One of our main goals is to operate our company in a way that has as little impact as possible on the resources of the earth and the environment. We have made incremental changes in our operational procedures over the years to achieve this:

• 95% of our printing is done on large copy machines. These machines are far more efficient than a desk top printer and do not use the liquid ink that can be harmful to water sources when the cartridges are thrown into landfills.  This eliminates the use of small desk top printers and the ink cartridges they use. Less pollution is achieved by not having to discard the ink cartridges and it reduces the number of cartridges manufactured and purchased.
• Two large containers are used for all discarded paper. These are picked up once a week and taken to a recycling facility. Only nonpaper trash and garbage is thrown away in the regular trash collection system.
• Ceramic coffee mugs are now used in our office. This eliminated the purchase and use of Styrofoam cups. Since petroleum products are used in the manufacture of styro products, this helps to reduce the demand on oil supplies and the pollution created by the refining process. It also reduces the amount of styro products placed in landfills which take centuries to decay.
• Our employees turn off their computers, monitors and office lights when they leave for the day. This eliminates wasted power usage.
• The HVAC system in our offices is controlled by computerized thermostats. These are set to go into a power savings mode except during regular office hours. This prevents wasting power for heat or air conditioning.
• Several of our community managers work from their home office. This reduces their use of fuel for driving and gives them more time to work on their communities, which are near their home. This eliminates the pollution caused by needless travel in their vehicles. They function by means of email, fax and phone, as do the managers in our office.
• We encourage the use of email for correspondence with the boards we work with in 180 communities. This eliminates the use of paper and envelopes and the copy costs. It is also more efficient than using the mail, since the information is transmitted instantly with no postage cost.
• Documents and letters that must be sent by mail are saved to an electronic file in our computer to eliminate printing the paper copies that used to be saved in a file. Our accounting department also scans invoices and bank statements into the computer to eliminate copy costs.
• We do not use electric space heaters in our offices in the winter. This saves significant power usage because these heaters are inefficient and use high volumes of power to produce heat.
• We encourage and help the Community Associations we work for to consider how they can operate in a more efficient and environmentally sensitive way.
• Automatic bank draft systems are used to pay utility bills for all of our properties. This saves printing checks, copies and postage.
• We encourage residents to pay by auto bank draft to save paper and prevent late payments.