Have a greener kitchen.

We’re all about “improving the experience” around here at Larson Binkley.  It’s in our culture.  It’s in our design process.  We’re thinking all the time about how our clients experience us, about how their customers experience them and about how our employees experience our own work environment.  We look for ways to make those experiences more comfortable and enjoyable.  Chris Larson has challenged us, in everything that we do, that we are “Perfecting Comfort to Optimize the Human Experience.”

As a member Larson Binkley’s Culture Team, I am tasked with our team mission to “To make everyone feel welcome, taken care of, and part of the LBI family.  To create a fun and safe environment that fosters creativity, professional growth, and risk taking in its employees.  To empower the employees to feel like they are valuable players in the company and take ownership in their successes.”  As a woman, and probably more so because I’m a mom, I take our Culture Team mission very seriously. 

I had a group of clients in recently and I really had to take a hard look at their experience in our office in terms of simple hospitality and global responsibility.  It was an early meeting and I had picked up bagels and coffee that morning and was feeling pretty pleased that I was going to have an opportunity to make them feel welcomed by offering them breakfast.  They arrived and the boxes were opened and very quickly I found myself scrambling around in our kitchen for plates, napkins, coffee cups.  I served those bagels that day to a group of a very well respected architects on mismatched paper plates, plastic knives and Chipotle napkins leftover from a lunch and learn.

 I was mortified.  That table setting screamed “We weren’t prepared for your visit!”  And even worse “We don’t care about the environment!”  None of which was true, we had prepared technically for the meeting very thoroughly, but our hospitality, the human comfort piece, was lacking. 

We are very dedicated to preserving natural resources and conserving energy here.  We have 31,299,531 square feet of LEED certified projects in 46 states.  We have a great program for recycling in our office.  But in the kitchen we were behind.

That day, I scarified trees for those paper plates and napkins and contributed to the landfill with plastic knives covered with cream cheese.  Our integrity had been compromised… 

Our Culture Team approached Chris with an idea to enable us to “walk the walk if we’re going to talk the talk” to our clients about sustainability and energy conservation as well as allowing us to really welcome and take care of our clients and our own employees when they are in our office.  Our team researched and found out we were spending around $500 per year in paper and plastic goods.  That was way too much.

We proposed replacing those paper and plastic products with reusable china dishes and silverware. 

We also installed an energy efficient dishwasher which uses less water and soap than washing dishes by hand.  The carbon footprint of our dishes being transported only happens once as opposed to paper plates being driven around the country on an ongoing basis. 

 

We can’t wait for you to visit us, enjoy a treat and a nice cup of coffee, from our green kitchen.


***Nikki has been plumbing designer for Larson Binkley Inc. in Overland Park, KS since 1993. Recently promoted to Vice President, she currently holds the position of Waterflow Department Manager and loves helping clients improve their plumbing experience. Plumbing might be often overlooked but it is never under used. :)

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