CommuteSMART Seacoast Honors 2018 Sustainability Award Recipients

November 19 2018

Nineteen Seacoast companies were celebrated by CommuteSMART Seacoast for their efforts in supporting and promoting sustainable commuting for their employees over the previous year.

CommuteSMART Seacoast, the regional Transportation Management Association, partners with area employers to help them educate and encourage their employees about commuting options such as taking transit, carpooling, bicycling, walking or teleworking.

Anne Rugg, Manager of CommuteSMART Seacoast said, “We’re delighted that so many Seacoast companies are taking the lead in creating a collective culture of sustainable commuting.”

Companies received an award based on a 19-point scoring system that included such items as providing transit schedules on site, giving new hires information about sustainable commuting options, offering preferential parking for vanpools and carpools, offering on-site bike sharing and bike parking, and designating a point of contact for employee commute questions.

The Gold Level Award was given to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and Harbour Light Strategic Marketing.  Silver Level awards were earned by the City of Portsmouth, Heinemann Publishing, Hubspot, IAPP, NH Dept. of Environmental Services, Oak Point Associates, Portsmouth High School, Rockingham Planning Commission and Strafford Regional Planning Commission.  Bronze Level awards were presented to COAST, Colonial Bicycle, Lonza, Mad*Pow, Medtronic, Pax World, Pease Development Authority, and TMS Architects.

The guest speaker was York resident Greg Norris PhD, who lectures at Harvard, is the co-director of SHINE (the Sustainability and Health Initiative for Net-positive Enterprise) at MIT and the chief scientist at the International Living Future Institute.  Dr. Norris shared his concept of “handprinting,” an optimistic philosophy for addressing the challenge of sustainability. The approach aims to engage people not only in reducing their carbon footprints, but also in creating a net-positive impact on the environment through persuading others to do the same.  Dr. Norris congratulated the group for acting as transportation sustainability champions within their environmentally progressive companies.  Dr. Norris commented, “By influencing others to commute sustainably, your impact has a huge rippling effect.”

The night was a wonderful celebration of another extremely successful year of smart commuting activities and the companies across the Greater Seacoast that are leading the way in this area.