Herrera Environmental Consultants
It's no big surprise that the winner of the most eco-friendly small company is a business where "environmental" is literally its middle name.
The Seattle-based provider of environmental and engineering services walks the walk in everything it does. Herrera provides a commuter bonus subsidy to employees who take the bus and has a bike-to-work group to mentor new cyclists, help each other with bike maintenance and host friendly internal competitions. Bikes are provided at the office for downtown meetings, and flex-fuel cars and SUVs are used for fieldwork trips.
To offset the environmental impact of business travel, the company runs a program to purchase carbon offsets, and further aims to reduce its carbon footprint by buying used or recycled office furniture.
They use reusable coffee filters, print on recycled paper (both sides of the sheet, of course), and donate generously to groups like the Center for Environmental Law and Policy and the Homewaters Project, a program to get kids away from the TV and into nature, to help breed the environmentalists of a future generation.
*Listed in alphabetical order
According to voters, O'Brien & Co. is a role model when it comes to being green. These sustainability consultants have been helping Puget Sound builders be more eco-friendly since 1991. These pioneers boast that they have no single-car commuters and work in a sustainably remodeled historic office space.
