The 2013 Big Green Commute was a tremendous success! This year, 54 offices (with over 5,000 employees) joined the challenge to commute greener for one week (May 13-17), which was 3x the participation of 2012. Employees rode, scooted, walked, ran and biked their way through the city to compete for the Greenest Commute trophy and DC bragging rights.

After calculating the scores, we did some analysis on the overall impact of the Big Green Commute:

  • Over 26% of the individuals who completed the survey indicated they would consider or will definitely change their commuting habits as a result of the BGC.
  • Over the course of the week, participants combined to travel over 19,000 miles, which is more than 6x the mileage of a US coast to coast trip.
  • Compared to an average US commute, during the week of the BGC, participants collectively saved over 107,000 pounds of carbon dioxide.
  • Here’s a graph which indicates the pounds of carbon dioxide saved by each participating office over the course of the week.

carbon dioxide saved by participant

The BGC culminated with an awards happy hour at Penn Social, where we announced the 2013 top 3 in each category (small, medium, large) and presented trophies to the winners.

Small Office (3-20 employees)

  1. Maurice Walters Architect
  2. Grantmakers for Effective Organizations
  3. Wnuk Spurlock Architecture/NK Architects

Medium Office (21-60 employees)

  1. Community IT Innovators
  2. ZGF Architects
  3. Skidmore Owings and Merrill

Large Office (61+ employees)

  1. RTKL Associates
  2. OTJ Architects
  3. Shalom Baranes Associates

Winners-01 - CopyMore photos from the event are posted on our Facebook page here.  

Congratulations to the winners and thank you to everyone who participated and helped make 2013 the biggest and greenest BGC to date (until 2014)!

If your office participated and would like to know your specific place/score please email us at bgc@zgf.com.

We look forward to next year and hope everyone (and more) will participate again!