Freddie Mac Steps Up 'Green Campus' Efforts

Freddie Mac has a long-standing commitment to environmental preservation and is constantly looking for new green products and ideas to help the company and its nearly 5,400 employees be at the forefront of conservation efforts.

Last year alone, Freddie Mac's green achievements included:

• Expanded can and bottle recycling programs, including containers from the kitchens
• Switching to biodegradable to-go containers in the cafeterias
• A "Bring Your E-Waste to Work Day," where employees brought in old computers, monitors, and other electronic equipment to recycle
• Offering reusable mugs for purchase in the campus shops
• Being recognized by the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors for our exemplary recycling efforts

As a result of these activities, we diverted more than 914,000 pounds of waste from local landfills through recycling and saved more than $22,850 in waste disposal costs.

In addition to paper, Freddie Mac recycles many other items, including toner cartridges, light bulbs, cardboard, ballasts, and batteries to name a few. In 2007, Freddie Mac recycled:

• 383,000 pounds of paper (four times the amount of 2006), which:
  • Preserved more than 1,340,220 gallons of water
  • Preserved more than 88,646 gallons of oil
  • Saved 586 cubic feet of landfill space
  • Saved 780,582 kilowatt hours of energy
  • Saved 3,255 trees
  • Helped filter 112,387 pounds of pollutants from the air we breathe
• 4,693 toner cartridges, saving 14,000 liters of petroleum oil. Recycling the plastic from cartridges freed up landfill "air space" for the next 469,000 years.
• More than 2,000 light bulbs, saving 14 million gallons of water from potential mercury contamination. In addition, all campus buildings were re-lamped in 2006 with lower wattage light bulbs that save 12 watts per fixture over the lifetime of the bulb.
• 329,460 pounds of cardboard (a 6 percent increase from 2006) reducing volume capacity of cardboard waste in landfills.
• 56,287 pounds of electronic waste (a 20 percent increase from 2006) saving approximately 4,938 pounds of potential lead contamination.
• 12,800 pounds of commingled (plastic, aluminum, and glass) materials, saving 24 barrels of oil and 47 cubic yards of landfill space.
• 584 pounds of batteries and ballasts, sparing possible mercury contamination of landfill space and allowing reuse of these materials for production of additional batteries and ballasts.
• 16,080 yards of carpeting, preserving more than 7,075 gallons of oil and freeing up 111 cubic feet of landfill space.

In addition to these recycling efforts, in 2007 Freddie Mac:

• Reduced energy consumption by 1,156,360 kilowatt hours from 2006 (a 2.4 percent reduction), which reduced our carbon emissions by 11,968 tons.
• Implemented two-sided copying default on all copiers, which reduced paper consumption by 1,049 cartons of paper, resulting in a savings of $29,000.
• Used recycled products for the pantry countertops in PHO III and the credenza tops in the renovated conference rooms in PHO I.
• Purchased desk chairs that are made of 62 percent recycled materials. At the end of the chair's useful life, 94 percent of the chair is recyclable.