— community
We believe that giving back to the community in which we live and work is the right thing to do. We're always looking for volunteer projects where our expertise and enthusiasm could make a real difference.
If you're involved with a community project and could use our help, please email jeremy[at]houstonlandscapes.ca.
— sustainability
We believe in being the change we want to see in the world, so we're constantly striving towards a higher level of sustainability. Lessening our company's, and our employee's, impact on the environment is as simple as adopting new, better habits, and that's something we do each and every month. We even give out an award to the employee who comes up with our newest monthly sustainability initiative.
Here are just a few we've already adopted:
- Water conservation
- Through purchasing spray nozzles and filters and regularly inspecting our equipment, we've been able to greatly increase our water efficiency at job sites, while also reducing the run-off of solid particulates into sewers and drains.
- Plastic pots program
- Every plastic planter we use on a job site is collected and returned to the nursery for re-use.
- Metal recycling
- We place a container at every job site to collect scrap metal, then bring the metal to a recycler, or return it to manufacturers for re-use.
- Soft Plastic Recycling
- All soft plastics (including pallet wrap, etc.) are collected on-site and then dropped off once a month at a soft plastics recycling depot. We also ask our employees to bring in their own soft plastics from home. If you want to join us in our initiative, here are some local depots that accept soft plastics:
- Presentation House Theatre at 333 Chesterfield Ave. (North Vancouver). 9am – 12noon
- Britannia Community Centre at 1661 Napier St. (Vancouver). Enter off Venables St. onto Cotton Drive to parking lot. 9am – 12noon.
- Battery recycling
- We collect all household style batteries, and most of those used in our rechargeable tools, both on-site and at our shop, to be recycled. We also encourage our staff to bring in old batteries from home.
- Idle reduction program
- To avoid creating unnecessary pollution and greenhouse gas creation, we enforce an idle-reduction program for all our machines, including skid steers, excavators and hand-operated equipment.
- Measurement Confirmation
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- Our teams plan for the week ahead before picking up materials. Less driving means a reduction in carbon emissions and fuel usage. As well, we double-check all orders to avoid the need to return unused materials or make a second trip to buy more.
- Material Re-Use
- Following the three tenets of going green – reduce, reuse, recycle – we encourage our teams to get creative when thinking of ways to re-use any raw materials that are going to waste.
- Unplug
- This may be the easiest sustainability practice, but also the easiest to forget. We strive to turn out lights when possible and unplug cell-phone chargers, computers and tools when not in use. We also encourage our employees to bring these practices home with them.