Gold Medal Pilates Level 4

Gold Medal Pilates becomes our first Level 4 certified business. But how quickly they got there is the most impressive part. Heading into the business for the first time I realized that it was going to be hard to improve this business since it was already so good environmentally speaking. The inspection took around 45 minutes and covered every single aspect of the business. Once completed I realized that the normal and more obvious steps to improve the business would be irrelevant due to the size of the building and the scale of the business. Changing the lighting system to LED was just not feasible. It would take more than 15 years to break even if we were to change the lighting system. The reduction of emissions was also not very major. This is where the innovation really came in. I saw that the way Gold Medal Pilates was washing their towels could be improved. So, I suggested buying more towels and reducing the number of weekly wash cycles. This would reduce the emissions by 345.6lbs of CO2 per year but also reduce water usage by 70%! This change is massive as it would turn Gold Medal Pilates from a business that uses way too much water to a business that uses less water than its relative carrying capacity within days of the change being made. This change was incredible as it required almost no work to implement and actually reduced the amount of weekly work for the business owner. The project broke even after just 3 months and ended up profiting the business $121.98 per year. The profits side for this project and for this whole business was not really the priority. Here the focus was on reducing the risk of the business. That is why we are getting as far away from reliance on any resources as possible. This leads us to Phase 2 of the project, reducing the use of non-renewable energy. Colorado Springs Utilities has a green power program available to all of its customers. This program lets you opt in for renewable energy that emits 0 emissions. We suggested this change since solar panels would take too long to break even due to the low use of electricity and because this change would actually be the same price as the non-green electricity the business was already using. This meant that the business could entirely eliminate the risk of energy prices increasing without having to pay any extra money for that. So now the business owner has less work to do, and they just eliminated all their emissions, the risk to getting taxed on emissions, the risk on rising energy prices, and reduced their water use to an amount that can be sustained by the environment this business operates in.

You can read the full report on Gold Medal Pilates here.

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