Crown Uniform & Linen Service Receives 2012 Boston Green Award

Crown Uniform & Linen Service, a 4th generation family business, was honored with a Boston Green Award on April 19, 2012 at the 6th Annual Mayor's Green Awards, which recognizes Boston businesses and residents for making significant contributions towards making Boston a more sustainable city. The award recognizes Crown's exemplary performance in sustainable environmental practices with water conservation, energy efficiency, and waste reduction.

"We are very proud to have been officially recognized by our community for achieving our sustainability improvement goals," says Plato A. Spilios, Vice President of Crown. "Over the past year, our efforts have ranged from issuing individualized coffee mugs to all of our employees, installing LED lighting, replacing our delivery fleet with "clean" diesel vehicles, and investing in a ceramic water filtration system that is saving our Boston Plant five million gallons of water a year. Although we have made great strides, we recognize there are other opportunities to continuously improve our focus and dedication to sustainability."

As a winner of Mayor Menino's 2012 Green Award, Crown Uniform & Linen Service is pleased to support Greenovate Boston; "a collective movement working to ensure a greener, healthier, and more prosperous future for the city". Crown is also partnering with The Sustainable Business Leader Program as part of their ongoing commitment to being a Green Business.

The Sustainable Business Leadership Group has inspected the Crown processing facility in South Boston and will be working with Crown as they qualify for certification. Crown has established a "Green Team" and a "Sustainability Action Plan" and will continue their tradition of first class quality and service, with even greater focus and dedication to sustainable and environmentally friendly processes.

In an effort to lower the necessary water and energy usage necessary to provide service to the highest OSHA and HLAC standards, Crown Uniform & Linen Service invested in the Norchem Ceramic Filtration System. This wastewater treatment and water recycling system is a fully automated system and specifically engineered for laundry wastewater treatment and energy recovery. With the implementation of the Norchem System, Crown estimates a savings of more than 5 million gallons of water in 2012.

Crown has also implemented a new accounting system as a first step towards a paperless billing system. The new accounting system enables Crown to provide invoices and statements, as well as important communications, via email rather than paper.

As a locally owned and operated family business since 1914, Crown Uniform & Linen Service knows that doing what's best for the environment today will have an enormous impact on the environment tomorrow.

SavWatt Appoints Christakis Paphites as Director

SavWatt USA, Inc., pioneers in LED lighting and the Green Revolution, announced today the appointment of Christakis J. Paphites, 56 years old, CEO of Paphites Holdings LLC, and partner in C&S Solar Holdings LLC as a Director of SavWatt. Mr. Paphites has been a restaurant entrepreneur since 1977. For 20 years he was a Yum Brands Franchisee with 84 Taco Bells, KFCs and Pizza Huts in 4 states. He was the COO/President of BurgerBusters Inc. in charge of operations and development with over 1,800 employees. He is currently a Buffalo Wild Wings franchisee with 4 locations in CA. Mr. Paphites holds a Bachelor's Degree from Guilford College in North Carolina.

SavWatt also entered into a consulting agreement with C&S Solar Holdings LLC, where Mr. Paphites is CEO. Under this agreement, C&S will earn a set fee, plus commission on all solar projects and will receive shares of SavWatt's common stock, based on sales contracted in SavWatt's Renewable Energy Division, up to 10% of SavWatt's outstanding shares. The $3.4 million NJ Solar Project (announced in a press release on March 28, 2012) was the first solar project brought in by C&S. C&S will be the Project Manager in NY, NJ and Connecticut for all SavWatt solar projects and will supervise the day to day solar activities.

Mr. Paphites, commented, "My associates and I from C&S are looking forward to building substantial revenues for SavWatt both in solar and LED. We believe the total market for solar projects nationwide may exceed several billion dollars over the next 3 years. Additionally, nationwide contacts in the fast food chains are prime candidates for solar and LED lights. Saving energy and saving money is everyone's priority and we believe SavWatt has the foundation to be a leader in the field. We are in the right place at the right time and together we will make it happen."

Fast becoming the market leader in LED lighting, SavWatt focuses on developing innovative, energy-efficient and cost-effective LED lighting solutions. By delivering value added, application-specific LED lighting systems, we can significantly reduce energy costs and minimize our carbon footprint worldwide. SavWatt is leading the LED lighting revolution and setting the stage to obsolete the incandescent light bulb. SavWatt's product families include LED fixtures, bulbs, street lights, and parking lights.

The new DEFINITY MR16 HO LED bulb from Lighting Science Group generates 8 W light output and an extended lifetime up to 25,000 h. When compared to competitive products, this 8-W high-efficiency LED bulb is 33% more efficient. It ensures excellent performance without employing any moving parts like fans and complies with all the form factors specified by the industry.

Complementing Lighting Science Group's unparalleled product portfolio, this new DEFINITY MR16 HO LED bulb effectively serves specific applications such as deployment in artistic designs that span skyscraper silhouettes and in NASA outer space ventures. When installed for indoor applications, these bulbs can enable in the reduction of energy-costs considerably. Lighting Science Group represents an ultra-efficient lighting revolution, on a global scale. It also manifests America's clean technology promise internally.

Home Heliostat from Wikoda

Rather than turning on a light indoors while the sun is shining outdoors, a team at Wikoda Inc. in Concord, Massachusetts (US) has developed a heliostat designed and priced for residential use, enabling homeowners to add brightness and warmth to dark or gloomy rooms.

Traditionally, heliostats have been expensive, costing thousands of dollars each. A heliostat is a mirror mounted on motors that tracks the sun throughout the day and places the reflection of the sun on a fixed spot, such as the window of a house. A single heliostat reflects up to 50,000 lumens of sunlight and can completely transform the mood of a room―one 60-watt bulb provides 1,000 lumens.

