Apogee's benchmark environmental footprint audit measured impacts on air, land and water in calendar 2007. Electrical power consumption is the largest component of the air and greenhouse gas emissions/carbon footprint. Regarding land, we were encouraged to learn that we currently recycle more than twice the waste sent to landfill, with glass comprising the majority of recycled material.

We have been reducing the carbon footprint of our manufacturing and office operations, with a key effort being our new Wausau Window and Wall Systems manufacturing facility, which is LEED-Silver certified (click here to read more). Apogee's corporate office moved to a LEED-Gold building in 2010.

Other recent sustainability initiatives include:

• Recycling more of our scrap production materials - primarily glass and aluminum
• Upgrading to higher-efficiency lighting in several facilities
• Equipping our new picture framing glass and acrylic coater with energy-efficient turbo pumps
• Introducing glass sample boxes made from recycled materials, with the thousands of boxes and glass samples provided annually now recyclable as well
• Replacing some wood shipping crates with reusable racks
• Recapturing 100 percent of VOCs recapture, and converting to acid-etch anodizing
• Electronically distributing the annual report to shareholders