lighting would cost $300 but you would save $50 a month on electricity so the item would pay for itself in 6 months and after that it would all be savings. The proposals were printed, bound, and delivered along with a presentation from Tech Go Green.
Although my summary of Tech Go Green's sustainable consulting is brief, it is a good representation of what I did interning this summer. I would highly recommend this internship to any college interested in sustainability or going green. Please visit their website to volunteer or for possible internships.
Tech Go Green is a California recognized non-profit organization.
http://techgogreen.org/
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