Not surprisingly, sales of home heliostats have been brisk and interest has come from worldwide. In fact, demand from countries such as Australia, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, New Zealand and the Netherlands was so high that Wikoda pushed for, and received the European CE certification on an accelerated schedule to allow shipping into those regions with full government approval. These new markets are in addition to the domestic US market for which the heliostat had already previously received US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) government approval.

Unlike heliostats intended for industrial purposes, a home heliostat from Wikoda does not require any programming or scientific knowledge to set up. The computer, motion servos and sun sensors are all onboard and self-contained. It doesn't even need batteries or a power cord because the heliostat itself is solar-powered. All that is required are typical homeowner tools, such as a screwdriver and wrench, and a sunny patch of yard. Once set up and operating, the heliostat tracks the sun every day and pumps sunlight in through a window providing free light and warmth.

People have used heliostats to brighten rooms, grow indoor plants, provide warmth, melt icy roofs, dry clothes, dry woodpiles, discourage moss or mildew and jumpstart spring flowers. Once it is operational, the heliostat steers a beam of natural sunlight to a location of the owner's choosing day after day while saving money, carbon and the environment.

Based on a typical $0.15 per kilowatt-hour (KWh) cost of electricity, the Sunflower Home Heliostat provides the equivalent of $2 per day of free natural lighting on each sunny day. On a yearly basis, the Sunflower Home Heliostat provides $200 to $600 of free lighting per year depending on local sky conditions, making it a form of alternate energy with an unusually rapid payback.

Legacy of neglect

The plant and the city grid have been neglected for decades, a situation "made worse by old, dilapidated and/or obsolete infrastructure," the McKinsey study found. Simultaneously, the number of skilled personnel to fix things has been cut in half in the past decade, the study confirms.

There have been recent city and state efforts to switch on 7,600 lights and upgrade some lights to energy-saving LED technology. But meanwhile, more streetlights fail every day, Taylor said.

The new lighting authority plan, of course, requires finding a source for at least $150 million in start-up costs. Making this solution a reality, however, hinges on finding a credible political process for making the tough decisions about where lights should be on and where they should go off.

Mayoral press secretary Patton said the fundamental reason for creating the lighting authority is to maintain local political control over streetlights.

"We do not want to have a situation where the people of Detroit feel as though they don't have input over where their lights are going to be located," she said.

But it has yet to be determined exactly how citizens will participate in these far-reaching decisions or how the mayor will build a consensus for the final outcome.

McKinsey also looked at restoring all 88,000 streetlights. But this choice has been ruled out by the Bing administration as unnecessary and too expensive. Mayoral aide Taylor said, "Basically the city is over lit right now."

Fixing the streetlights is not simple. The city's problems extend from antique lighting fixtures to faulty transmission lines that stop electricity from getting where it needs to go.

There are two electrical transmission systems or "grids" in the city. The biggest grid ― covering virtually all of Detroit ― is owned and maintained by DTE and provides electricity to homes, businesses and most streetlights.

Then there's the city's grid, which primarily follows Detroit's main thoroughfares, powering 33,000 of the 88,000 streetlights and delivering power to public buildings, including Detroit and Wayne County offices, Cobo Center, Wayne State, Detroit Public Schools and Detroit Receiving Hospital. It even delivers power to 200 residences.

Sustainability can save WMATA money, if it's a priority

According to a November memo to the Board, more efficient lighting in parking garages could save $1.5 million per year. Doing the same for stations and tunnels could save $5-8 million per year. New lights also generate more light and need less maintenance than the old.

Lighting isn't the only way that being green could help get rid of the red ink and improve operations at the same time.

Many escalators around the world stop when they're not being used, and have more efficient motors than Metro's aging escalators. Solar panels or solar laminates could cover the roofs of Metro railyards, maintenance facilities, and garages.

Other transit agencies have trained operators to accelerate and brake more fuel-efficiently. Many have installed tire pressure gauges that actively and constantly communicate tire air pressure data to the maintenance facilities. That lets them keep buses at optimum tire pressure and fuel efficiency, which saves significant fuel. Fuel is a very large cost item in Metro's budget, especially with fuel prices rising.

WMATA already has set a standard to make new facilities LEED Silver, like the Shepherd's Parkway bus garage under construction. Its new buses are cleaner and more efficient than the old, and the 7000 series railcars use LED lights, regenerative braking to get energy back like hybrid cars do, better HVAC systems and a design that reduces the need for some polluting processes to clean them.

It's often difficult for transit agencies to energetically adopt sustainability programs. Some agency staff think of transit as intrinsically pro-sustainable, compared to other modes of travel, so they might not feel that sustainability is the higest priority. There can be resistance from the rank and file to newfangled, ivory tower ideas that don't recognize the rough reality of engineering and operations.

Transit agencies also, perhaps understandably, end up prioritizing the day-to-day crisis management over strategic programs. At the moment, WMATA's the overwhelming emphasis is on system safety and renewal capital projects. That means that "soft," "green" projects can find it hard to compete for the capital funds available, even when there's a powerful economic business case behind them.

Another obstacle is the relationship between labor and management. Many sustainability programs might involve changes to people's job responsibilities, which means that management has to negotiate for a change rather than simply establishing and implementing the program.

For example, if WMATA monitored the fuel efficiency performance of each bus driver to help them save fuel, would the union oppose this as another form of management breathing down workers' necks? Would WMATA be able to reward employees that saved the most fuel and money?