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Environmental Statement
The Ken Blanchard Companies strives to conserve natural resources by minimizing consumption of resources and energy, reducing emissions, and increasing awareness so that future generations will inherit a healthy, sustainable planet.
Green Team
An important goal for Blanchard is to decrease our environmental impact. Since the establishment of the Green Team in 2002, Blanchard has instituted numerous environmentally friendly practices. We have received the prestigious "Outstanding Contribution for Paper Recycling" award by Legacy Fibers each year since 2004 thanks to our corporate-wide recycling program. We have a dedicated recycling center at our headquarters that includes paper, cardboard, glass, plastic, aluminum, and e-waste recycling. We only use 30% recycled paper in our offices and switched to a lower pound paper to reduce the environmental impact created in shipping heavier paper.
The Green Team generates ongoing interest in and awareness of Green practices to all associates through monthly articles, a Web site dedicated to sharing environmentally friendly information, and sponsoring an annual Earth Day Movie Night. Other activities have included choosing a Force of Nature award recipient, a Halloween Haunted Greenhouse experience, and brown-bag information sessions. The Green Team continually collects, reviews, and presents data on energy and water conservation measures as well as recycling measures. The intention is to create increased return on investment that supports the intrinsic value added through new conservation efforts.
Our Materials and Products
We take our responsibility to conserve natural resources seriously. We challenge our organization on an ongoing basis to use a multi-pronged approach to conservation—including the way we produce and deliver our products and services.
For domestic fulfillment we partnered with Ricoh Services (previously IKON) more than 12 years ago to establish an onsite printing and assembly center. Over the years we have teamed up with the Ricoh staff to minimize the environmental impact of document management using Ricoh’s Leave a Green Impression Solutions. Ricoh is committed to a program of environmental stewardship—both in the way they work, and in the way they help us work. Ricoh technology is designed for maximum energy efficiency to help reduce energy costs and support CO2 emissions reduction goals. Their products are designed to control, minimize, and eliminate volatile organic compounds and environmentally sensitive substances in accordance with RoHS and Ricoh internal standards. Ricoh has been recognized by the Financial Times, EcoValue 21, and the World Economic Forum for dedication to sustainability and environmental conservation. Ricoh was also named one of the "Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World" for five consecutive years.
We have progressed dramatically over the past seven years in producing our materials as geographically close to the customer as possible. With electronic files and partnerships with fulfillment centers worldwide, the need to print and ship great distances has been eliminated—lessening environmental impact. Partnering with facilities in the U.K., Singapore, and Latin America, as well as with FedEx Office locations, has allowed us to print training materials locally rather than shipping materials across the world. FedEx Office’s proactive stance on environmental initiatives is the reason why the Council on Economic Priorities’ Corporate Responsibility Profile for the Environment ranks them among the best Fortune 500 companies. In addition, they are the seventh largest retail user of renewable, green power in the United States.
We have also made cosmetic changes and updates to our training materials that do not affect intellectual content, instructional, or training design, yet do help the environment while fulfilling the needs of our clients. Where possible, we print our materials on 30% post-consumer recycled paper. We’ve transitioned away from producing plastic laminated covers for workbooks and other training materials, and switched to a high-quality recyclable stock. Our participant workbooks are now delivered using perfect binding instead of a three-ring binder with shrink-wrapped materials. These changes dramatically decrease the use of plastics in our products; decrease the weight, and therefore carbon impact, for shipping; and result in our materials being almost 100% recyclable.
In all, these changes maximize the use of recycled materials, and will result in lighter shipments that save our clients shipping costs while reducing the overall carbon footprint.