SUSTAINABILITY OFFICERS:

Showing How Water Matters for World Environment Day

Feature Company: Highmark, Inc.

Sustainability Coordinator/Representative: Phyllis Barber

Employees: 20,500

Individuals impacted: 4.7 million customers

Notable sustainability projects:

A roof on Highmark's Fifth Avenue Place building in downtown Pittsburgh boasts a 22,000-square-foot green roof that contains some 25,000 plants. This green approach to roofing helps Highmark to reduce storm water run-off and manage building temperatures, which ultimately lowers energy costs and doubles the life of the roof.

Highmark operates a Silver LEED certified Data Center near Hershey, Pa. The Data Center, which provides computing infrastructure for the company, opened in November 2005 and was built using environmentally friendly attributes. These features include storm water management, erosion and sedimentation control, optimized energy performance, water recycling and more. For our efforts, Highmark was recently named the Top Green IT company by Computerworld magazine.

Highmark provides its members with the option of receiving EOBs and newsletters through online e-delivery. Members can view their EOBs online and receive newsletters electronically, saving paper resources as well as postage costs. For members who opt to receive EOBs through the mail, Highmark prints content on both sides of the paper

Highmark has a 87,000-square-foot silver LEED certified Data Center near Hershey, Pa. During facility construction, waste management techniques, such as recycling and reuse of materials were implemented to allow for a 67 percent reduction in landfill waste. The Data Center also includes a 100,000-gallon water tank built underneath the facility. The tank collects rainwater that runs off the roof and uses the water to cool the building. Natural light is used in 93 percent of occupied areas of the building.

Highmark implements strategies throughout its facilities to reduce energy consumption. In 2008, Highmark’s energy conservation efforts such as the installation of energy-efficient lighting and the reduction of lighting and heating and air conditioning usage resulted in an average 5.6 percent decrease in energy consumption for the company and a savings of some $329,000 in energy costs.

By eliminating one page of paper from each of the more than 23 million Explanation of Benefits sent to our members each year, Highmark is saving approximately 82,000 pounds of paper, 1,060 trees and enough energy to power 13 homes and enough greenhouse gases to remove 22 cars from the road.

All Highmark campuses work on a printer consolidation system that allows for the minimum number of office printers in each location to ensure the appropriate use of energy and paper resources. All Highmark printers and copiers are set on mandatory double-sided printing, which saves some 14.5 million pages of paper a year or approximately 1,700 trees.

Pittsburgh's Sustainability Officers: Connecting regionally to contribute globally