Greening BAVC

BAVC has always valued energy conservation and the preservation of our natural environment. In 2007, however, BAVC made an organizational commitment to becoming a green business.

While the City of San Francisco has yet to establish “green guidelines” for non-profit and/or media organizations like ours, we implemented some initial changes on our own including:

• reducing our use of paper products by distributing most of our supplementary training materials and forms as PDF or other electronic documents;
• using HTML email invitations for events and screenings;
• moving to electronic timesheets;
• copying double-sided;
• purchasing only recycled-content paper and business products;
• switching from bottled water to a water filtration system;
• cleaning with non-toxic, environmentally-safe products;
• using energy efficient lighting systems;
• conserving energy with the installation of a more efficient heating and air-conditioning system;
• the installation of honeycomb shades to prevent external heat and cold in several of our suites and offices; and
• upgrading our network and software to be able to control all of our labs from a single computer, thus making it easier for us to power down computers.

Of course, at BAVC, we still have some “greening” to do and we continue working towards our additional goals including:

• the conservation of water with low-flow toilets and faucet aerators;
• paperless invoicing and financial processing.

Do you have ideas about ways that BAVC can get more green? We'd love to hear them.

Want to help support our efforts?