When I first joined the team at Southern Energy Management, I figured that a company specializing in sustainable energy would have a recycling program. I was pleasantly surprised to find out just how seriously we take things here, though. Recycling at SEM is viewed as an integral part of the triple bottom line business model of people, planet and profit.
“Recycling was always a given,” said Maria. “It’s always just been a natural thing that people who come to work at SEM feel is important.”
But while the idea was always there, the implementation was somewhat disorganized: there were bins that would fill up with recyclable material, and whoever happened to notice would take it upon themselves to get those bins to the recycling center. As we’ve grown from a handful of people operating out of a living room to having four offices and more than 80 team members, these inherent recycling efforts have gradually transformed into a legit “program.” Nowadays, every desk has a paper recycling bin and all cans or bottles go to the bin in the break rooms. We’ve got a dumpster out back for cardboard, another for scrap metal, and a special collection box in the break room for candy wrappers. We’ve also got bins that sit in every bathroom to collect retired toilet paper tubes.
Our efforts vary a little from office to office, but in general, we all aspire to operate by the same environmental sustainability “Guiding Principles” – which we documented recently as part of our commitment to being a B Corp. Side note: we plan to publish these along with our other “guiding principles” documents in a new section of our website later this year.
“I see the development of our guiding principles as a natural progression that reflects the evolution of the whole company,” says Maria. “Our goal is not to have rigid mandates, but to provide useful guidelines that outline our values while still allowing our team members to exercise some creativity in determining how we can best meet our commitment to being exemplary environmental stewards.”
A great example of this type of creative engagement from the SEM team can be found behind our main office in Morrisville. At first glance, it looks like a boring box near the dumpsters; but take a look inside and you’ll see that it’s actually a palatial worm haven (otherwise known as our 
industrial-strength compost bin). SEM’s compost program started small, with a re-used Tidy Cats plastic tub place next to the sink in the break room. In 2008, though, things got kicked up a notch when Max Isaacs, one of our Solar PV Project Managers (who now doubles as our “Director of Worms”), attended a “vermiculture” class offered by a local non-profit called The Abundance Foundation (vermiculture is the art of composting with worms). Soon, Max was sharing tips around the office and it wasn’t long before he convinced others that SEM should have its own vermiculture compost.
“We started out with about 16 pounds of worms, and there’s about a thousand worms per pound,” says Max. “So we had about 16,000 worms.” He says there’s no real way of knowing how many worms we have now, because the population fluctuates for its own sustainability.
Every day, as SEM team members add food scraps – like apple cores, orange peels, peach pits, and coffee grounds – to a collector in the break room, Max transfers the scraps to the big bin out back.
“Worms really, really like coffee grounds, and we have a lot of coffee here,” says Maria. “So we have a lot of happy energetic worms.”
“They’ll eat pretty much anything,” says Max. “Everything will break down. There’s lots of mold, we’ve had mushrooms growing in here for a while, and it’s just a nice little system — everything breaks down, the worms take care of it. They’re all just part of it: worms, bacteria, fungus, everything really contributes to break it down.”
Though we enjoy having the compost, it’s also serious business: it is fully permitted by the North Carolina Department of Natural Resouces, and Max keeps records of how much food and water goes in, along with condition reports. It even has a heating coil to make sure the worms stay cozy during the winter. And every once in a while SEM team members get to take home dark, moist and incredibly rich compost for their own plants and gardens.
“I like closing the loop. Taking the waste from the kitchen, putting it in here, really getting it to helping out the natural cycle. If we didn’t compost it here, it would go to the landfill and just sit in there and get sealed up. Really, those resources wouldn’t go back into the environment for a long time. We’re just taking that directly and making really high grade soil, and so it just really helps close the loop,” explains Max. “And it’s good to come out and get my hands dirty.”
If everything goes according to plan, SEM will be opening a second worm hotel, soon: our Greenville, South Carolina, office has plans to start its own vermiculture program. It just shows that sustainability isn’t simply part of what we sell clients — it’s part of who we are.
For a behind-the-scenes personal tour of our compost program, check out this short video we put together this week (for the record, that bread was moldy BEFORE we decided to compost it!!)
Chris Cowperthwaite is a Writer & Multimedia Specialist at Southern Energy Management. Read more about him here.
Maria Kingery is Co-Founder and Director of Cultural Development at Southern Energy Management. Read more about her here.
Max Isaacs is the Solar Photovoltaic Project Manager at Southern Energy Management. Read more about him here.
Tags: compost, recycling, triple bottom line, vermiculture
Just a quick correction to make sure we’re giving credit where credit is due — it was actually Jamie Hager (SEM’s green building guru) who attended the Abundance Foundation vermiculture workshop, and cared for our incubating worms before they were hardy enough to transfer to our Morrisville kitchen. From there, Max took over. . .and the rest is squirmy, biodegradable history!