2011 sustainability champion awards: state program celebrates business, government and nonprofit efforts to conserve energy, reduce waste and promote recycling.

To be a true champion of sustainability, you need to do more than replace your old light bulbs with compact fluorescents. Do you know how much energy you use? How much waste are you recycling? How much power are your computers draining from the grid when you're not using them?

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The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and the Colorado Environmental Partnership have partnered with Connected Organizations for a Responsible Economy (CORE) and ColoradoBiz to present the awards.

A team of judges from the state of Colorado and CORE selected the winners from dozens of entries. They examined how each team met criteria for the environment, economy, innovation, society and education. The profiles on these pages offer a snapshot of how the winners and finalists addressed those issues.

Rodwin Architecture/Skycastle Homes

Finalist, small category (Less than 50 employees)

Rodwin Architecture and its construction and sustainability consulting arm, Skycastle Homes, provides a comprehensive approach to green building, which has helped the company defy the building slump of the last couple of years, its founder says.

"Sustainability has been a key principle of the architecture firm since I started it in 1999," Scott Rodwin said. "It has really helped us from a business perspective ride out this recession. We found that the one sector of the design and construction economy that is still active has been the sustainable design portion."

Focusing on sustainable design has helped the firm reclaim the "master builder" concept that architects have struggled to maintain as engineers, builders and specialists take over responsibilities once handled by architects, Rodwin said.

"It means we have greater responsibility. We have to become experts in a wide range of things," Rodwin said. "We saw that as an opportunity, which we eagerly pursued. It's been very exciting to say that we really take responsibility for the entire delivery of the project, from the design to the energy to the construction of the project to even the testing of the project. That gives us the opportunity to improve the quality of what is delivered and the integrity of the initial design."

In Boulder County, energy-saving measures that might be an ideal rather than a requirement elsewhere have been written into the building code.

"Here in Boulder County, if you're building a 4,000-square-foot house, you need to hit a HERS (Home Energy Ratings System) of 50, which is 50 percent less energy than a conventional code-compliant house. That's not easy," Rodwin said. "To do that you to have to have a high degree of integrity from beginning to end in the project in order to not lose that particular parameter in the design and engineering of the house."

Environment: Rodwin/Skycastle's Edge House project, which introduced Boulder's first legal gray water system, was named Green Home of the Year by the Home Builders Association of Metro Denver in 2009 and won a first place award in the residential category in the Colorado Sustainable Design Awards (sponsored by ColoradoBiz). One example from the Edge House project: Diverting 91 percent of the material that came from deconstructing the existing structure from the landfill.

Economy: Rodwin/Skycastle grew from five to nine employees between 2008 and 2010 and likely will grow additionally this year, the company said. The company also has hired dozens of contractors to work on projects.

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Society: One of the company's projects, Columbine Elementary School, reduced its peak energy demand 42 percent below code for a new school through energy modeling and sustainable design.

Innovation: Rodwin/Skycastle has pioneered several technologies, including a ground source heat pump drilling technique for alluvial fields and an insulation system.

Education: The company has taught nearly 1,000 code officials, architects, engineers, builders, construction material providers, home owners, energy specialists and Realtors its "Green Building 101" course.

Aircraft Service international Group

Finalist, small category

Aircraft Service International Group operates and maintains the fueling system at Denver International Airport, a 27-mile system of underground piping that delivers more than 410 million gallons of fuel annually to the DIA concourses.

ASIG also is responsible for six above-ground jet fuel tanks at the airport. The system is capable of pumping 1,000 gallons of jet fuel per minute.

Environment: ASIG participated in an energy-savings project at the airport that included construction of a solar array next to the DIA fuel farm. The company later installed variable frequency drives on 12 hydrant system pump motors. The solar array project is expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 6,100 tons of carbon dioxide, the company says. To date, the array has generated nearly 2.4 million kilowatts of power.

ASIG...