Sustainable Vision Award: Zero Waste Alliance

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If the Zero Waste Alliance were into slogans, it might adopt something like this: "Business the way Mother Nature intended."

The Portland-based nonprofit consulting firm has spent the past 11 years helping organizations eliminate waste and toxins from their operations.

The goal, naturally, is to eliminate waste, or at least help clients turn it into something reusable using nature as its model.

"The 'zero waste' philosophy approach is an aspirational goal. It starts from an assumption that to be truly sustainable, let’s model ourselves after a sustainable system," said Cheyenne Chapman, the alliance’s executive director. “Nature is sustainable. Nature has no waste. It becomes feedstock or food for the next cycle.”

The alliance itself is small, with just a small core staff, but leverages its relationships with an array of associations and partnering consulting firms to provide a range of sustainability services.

It takes on clients ranging from governments and small businesses to large companies to solve specific problems of offer training courses. It worked with Nike Inc., for example, to find a green chemistry solution and Germany-based microchip-maker Siltronic to find water efficiencies at its Portland fab.

But the Zero Waste Alliance, a program of the International Sustainable Development Foundation, perhaps has the most wide-ranging impact through its work developing industry standards.

The organization developed the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool, or EPEAT, which the U.S. and 40 other nations have adopted as a standard by which consumers can gauge the environmental attributes of electronics products.

EPEAT has since spun-off into its own free-standing organization.

It’s developing a similar programs with the Outdoor Industry Association and the European Outdoor Group to develop a so-called “eco index” of products within their industries.

The alliance has also been a successful incubator of sustainability-driven organizations.

Among them are the Green Electronics Council, which manages the EPEAT standard; the International Society of Sustainability Professionals; and the Sustainable Oregon Schools Initiative, in which its taking a comprehensive look at school operations from building maintenance to curriculum.

The Zero Waste Alliance was founded in 1999 by Larry Chalfan, the former CEO of Oki Semiconductor Corp., which in 1997 became the first Oregon company to receive the 14001 certification type from the International Standards Organization, a standard that recognizes environmental management practices.

Upon retirement from his 30-year career in the semiconductor industry, Chalfan wanted to give back to the community by forming an organization that would help other organizations become more sustainable operations.

Zero Waste Alliance employs Two full-time, two part-time and a network of about 15 contractors. Zero Waste has about $500,000 in average revenue, which, based on the project, is often supplemented by various government grants.

With its roots tied to Chalfan’s experience in the manufacturing world, the Zero Waste Alliance offers a practical and disciplined perspective, said Scott Klag, a senior planner with the Metro regional government and co-chairman of the Northwest Product Stewardship Council, a group which advocates that producers take responsibility for their waste.

“The people that get associated with them tend to have a good set of skills that work not just with nonprofits, but with business sectors,” Klag said. “They bring both to the table.”

The group has proven to be a resource for organizations like the Portland Development Commission.

The PDC often refers businesses to the Zero Waste Alliance when they’re moving into a new facility in an effort to help them apply sustainable practices for tenant improvements to a building.

Pam Neal, a senior project coordinator at the PDC, said companies often think first of the short-term costs when it comes to investing in sustainable practices. The Zero Waste Alliance helps them make sustainable decisions that lead to long-term savings.

“They’re able to offer alternatives that we don’t have time to dig into,” Neal said.