NGL has been actively working toward reducing its environmental impact and providing its employees opportunities to be more green during the last year. The NGL Green Team was created to develop engaging projects that everyone could easily take part in.

There are one-time projects and ongoing projects. Below are a few highlights from the E-Waste Drive, paper cup reduction and air conditioning replacement projects.

E-Waste Drive

We held an E-Waste Drive to help our NGL colleagues properly dispose of their electronic items they no longer use. This year, NGL collected 335 pounds of electronic items, including computers, gaming systems, cords, printers, etc. All collected items were safely disposed of, eliminating the possibility of those items ending up in landfills and leaching into the soil.

There are more than 20 million tons of e-waste produced each year. E-waste represents 2% of all waste but roughly 70% of all toxic waste. When electronics end up in landfills, toxins like lead, mercury, cadmium and more leach into the soil and water causing harm to the environment.

Reducing paper cups

In 2018 we began to make an effort to reduce the amount of paper cups our office was using. Cutting down on the paper cups was the first project the NGL Green Team decided to tackle. Due to a wax coating on the inside of paper coffee cups, the majority of cups are unable to be recycled.

As it turned out, we were using over 5,500 paper cups each month, which equaled:

In order to help reduce the amount of paper cups, NGL and the NGL Green Team provided encouragement to use reusable water bottles and mugs instead of paper cups.

With everyone being more aware of the impact their daily paper cup has and switching to their own mugs and water bottles, we witnessed 18,000 fewer paper cups being used.

If these 18,000 saved paper cups were stacked end to end, they’d reach over a mile, weigh 400 pounds and if only one person used them, it would take them 50 years to use all of the cups.

Replacing air conditioning unit

NGL recently replaced its 20-year-old air conditioning equipment at the Downtown office with a new system. The new chiller system is a considerable improvement over the old system.

The environmental impact of this project will result in a reduction of 39,829 lbm/year of carbon dioxide, 181 gm/year of sulfur dioxide and 47 gm/year of nitrogen oxides. Assuming a 10-year-old tree absorbs 48 pounds of carbon dioxide per year, to have this same impact by planting trees, NGL would have to plant 830 10-year-old trees to remove the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. To plant 830 trees locally, it would cost about $750,000 (assuming the cost of a 10-year-old tree is $900).

Click here for more information about NGL’s community involvement.