|
|||||||||||||
Printer-Friendly
Email this Story
Post a Comment (0)
Less is more at TMG Construction
“Green construction company” doesn’t have to be an oxymoron. Witness TMG Construction Corp. of Lincoln.
Unlike most construction companies, TMG tracks its carbon footprint, and Vice President Joe Matthews -- husband of the president and CEO, Tanya Matthews – will talk to his colleagues about the threat of global warming and of the importance of adopting the Kyoto Protocol. The corporate mantra is “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle,” and the corporate mission statement commits TMG to “demonstrate lasting respect for our environment, our business relationships, and the people with whom we interact.”
The company employs 65 engineers, office staff and crafts and trades workers and holds contracts on millions of dollars worth of construction work. Clients range from Loudoun County (interior remodeling of the courthouse, the new crime lab for the Sheriff’s Office) to the Department of Homeland Security, multiple airlines, American University and Washington Dulles International Airport. At Fort Belvoir, TMG is building a multimillion-dollar southern loop road and a million-gallon pumping station.
Recycling at teardown and remodeling projects – ceiling tiles go back to the manufacturer for reuse, rather than to a landfill to decompose over the next 200,000 years – is company policy. It is usually cost-neutral once the laborers are coached to separate out the recyclables in the waste steam.
When we humans saw the Earth rise over the lunar horizon in December 1968, Joe Matthews said, “We realized we are in a smaller world.”
Before that, he said, the baby-boomer generation assumed the world was plentiful and its inhabitants could just take, take, take.
But with the population topping 6 billion, he said, “We realize we are coming up against the sustainable yield of the Earth. It has a certain carrying capacity and we have exceeded it in many cases.”
Today, the problem is global and the threat of global warming leads the way.
The answers at TMG aren’t always global, but they are, as the saying goes, part of the solution – substitute electronic communication for paper in everything from the company newsletter to blueprints to proposals; if they use paper, it is on both sides; shred that paper and use it for hydroseeding on the job site; replace energy-hungry CRT monitors with the LCD version; replace disposable cups with ceramic mugs and glasses; use pencils made of recycled newspaper. Use materials that don’t off-gas volatile organic compounds.
Shop for office equipment at thrift stores.
And replace the industry-favorite Ford F-150 pickup truck with the gas-electric hybrid Toyota Prius. A TMG job superintendent drives from home to the job site in a Prius, most likely toting only a briefcase and a laptop. The F-150 is waiting at the job site where it is actually needed.
Environmental motives aside, the Prius fleet has lowered gas costs for the entire company.
Chris Worth, TMG’s IT wizard, the one who makes all those electronic communications happen, tracks the carbon footprint of the entire company, everything from miles to and from work, fuel use on the sites, heating and cooling costs, recycling. Today, TMG is adding 1,226.65 tons of carbon to the atmosphere each year.
That’s a baseline, Joe Matthews said. TMG will get that number down.
And for Trillium, the 50-acre home and business site south of Lincoln, Joe and Tanya Matthews have a BHAG, or “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” – plant more trees, add renewable power, until Trillium is a carbon sink. Reduce, reuse, recycle.
“If you have dozens of 50-acre and 20-acre and 10-acre properties focused on becoming a carbon sink, using less carbon than they put back in the atmosphere, we may be one step closer to reversing the trend,” Joe Matthews said.
You must be logged in to post a comment.