Energy Treasure Hunt

Small Things Turned Into Treasure

Individuals may believe that they only make a small contribution to conserving resources, but we’ve seen those small contributions add up quickly.

At our Humacao, Puerto Rico, facility, a leaky valve was a small thing. So were the lights left on in unoccupied labs and offices. The same was true of other items identified during an Energy Treasure Hunt, a three-day event that draws on the unique insights of employees to identify day-to-day operational energy efficiency improvements.

The treasure hunts, developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), are designed to identify overlooked energy savings opportunities by bringing together colleagues to demonstrate the impact we can all have on energy conservation and encourage the use of day-to-day observations to find savings that might otherwise elude the experts.

In the case of the Humacao treasure hunt, those small things accumulated into a big impact – a potential 21% reduction in energy use and 2% reduction in water consumption.

“We know energy and we know where to look for the major impacts, but our colleagues on the treasure hunts are in the facilities every day and see the small things that can add up to a big reduction in resource consumption,” says Bill Perhacs of Global Energy Services.

Since the program began at the company in 2014, more than 200 people have taken part in Energy Treasure Hunts at five facilities – Humacao and Manati, Puerto Rico; New Brunswick, New Jersey; Shanghai, China; and Syracuse, New York, with at least two more scheduled in 2016.

“People show a real passion for improving sustainability when you engage them personally and identify innovative ways to reduce consumption,” Bill says. “The proof is in how successful they are. We’ve identified energy savings as high as 21% and water use reductions of as much as 17%.” The treasure hunts contributed to recognition of Bristol-Myers Squibb as a U.S. EPA Energy Star Partner of the Year for the second year in a row.