Clean Air Campaign honors businesses, people

It is possible for buildings and businesses to improve air quality, insist officials at the Clean Air Campaign. This week the campaign honored some that do.

Winners of the campaign’s annual Pace awards included managers who encourage teleworking, office buildings with easy vanpool parking and near transit stations, and a green commuting evangelist who the campaign says signed up enough vanpoolers and transit riders to eliminate 1.02 tons of pollution.

A handful of the winners and their efforts, according to the campaign:

• Andy Smith: Signed up 30 vanpoolers, convinced his company, Rollins Inc., to offer discounted MARTA passes and pre-tax payroll deductions for vanpoolers and transit riders. The campaign claims that just in 2008, Smith’s efforts will eliminate 1.02 tons of pollution, reduce hundreds of thousands of vehicle miles traveled and save the riders about $40,000 in commute costs.

• Solvay Pharmaceuticals, Inc.: Offers sports tickets, movie passes and gift cards to support green commuter employees. One in three teleworks, does flextime, carpools or bikes to work.

• Richard Wittschiebe Hand: Located near a transit station, and offers $52.50 per month to employees who use a clean commute. Helped employees purchase rain barrels at wholesale.

• VeenendallCave, Inc.: Located near a transit hub, offers transit and vanpool subsidies and cash incentives for buying a fuel-efficient car.

• Hines Interests Limited Partnership: One Atlantic Center, a building managed by Hines, offers preferential carpool and vanpool parking, Zipcar access and biking. A tenant breakfast they hosted pitched the benefits of teleworking.

• Cox Enterprises: Cox, which owns the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, plans to reduce its environmental footprint by 20 percent by 2017. In Atlanta, 400 employees are eligible for a vehicle allowance, and the higher the car’s mileage, the more Cox contributes.