 Well thank you again Christy for having me and thank you all for being here today. My name is Alejandra and I work for the San Francisco Environment Department as part of the green business program. So I'm going to just tell you all more about the program and I welcome your questions, comments, feel free to type them in the chat as well and I can get to them towards the end. So again thank you for having me and let's begin. There we go. All right. So yeah the green business program. It's a free program that works with small and medium-sized businesses from nearly all sectors to reduce their environmental impact and to reduce chemical exposure. And this is done through achieving a wide range of environmental best practices for the health of our communities and the planet. Businesses also save money and resources in the process which is great and we recognize them for their accomplishments through this program. As of right now and today there are over 400 green businesses recognized in San Francisco and over 4,000 within the network across the state of California. Yeah and so this work is also accomplished by partnering with community-based organizations like Renaissance and N2Action. Some of you may recognize and they have amazing ties to communities in the Bayview and the Fillmore which help us reach more folks. And so within the program one of the areas we look at is energy. As you all know energy can be a huge expense for businesses and homeowners. So switching to LEDs saves businesses a lot of money and are also better for the environment. They reduce pollution and don't contain those same toxic elements that fluorescent bulbs do. So this is a huge thing for a lot of businesses. But also energy consumption may come from other sources like refrigeration. So we look at energy saving strategies that work best for each specific business. And we also have lighting contractors that we partner with that can do free lighting audits and so there are no upfront costs to them. And another area we look at is pollution prevention. And through these measures we help businesses switch to less toxic cleaning products and we recommend products that have been certified as a safer alternative to those that can carry harmful ingredients or that are harmful to human health or ecosystems. For solid waste we help to maximize recycling and composting which in turn also saves businesses money. And as part of the program we give free waste trainings to businesses and their staff in addition to other resources that will help encourage proper waste sorting techniques. And the program also touches on transportation through helping businesses offer commuter benefits for their employees and their staff and through incentivizing, biking, walking and taking other sustainable modes of transportation. And we also work on water conservation to help businesses business owners save water which of course also saves money. And so what we do is we check water fixtures like your kitchen and bathroom sinks as well as your shower heads, toilets and urinals to ensure that each fixture is compliant with the SFPUC's commercial water ordinance. So essentially we'll make sure that the fixtures are not releasing more water than is necessary and if they are we work with you either right there on the spot by applying aerators with restrictive water flows to your faucet or if it's something that's a bigger scope we can refer you to the POC for consultation to receive free fixtures if for replacements if that's necessary. And finally the program's last section is about community and this is done through engaging our community and sharing the good work that we do. We focus on engaging employees, clients and the greater community at large by letting them know that truly we hold sustainability as a core value. As I mentioned the program is free we do offer up to $1,500 to provide funding for green purchases or lighting retrofits if they're necessary. So for example if a business does need to do a lighting retrofit to upgrade to LEDs we can go ahead and do that and provide some funding for that. Within the last two years we've distributed over $35,000 to 60 businesses so on average a business might use about $600 worth of rebates for their certification process and it's important to note that there are three different levels of recognition in the program. So the first one is the efficiency tier which is the entry level tier and here we focus on cost saving and resource saving measures that will help lower your utility bills like your water and your energy and your waste and also to reduce toxic exposure from potentially harmful cleaning products. And then at the middle tier the certified level this is where we help businesses take a deeper dive into their operations to become more sustainable. So some examples at this level could include creating an environmental policy statement for the business and this is essentially a document that outlines the ways that sustainability will be upheld in the business and a lot of businesses like to post this on their websites to kind of show their customers and their clientele you know what they're doing to be more green. More things that at this level are about using more environmentally responsible items and training your staff on proper waste sorting practices things of that sort. And finally at the innovator level at the highest tier the measures here go above and beyond. Here for example we can help businesses purchase 100% renewable energy and you know really these levels are a journey many of our businesses begin at the efficiency level and as time goes on they realize that more can be implemented with our help and they move on to become certified or even innovators. And an example of this is the African-American art and culture complex which I'm sure some of you may recognize. They started at the efficiency level and worked their way up to innovator and so just so you have an idea of like you know the timeline it takes for some businesses it took two months for them to complete the efficiency level and then four months to finish the certified level and then finally an additional two months to complete the innovator level. So I just want to outline the four steps that it takes to becoming a green business and