Sodexo – Katie Schindall – 2009

Goals

Katie Schindall spent her summer as a Climate Corps fellow at Sodexo, the leading provider of integrated food and facilities management services in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, serving 10 million customers in 6,000 locations every day. Schindall, a MBA student at Yale, collected baseline data to identify how two of Sodexo’s buildings currently use energy and identified opportunities for greater energy efficiency.

Solutions

She investigated and recommended office building energy efficiency projects related to lighting, office equipment, heating and cooling, water and IT management. Her analysis illuminated two key areas in which centralized policies could create significant energy efficiencies across Sodexo’s North American operations: enabling power management settings on desktop computers and ensuring Energy Star equipment purchasing.

Potential Impact

Projects identified by Schindall could save the company approximately $200,000 and 1.7 million kWh annually, while avoiding 554 metric tons of CO2 emissions. Her recommendations will be included in the rollout of sustainability best practices across the organization.