Sustainability Overview

CMHA won Crain’s Cleveland Emerald Award

Our earth was endowed with a seemingly endless supply of natural resources that have sustained life on this planet for millions of years.  However, we have learned that these resources are not endless and we all must change our patterns in the consumption of these resources to ensure that we continue to meet our needs, and more importantly, ensure that our future generations are able to meet their needs.  This pattern of conservation is called sustainability.

CMHA through its Energy Performance Contract took a huge step toward sustainabilty by reducing its consumption of water, electric, and natural gas.  Now, we are looking a recycling initiative which will further reduce our environmental footprint and move us further towards becoming a truly sustainable organization. 

Annually, CMHA hauls approximately 10,000 tons or 20,000,000 pounds of trash to a landfill.  Much of that trash consists of material that could be recycled.  It is our goal to significantly reduce the amount of material going to the landfill by diverting those materials that can be recycled to facilities which will process them and ship them to various manufacturers for reuse. It is estimated that it takes 50% less energy to produce products from recycled material than it does to produce those same products from raw materials.

To begin this landfill diversion process, in 2008, CMHA initiated the recycling of paper and corrugated cardboard at all of its administrative offices and at its residential high-rise apartment buildings with the residents.  To date, our employees and residents have recycled over 100 tons of paper.

We accomplished this by first running a recycling pilot at six of our administrative offices.  We teamed with a national recycling company called Caraustar, who provided us with 96 gallon collection paper recycling bins which when filled are transported to their facility processing and pickup by various manufacturers to be recycled to make products such as paper towels, tissues, and greeting cards.  Recycling also provides us with a variable income stream as Caraustar pays us market price for the paper, and we avoid landfill tipping fees.

Each pilot office chose a “Green Team” person.  They had the responsibility to communicate and support the program, and to make sure that their co-workers were “tossing in” the right materials into their desk side collection bins.  We placed larger 23 gallon "Slim Jim" collection bins at our fax and copier stations and at strategic locations in our offices to collect not only paper, but also newspapers and magazines.

It is important to note that CMHA continues to follow established record retention policies, and continues to safeguard the confidential information provided by our applicants, residents, and employees by destroying documents which contain sensitive information.

Once the pilot ran smoothly, we introduced it at all of our administrative offices.  We then met with our residents and asked them to join us in this effort.  They responded by pitching in their paper, junk mail, newspapers, and magazines.

We are looking into ways to expand our recycling to include other office and household waste.  There are a number of ideas under consideration and we will keep you updated as we move forward.

The idea of sustainability has five major tenets, reuse, recycle, respect, reduce, and rethink.  An example of rethinking how we do things was a recent major change in the type of chemicals used by our custodial staff in the cleaning of our buildings.

CMHA worked with State Industrial Products to pilot a new line of “eco-friendly” cleaning agents.  Their new line of non-petroleum based biodegradable products is called “Ecolution”.  These concentrated products are mixed with water in an automated proportioning station.  The mixed product is dispensed into reusable spray bottles or directly into mop buckets.  In addition to this system being very economical it has virtually eliminated waste in the form of packaging.

The Ecolution system has proven to work as well as or better than the old petroleum based products. It has resulted in a safer environment for our employees and residents.  We are now moving to convert all of our buildings to this new system.

We have made a good start, but we have a lot of work ahead to attain our goal of becoming a truly sustainable organization.  We are committed to that end.

Insulation and Weatherization Project

CMHA and Community Housing Solutions (CHS) collaborated on a partnership to insulate and weatherize a number of family units and freestanding homes. CHS provided the funding for this comprehensive energy conservation program that addresses the interior and exterior environments of the building, and the operating efficiency of the furnaces and the hot water heaters. CHS first performed an audit of the property to develop the scope of work. Then they assessed the operational efficiency of the furnaces and water heaters. CMHA and CHS made the residents’ homes more comfortable, while at the same time reducing energy costs. CHS will work with CMHA on this project throughout 2010, concentrating on family-unit clusters and freestanding scattered site homes.

Please click here to view a scorecard that charts the progress of our paper recycling initiative.