
My grandmother loved catching us doing something good. She would smile, give us a big hug and thank us for seeing something positive that could be done for someone else. It could be picking up a piece of litter, simply playing nicely with each other or running inside to get help for a baby bird that had fallen from its nest.
We celebrate this spirit each day at Hickory Chair. We call it EDGE (Employees Dedicated to Growth and Excellence). It is our journey of environmental stewardship and continuous improvement. We set internal goals and celebrate when we reach them (notice the circus tent!). We celebrate recycling and repurposing efforts. We love celebrating when we have designed the waste from the product itself so that there is nothing to be recycled or repurposed. We celebrate safety, quality and other valuable goals. 
We set a goal to become EFEC (Effecting Furniture's Environmental Culture) registered by the American Home Furnishings Alliance (AFHA) and reached it in 2008. We entered the contest for the first SAGE Award that was co-sponsored by the AHFA and Cargill. We won not because of making the greenest product but because of a company-wide culture of doing the right thing... conserving materials and time, recycling and repurposing, and other efforts to control waste and the associated costs. In 2010 we earned Sustainable By Design (SBD) registration also from the AHFA. When a drought hit in 2010 we encouraged our employees to conserve water... let us know when a sink or water fountain had a trip or a toilet that ran. Once everyone knew it was important and worked together, we reduced our water useage by 50%!
With the rising cost of energy, we asked our team to help us reduce our need for power. We began by turning off lights when we left our office or work station for meetings or breaks and this lead to turning off computers at night, not printing pages if they were not essential and other acts. Our maintenance department replaced bulbs with energy saving styles along with new ballasts. They installed heat reflective roofing in areas ready to be replaced. The company then signed up for the program that would allow our power company, Duke Energy, to cut our power if a shortage occured due to cold or hot weather. These countless acts of wise use of resources were noticed. Hickory Chair was chosen as a 2010 Power Partner along with The Kroger Company - Cincinnati, Ohio; Greater Clark County Schools - Clark County, Indiana; Fabri-Kal - Greenville, South Carolina, Techtronic Industries - Anderson, South Carolina, the Charlotte Mecklenburg School System - Charlotte, North Carolina, DataChambers/Salem Business Park - Winston Salem, North Carolina; Davidson College - Davidson, North Carolina Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center - Winston Salem, North Carolina and Wells Fargo / Wachovia Bank - Charlotte, North Carolina.
On May 2nd, Hickory Chair had planned a picnic lunch for all 450 employees to celebrate a 100% safety record for the year. Duke Energy contacted us about presenting Hickory Chair's employees with the 2010 Power Partner Award. In addition, the AHFA had completed the hand carved award for the SAGE Award. We invited both organizations to join us for our celebratory lunch. We are proud that for 100 years we have worked hard to do the right thing making heirloom quality furniture in a safe environment for our talented artisans and craftsmen while conserving raw materials, energy and other wasteful factors. we are proud that over 87% of our products are made by these artisans and craftsmen in Hickory, North Carolina. We were caught doing the right thing. We intend to be caught again in the future!