Question: What results have you realized from environmental sustainability measures you’ve put in place?
Sherri Barry
Owner and CEO
Arizona Fashion Source, LLC DBA The Fashioneer
Sector: Fashion
The Fashioneer was created as a sustainable, technology-driven alternative to traditional apparel manufacturing. This alternative allows fashion brands to create fashion in way that is most considerate of humanity and the environment, reducing the environmental impact wherever possible. Substantial technology investments were made to create this sustainable solution. These include a digital, roll-to-roll fabric printer, which employs zero water waste; computer-aided design and resource planning software; and an automated cutter.
This technology allows us to take the brand’s personalized print, engineer it into their patterns, create a 3D rendering (no physical samples required); print on demand; auto cut the printed pattern; sew, pack and ship the brand’s order direct to their customer.
These investments to create a sustainable business model has resulted in attracting exciting new clients, created the ability to personalize and customize products, provided new revenue streams, reduced waste, reduced costs, garnered media attention, and nurtured our corporate culture of environmental responsibility.
The struggles of manufacturing her own fashion brand sustainably and profitably ignited Sherri Barry’s passion for creating a better, 21st century resource — a place where digitally native designers and brands can create, sell and manufacture. In 2021, Barry launched The Fashioneer so designers and brands could utilize state-of-the-art technology to design, print, cut, sew and ship on demand.
Dr. Tricia Loscher
Assistant Museum Director – Collections, Exhibitions, and Research
Scottsdale’s Museum of the West
Sector: Arts
Scottsdale’s Museum of the West is dedicated to telling stories of the Western Spirit to “illuminate the past to enlighten the future.” We tell stories of the past and bridge to today and the future, and a great story of today’s West can be seen in our sustainable building that houses the museum’s various always-rotating collections.
The building is LEED® Gold certified and has exciting “green” features that reduce energy consumption by 38% and water savings by 40% — two immensely important aspects of any business today based in the West.
Key features include our outdoor sculpture courtyard’s “weeping wall,” which collects rainwater from the roof and 100% of the condensation from the HVAC system and redistributes the water via a bioswale to our low-water-use landscaping. The building has self-shading features such as the concrete ribbing on the museum’s façade that mimics the ribs of the saguaro cactus and provides “passive” vertical shade cross the building’s exterior. Our building is a true work of art!
Tricia Loscher, Ph.D., is assistant museum director of Collections, Exhibitions and Research at Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West. She has been the museum’s chief curator since 2014. She earned her doctorate in art history with a minor in Latin American art at University of Arizona.
Jack Nagy
President
MTA360
Sector: Marketing
Out of necessity, we became a virtual company during the pandemic and strategically made the decision to remain that way, which is delivering significant sustainability benefits. We have 100-plus team members — from creatives and graphic designers to digital marketing experts and client services professionals — across the nation working from their homes in three different time zones. We effectively leverage today’s collaboration technology, including Zoom (video, messaging and phone), Dropbox and Google drive-based library for digital assets to meet the Google SEO needs of our thousand-plus home improvement/HVAC clients nationwide.
Key sustainability benefits of this move include the fact that our associates aren’t driving to work, reducing fuel consumption, and we aren’t using energy to run office spaces. We have progressive programs in place, too, for our associates whereby MTA360 pays for all their in-home office equipment, as well as Wi-Fi and other services our associates use from their home office to do their jobs. We even send our team members and clients group lunches to foster the camaraderie that formerly took place in our offices.
Jack Nagy is president of MTA360, a leading digital marketing agency and a virtual company that used to have its headquarters office in Scottsdale and additional offices in Jacksonville and Tampa Bay, Florida; and Buffalo, New York. A pioneer in the social media marketing industry, Nagy has more than four decades of experience in the industry, and is a leader in digital marketing, training and advertising.
