The Chicago Green Office Challenge: Encouraging Sustainability in Business
Chicago Green Office Challenge logo
by Andrew DeCanniere
Earlier this month I found out about the City of Chicago's "Chicago Green Office Challenge," designed to engage the City of Chicago's business community and encourage them to consider what they could do to operate in a more environmentally conscious manner. Last week I had a chance to speak with Alex Moree of the Delta Institute, to learn more about the program.
Andrew DeCanniere: I just recently learned of the “Chicago Green Office Challenge” myself, and I’m sure that there are many other people who haven’t heard of it, or perhaps — like myself — just learned of its existence. Perhaps you could give us a bit of background. What is it? How did it come to be? And, for that matter, what’s the City’s motivation for putting this kind of a program in place?
Alex Moree: I would say it has a little bit of a fun and funny history. It began in 2008, as a City of Chicago program. The Department of Environment and the City of Chicago were working on it with a non-profit called ICLEI. They previously had an office in Chicago, and I actually used to work for them. They are headquartered in California and closed their Chicago office. They are an environmentally focused non-profit that works specifically with local governments — so cities and counties and some rural areas — on sustainability programs. They were talking with the City of Chicago about ways to engage commercial offices, because the City didn’t previously have a really robust program for that, and they wanted to develop one.