Austin Chamber honors businesses for environmental responsibility

On August 21st, the Austin Chamber hosted the 19th annual Greater Austin Business Awards. With more than 125 nominees across 12 categories, we wanted to share some of the great things each of our honorees are doing. Today, we are focusing on the environmental champion honorees.

Posted on 11/18/2019 by Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce



Small Sized (1-50 Employees)

Cosmic Coffee + Beer Garden

Cosmic Coffee + Beer Garden participates in a variety of eco-friendly practices such as wildlife habitat creation, landfill diversion, on-site composting, rainwater harvesting, and re-homing mature trees. Cosmic has eliminated most non-compostable or non-recyclable packaging and the majority of products it uses are locally made.

NuWash Mobile Car Wash

NuWash offers eco-friendly, water-saving car wash and detailing services. Its rinseless wash method uses less than a gallon of water per wash, while traditional drive-thru car wash locations typically need upwards of 40 gallons per wash to achieve the same result. NuWash also eliminates water/product runoff since it uses so little water, and any remnants are wiped up using its microfiber towels and brought back to its headquarters.

Toybrary Austin

Making a positive impact on the environment is what Toybrary Austin is all about! The very heart of its business is recycling. Other core missions include saving parents money, educating children, and promoting minimalism. Here’s how it works:

Happy Wallets - Having a membership saves parents money, since they are able to borrow toys instead of buying expensive new toys all the time. There is no other business in the entire state that offers this!

Happy Kids - Kids need fresh, exciting challenges, to have their minds stimulated. Toybrary provides educational toys for any and every interest a child might have! When they get tired of the toys they’ve borrowed (which they always do) parents bring them back to try new things. This makes kids happy!

Less Clutter - Borrowing toys helps keep homes orderly and neat. Instead of stockpiling toys, parents and kids can simply borrow & return them. Research shows that children are only able to focus on seven toys at a time anyway.

Less Waste - Toybrary takes care of the environment and teach kids to do the same. It is a part of the sharing environment, and it keeps toys from going to the landfill.

What does that mean for the environment?

  • Fewer toys need to be made, saving resources
  • Reduced need for cardboard and plastic used in packaging
  • Fewer toys and less packaging end up in the landfill!
  • Since it doesn’t stock toys that use batteries, Toybrary also helps keep those out of the landfill. All of its toys are timeless, high-quality, and a bit more old school, as in, requiring imagination, not batteries. Only the child's energy is consumed.

Medium Sized (51-350 Employees)

Dialpad

Dialpad's goal and motto are to "Kill the Deskphone" and it is winning at this every single day. Dialpad are not just a SaaS company, it eliminates the need for a desk phone by providing a soft phone right on your desktop.

How does this make Dialpad environmentally friendly? By eliminating desk phones and the data centers that support these desk phones, it helps reduce carbon footprint all around the world.

Large Sized (351+ Employees)

HHS

In 2017, HHS pledged to support responsible animal welfare and sustainability practices at all its culinary accounts. HHS’ dedication to this means that it follows Global Animal Partnership 5-Step program and source ethically raised meats, poultry, and seafood, and source produce and products from area farmers and companies. In 2018, HHS partnered with Joyce Farms, a family-owned business that is dedicated to raising animals humanely and naturally, without antibiotics or growth stimulants. Joyce Farms also practices regenerative agriculture helping to reduce carbon dioxide levels by diversifying their crops, removing the practice of tilling, growing plants without any chemicals, providing adaptive grazing, and integrating livestock for natural soil microbes. At its new 125-acre campus in Dripping Springs, Texas, HHS took every measure to ensure that it positively impacts the local community. Since opening its doors in February, HHS has implemented on-site composting to reduce waste, upgraded its water filtration system to a reverse osmosis system, helping to eliminate the need for bottled water, stocked all break areas with reusable supplies to minimize the amount of waste that ends up in landfills, and have started an on-site garden to source its own produce within its cafe.

Texas Disposal Systems

The Gregory family and their group of businesses known as Texas Disposal Systems (TDS) are committed to being environmental stewards working in the best interest of their neighbors, employees and the communities they serve. The dedication to doing things the right way was established more than 40 years ago by its founders and owners, Bob and Jim Gregory, and it still holds true to it today. Its fully integrated facility - the first of its kind in the nation - provides a leading-edge Type 1 Municipal Solid Waste Landfill, a Materials Recovery Facility for recycling and a large-scale composting operation, all at the same campus. TDS also provide several other avenues of landfill diversion, including concrete and construction demolition waste recycling, capturing landfill gas, scrap metal and tire recycling and a host of other recycling programs. The TDS business model, which incorporates all of its diversion programs, is intended to be a respectful, sustainable, affordable and honest approach to managing products discarded as waste and recyclables. TDS is dedicated to maintaining the highest environmental standards in all its operations, including its on-site TDS Exotic Game Ranch and Pavilion - a living proof of multi-faceted conservation efforts. At this venue, TDS hosts fundraisers, recognition and educational events at no charge to organizations responsible for the event. It has hosted over 2,400 events and helped these organizations to raise $25 million for local causes over the past 19 years. TDS has made it a key part of its mission to partner with communities and educate citizens how to manage waste, recycling and compostable materials in a compliant manner to protect the environment and reinforce eco-friendly habits.


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