so for the first step you would just start by registering your business online at the website after doing that you would schedule a site visit with the coordinator which should be either myself or one of my colleagues and this site visit just consists of about an hour an hour and a half one time visit to your business where we take a physical walkthrough of this space to really get a feel for what your business's needs are we'll take a look at your lighting at your water fixtures the things that I mentioned previously and then after that you would work with whoever is your coordinator and meet every few weeks it could be either by phone or virtually it doesn't have to be in person so it's flexible and during these meeting sessions you would just give them updates about how it's going if you have any questions send any documentation that's related to the measures and finally after meeting and finishing all of the items on the checklist you would submit any receipts or anything that pertains to receiving a rebate on the screen it says a pre-bate and just so you all know that where we pay for an item upfront versus a rebate is in reimbursement that we give to the business after certification process so we can either pay for things upfront or reimburse the business and that would be the last and final step to just get your money and become recognized and so here we talk about the benefits of becoming a certified green business so at the efficiency level businesses receive cost savings for reimbursements they're promoted on the green business facebook page and they're added to the green business directory and map and that's essentially a map where anyone can just type in a location or their zip code and see all the green businesses that are around them in case they're looking for something specific and so your business will pop up there at the certified level your business receives a certificate signed by mayor linton breed who will receive a green business decal sticker that you can put up front facing and a green business award plaque and the recognition lasts for four years and once those four years are up you can choose to get recertified and then you're good to go for another four years and so here we've just listed a few of the eligible expenses and that you can use your green business funds for so anything that will help you complete a green business measure is considered a qualifying expense so you could use it to get green less toxic cleaning products you could do use it to improve your hVAC you're deducting even getting energy efficiency computers like energy star rated so any of the things that will help you be more sustainable they're a part of the process is considered eligible to receive funding and so finally I just want to emphasize how impactful this work really is we really value every business efforts and you know the collective difference that you all make so I just want to extend the invitation to you all and I really look forward to expanding the green business community by inviting you all to take advantage of the resources that we have to offer I'm always happy to hop on a phone call or answer any of your questions so please I will be sharing my contact information and please feel free to reach out send an email call I love to answer questions and get to to know more about each individual business and so here I've just listed my contact information at the bottom as well as my two colleagues who also work on green business and so you can feel free to reach out to any one of us we're good with responsiveness and so just show us an email or give us a call and I'm happy to answer your questions and come out to the business yeah yeah of course if anyone has any questions or if there's something in the chat that I'm missing just feel free to to blurt it out okay do you want me to read the questions yeah sure okay there's a question from someone what does certification look like for a remote consultant and she has no staff and she's using a home office totally yeah so we actually started by home offices all the time it's not necessarily necessary to have a brick and mortar and so when that's the case that's totally fine as well we can either come to your home but if that's you know a little us and people are like COVID cautious and things like that we can also do virtual site visits and so you just walk around with like a zoom or a FaceTime call and we would essentially do the same thing we would look at your lighting at home you would look at your waste bins set up at home and try to implement those green measures inside of your home which is your working space to try to reduce your resources and save you money at home as well thank you totally um someone else wrote I am interested in learning about carbon credits do you have any recommendations on how to get started and information to learn more absolutely so um actually one of the elective measures on the checklist speaks to carbon credits and there's a whole list of different um entities that you can kind of take a look at to see what they're doing how they're investing their money um where you know those credits are going and so you can really get a feel for what you're supporting um additionally my colleague Kevin here whose email you can see on the screen um he's really familiar with kind of like more of this topic and so you're more than welcome to reach out to him who can provide you a little bit more information but um definitely the green business network um does have options to kind of do some research into looking at the carbon credits and if you want to participate okay thank you I did just put uh your email address and Kevin's email address in the chat totally perfect thank you does anyone else have any questions there is uh oh just a couple thank yous cool thank you all absolutely yeah thank you for having me and um again feel free to reach out um or give me a phone call I can also put my phone number in the chat as well okay um so I'm going to send a follow-up email um to everyone who attended with Alejandra's slides and the recording link if you want to watch it again but um I see a lot of thank yous in the chat thank you thanks for having me Christine okay yeah thank you Alejandra and um happy small business week everyone