EnergySmart Home Energy Assessment + Xcel WindSource + Waste Reduction

As a resident and small business owner in Lafayette, our family's effort to become more sustainable is an ongoing process, but also an area of great pride. We know there's always more we could do, but by sharing our successes and challenges, we've found we can engage others in the conversation and help improve our collective thinking and development of creative solutions. Here are some of the areas we're most excited about from the last year and where we hope to go next:

Home Sustainability

• Enrolled in Xcel Energy's Windsource program to offset our power consumption with 100% renewable energy.
• Completed a home energy assessment through Boulder County's residential EnergySmart program to identify potential areas for improvement.
• Although our neighborhood HOA is not currently enrolled in the City of Lafayette's 3-Cart Pay-As-You-Throw (PAYT) program, we were able to get our waste hauler, Waste Connections, to run a pilot composting program from April-October.
• Use of Eco-Cycle's CHaRM facility for a variety of hard-to-recycle materials.
• Use of TerraCycle Zero Waste Box programs for hard-to-recycle plastic packaging not accepted by Eco-Cycle's CHaRM facility.
• Bringing reusable/durable containers with us when eating out at Lafayette restaurants.
• FUTURE: Researching options for residential solar and electric vehicles

Business Sustainability
Our business, The Happy Beast, is a pet food and supplies store and we recently celebrated our 5th anniversary in Lafayette. As a tenant (rather than building owner), we somewhat limited in the building-related sustainability upgrades we can make, but we've still engaged in a variety of areas that can be replicated by other businesses:

• Participate in Lafayette's Green Business Program – The Happy Beast has been a gold-certified green business since 2015, which includes a number of efforts in 2019 that we're proud about:
  • Stopped using printed receipts in favor of emailed receipts
  • Stopped offering single-use shopping bags in favor of reused boxes or reusable shopping bags
  • Offset 100% of our electricity use with Xcel Energy’s Windsource program
  • Continued to expand our partnership with Eco-cycle and Terracycle in responsibly disposing of our customers’ plastic pet food packaging.
  • Significantly expanded our bulk food and treat options, including The Beast Feast, our own line of dehydrated treats for cats and dogs.
  • Started working with the City of Lafayette and Boulder County to implement dog waste composting at The Great Bark Dog Park.
  • You can read more about our sustainability efforts on our blog at https://www.thehappybeast.com/blog/category/sustainability/
  • FUTURE: Researching options for on-site composting and continued evolution of packaging materials to compostable and reusable options.