MEREDITH’S SUSTAINABILITY EFFORTS AT HQ AND IN THE FIELD

Examples of sustainability successes from Meredith's most recent (and impressively extensive) sustainability progress report. Use the QR code to see the entire document for yourself (https://www.meredith.com/about-us/social-responsibility):

• Across the company, Meredith set printers to default to double-sided printing. In the first year of this policy, the company reduced its paper usage by close to 900,000 sheets of paper, the equivalent of 107 trees. Additionally, all Meredith printers use recycled toner.

• Between July 2018 and June 2019, Meredith's reusable mug programme in the Des Moines (Iowa) offices kept a total of 39,000 disposable cups and 7,000 disposable lids out of the landfill and saved the company $3,764.40.

• To decrease Meredith's energy use at one of its Des Moines offices, the building was designed with large windows to harvest daylight, and a dimming system to reduce electric lighting based on the available foot candles of natural light.

• By making efforts over the past several years to reduce energy consumption — such as converting to LED lighting and improving the HVAC system — Meredith has saved more than 215,000 kilowatt hours of energy and an average of almost US$12,000 a year. At the end of 2016, Meredith had also earned more than US$120,000 in incentives by making these energy-efficient upgrades.

• In 2016, Meredith's IT department partnered with the Sustainability Task Force to analyse historical data on use of video-conferencing tools and its effect on company travel. The data suggests that, when employees are given access to Webex tools and trained on how to use Webex's internal and external video communication programs, employees' use of, and satisfaction with, the video-conferencing programs increases, while travel and associated costs decrease. As a result, Meredith began ramping up Webex use and committed to reducing travel across the company. For example, Meredith's National Media Group conducts quarterly town hall meetings that are broadcast live to all locations, rather than held individually at each office.

• At broadcast station WALA in Moble, Alabama and Pensacola, Florida, all lighting is LED or fluorescent, and the incandescent light kits previously used by WALA's photographers have been replaced with LED kits. Both of these adjustments save power, eliminate the replacement of lamps and produce almost no heat.

• At stations KCTV and KSMO in Kansas City, the team added variable frequency drives (VFDs) to studio air handlers, providing significant energy savings on both studios' cooling. The VFD upgrade also included a control system in which operators can set up cooling schedules for different areas of the building, increasing efficiency in the overall control system.

• By installing low-flow shower heads at one of the company's Des Moines offices, the company saves an estimated 159,400 gallons of water per year. Another water conservation project involved setting up a meter with the local water utility to credit Meredith for water that was used as irrigation instead of going into the storm sewer. It saved US$12,800 per year.

• In 2018, each Local Media Group station's engineering staff was trained to input water bills into the Portfolio Manager. During this input process, a leak was found at a Local Media Group broadcast station that saved almost $20,000.

• At Station WSMV in Nashville, as part of the editorial department relocation and redesign, the company maximised its use of lowconsumption plumbing fixtures, minimising water usage.

• WSMV also replaced its five-gallon water coolers with a filtered water system, saving S$4,500 each year on plastic jugs.