Student group helps company go green

What began as an internship has turned into a business deal — and now a student group is working with a local high-profile real estate company to implement a new, sustainability-focused plan of operations.

The Society for Green Business, a student business group at the university, has begun working with Bozzuto Management Company, a division of a large real estate company, Bozzuto Group, that builds apartments along the East Coast. The students are working to implement a program that would establish sustainable practices in the company’s properties, making them more environmentally friendly. Members of the Society for Green Business lauded the partnership, noting it is for a good cause and would also help bolster their group’s legitimacy as an authority on the subject.

“One of the reasons these changes haven’t occurred is because they don’t have the expertise, and now they can change their operations to be more sustainable,” said Tian Tian Feng, the society’s vice president of advocacy. “We’re really educating the company about altering their operations to make them more effective.”

After an internship with the Bozzuto Group this past summer, Feng said she met with Bozzuto Management’s senior vice president, who was also in charge of sustainability, and mentioned her student group could do free consulting for them on how to make the properties greener.

It worked.

Senior Vice President and Sustainability Chairman Chad Cooley said the reason he wanted to work with the group was they had an apparent passion for green business practices.

“They were clearly one of the most energetic groups, with a passion that was unmatched,” Cooley said. “We also have a relationship with UMD; we have employees who are adjunct professors and graduates and we’ve always felt a strong tie so it was a neat opportunity.” 

This semester, the students involved in the society visited one of the group’s nearly 100 East Coast properties — Hunters Glen — where their pilot program would run, and did a walkthrough to determine what sustainable changes they could make.

“There’s a lot of waste, in terms of energy, there’s a lot of lights on all the time that don’t need to be,” said Feng, a junior international business major.  “A solution we came up with is turning off all the appliances in a certain section, like using a power strip so everything is off. We definitely thought about convenience.”

Since then, the group has researched and devised a proposal to address energy efficiency, recycling, environmental procurement, maintenance and education for residents and employees — all using environmentally friendly materials. Feng said she hopes the group will present the proposal and go over it with Cooley as early as Dec. 15.

Some of the recommendations include using motion sensors for lights, lowering thermostat settings and closing window shades in the winter to retain heat, Feng said. 

“We’re recommending solutions to the company, so the next step is to sit through a meeting to see which points [Cooley] thinks are valid, and he will approve or disprove parts, and we will budget from company money,” Feng said. “The way we strategized the proposal is with the most cost-effective choices — either free or require the least amount of investment — and we’re hoping the analysis will push them to make these choices because in long run it will save them money.”

Cooley said he hopes they can implement the project in the next five years and thinks it will have a “real-world application.”

“My hope is that it can be an actual working model for other communities,” Cooley said. “They have a lot of ideas that are applicable so not only do I hope we end up using them, but that it spawns a new level for the communities.”

cetrone at umdbk dot com