BEST Award Winners Named

Eleven local businesses honored for combining business objectives with environmental aims

(Portland, Oregon) — Portland’s Office of Sustainable Development this week unveiled the winners of its 14th annual BEST Awards, an honor for local businesses that incorporate sustainability as part of their business practices.

This year, a favorite Portland destination – Stumptown Coffee Roasters – won accolades in the BEST Practices for Sustainability: Medium Company category.

Stumptown stated its very modest goal on its application for the award: “To be the most sustainable and socially responsible coffee roasting company on the planet.”

The goal may be large, but so are their efforts to attain it.

Stumptown pays its baristas the highest wages in the industry and offers each employee and their spouse full health benefits. Additionally, the company shows its commitment to coffee farmers by paying record prices for green coffee on the world market.

And the company hired a sustainability coordinator, Matt Lansbury, to help reach a rather lofty goal: reducing its overall environmental footprint of its internal retail and wholesale business by at least 50 percent by the end of the year.

"Sustainability has always been inherent in what we do," Lansbury said. For this homegrown coffee company, best business practices include simplifying the entire process.

"You take as many middle men out of the picture, get closer to the farmer and pay them well for the best coffee in the world," Lansbury said.

Nike, Inc. ran away with the BEST Practices for Sustainability: Large Company award for working to eliminate PVC from Nike branded footwear and recycling old shoes to be used in the construction of new sport surfaces, among other initiatives.

Eleek, Inc., a small design and manufacturing company, garnered honors in the BEST Practices for Sustainability: Small Company category, for its efforts to source 90 percent of materials used in its manufacturing from local sources, and using 100 percent recycled cast and tumbled aluminum, among other practices.

“Corporations can have such a huge impact on the environment by demanding environmental standards from suppliers,” Portland’s Office of Sustainability Director Susan Anderson told a crowded room at the BEST Awards breakfast ceremony.

More and more, local businesses are recognizing the importance of hanging a BEST Award on their office walls. Applications for the award grew 50 percent more than last year, said Anderson.

Other Award Winners include:

This food company committed to using 100% renewable wind energy at its corporate offices and 39 different Burgerville locations.

This small but mighty production company produced “Architecture to Zucchini,” a video documenting 12 sustainable business case studies, marketed to colleges and universities around the world.

The Property Maintenance Department developed an innovative irrigation system that checks the weather forecast, tests the moisture content of the soil and determines how much water is actually needed before watering the ground.

This university included sustainability criteria in its food service contract with Sodexho and educates students about sustainable food choices. 

This event management company employed a creatively designed stormwater system at its NE Portland headquarters.

This company attained high rates of alternative commuting and purchased CO2 offsets for all business air travel.

This company’s recycling program reduces the impacts of manufacturing processes and finds uses for old materials.

A Portland institution, this small non-profit takes discarded materials from businesses and resells the items. SCRAP also implements local educational initiatives around waste management.