Seven Massachusetts companies ranging from a global financial-services powerhouse to a startup Berkshire County drug manufacturer have been named winners of the third annual Associated Industries of Massachusetts (AIM) Sustainability Award. The award recognizes excellence in environmental stewardship, promotion of social well-being and contributions to economic prosperity.

AIM announced today that State Street Corporation and Eversource of Boston; Analog Devices of Wilmington; Fallon Health of Worcester; Sanderson MacLeod Inc. of Palmer; Berkshire Sterile Manufacturing of Lee; and Twin Rivers Technologies of Quincy were selected from among several dozen nominations. The seven companies will be honored at a series of regional celebrations throughout Massachusetts during September, October and November.

“These companies set the standard for sustainably managing their financial, social and environmental resources in a manner that ensures responsible, long-term success,” said AIM President and Chief Executive Officer Richard C. Lord.

“Sustainability guarantees that the success of employers benefits our communities, our commonwealth and our fellow citizens. We congratulate our honorees and all the worthy companies that were nominated.”

Sustainability has gained widespread acceptance in recent years as global corporations such as Wal-Mart, General Electric and IBM make it part of their business and financial models.

The seven honorees were selected by a committee that included members of the AIM Sustainability Roundtable, along with experts Wayne Bates PhD., PE, Principal Engineer for Tighe & Bond, Inc.; Matt Gardner, Managing Partner Sustainserv; and Cristina Mendoza, Solutions Design Lead for Capaccio Environmental.

AIM initiated the Sustainability Roundtable in 2011 to provide employers the opportunity to exchange sustainability best practices and hear from experts in the field. That opportunity has attracted hundreds of participants ranging from companies such as Bose, Coca-Cola, Boston Beer, Ocean Spray and Analogic to smaller businesses such as RH White and Precision Engineering.

Here are summaries of each recipient, along with the date and location of the celebration when each will receive the award.

State Street Corporation | September 27 | 100 High Street Amenity Center | Boston

Financial-services giant State Street Corporation is proving that sustainability encompasses operational elements ranging from environmental stewardship to management of human capital.

State Street in 2015 launched The Boston Workforce Investment Network, a four-year program to strengthen Boston’s future work force by advancing job readiness for youth. As the signature program of the State Street Foundation, the company has committed $20 million over the four years to five high-performing Boston area nonprofit organizations that focus on education and work force development.

The Boston WINs initiative brings together the private, public and nonprofit sectors toward a common goal: creating meaningful career paths for Boston youth. The program is unique both in its size and scope ” State Street has committed to it across many facets of its work. State Street Foundation has pledged major support both directly and via a matching gift incentive, and the State Street Corporation is working to hire WINs candidates into permanent and internship roles. In addition, the Coordinated Action component strengthens working relationships between the WINs partners and the schools in which they work, ensuring better sharing of data.

Over the course of the program, partners will scale their reach by 60 percent so that more Boston youth will receive services that prepare them for college and career success. Since program launch in June 2015, partners have collectively served 53 percent  more youth.

State Street also launched Coordinated Action a means for partners and 26 Boston public high schools to work together to prepare students for college and workforce readiness. State Street has committed to hiring 1,000 aspiring professionals as part of the initiative.

Eversource| September 27 | 100 High Street Amenity Center | Boston

The largest electric utility in New England has launched a broad-based initiative to ensure the sustainability of its work force through a commitment to diversity and inclusion (D&I).

Eversource CEO Jim Judge joined more than 350 other CEOs in signing the CEO Action for Diversity and Inclusion pledge. The CEO Action for Diversity and Inclusion is the largest CEO-driven business commitment to advance D&I in the workplace.

Eversource’s D&I Corporate Council, state teams, and Business Resource Groups (BRGs) are comprised of employees based in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire who serve as change agents and champions of D&I.

Plans are in place to launch two new Business Resource Groups in 2018: a Young Professionals BRG, an LGBQT BRG; and one in 2019: a Differently Abled BRG. Currently, nearly 1,000 employees across all three states are involved in Eversource state councils and BRGs and the company continues to evolve and expand these groups.

Eversource says it wants to build the next-generation energy work force, “one with diverse, highly skilled, and qualified employees capable of delivering on the responsibility to meet customers’ evolving energy needs.”  Eversource has developed a three-year diversity and inclusion plan, which incorporates initiatives and metrics to improve our overall D&I results, and by pledging to take on specific D&I actions.

Analog Devices| October 4 | The Riverwalk | Lawrence

Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI) in Wilmington occupies a campus composed of six buildings housing offices, semiconductor manufacturing space, labs for R&D, and a central utility plant.

The company in 2015 initiated a major efficiency effort that has been implemented by cross-functional teams of operators, engineers, and managers, with the intent to eliminate wasteful activities and update older equipment.  To date, the effort has yielded more than $1 million of annual savings in electricity costs and a 19 percent spending reduction on chemicals supporting manufacturing operations, significantly reducing ADI’s impact on the environment.

The Wilmington facility has reduced its electricity consumption by 34 percent and its water usage by 18 percent, based on data normalized to production output (i.e. the resources required to create one unit of product).  ADI also reduced usage of two solvents by 60 percent in this same timeframe.

ADI says it had to convince itself as a company to think beyond what solutions worked in the past and focus on creating the future.

“Some changes ” especially those related to solvent usage – affected areas or processes that were thought to be too complex or simply untouchable, others affected areas that didn’t appear would have much of an impact, until the measured effects proved otherwise,” the company says.

Specific projects completed during 2017 include:

• Replacing dozens of vacuum pumps and chillers with more energy efficient models for semiconductor processing equipment. This saves over 3.4 million kilowatt hours per year.
• Lowering the idle power or temperature on reactors and furnaces between runs, which saves over 1.2 million kWHs per year.
• Reviewing our manufacturing facility’s exhaust configuration and optimizing the exhaust flow in many areas, resulting in 1.4 million kWHs saved per year.
• Across the site, reducing nighttime lighting in low & no traffic areas as well as completing 75% of LED replacement for parking lot lighting (remaining 25% to be completed in 2018).
• Consolidating the number of tools running two kinds of solvents and reducing the change-out frequency, effectively reducing usage of those solvents by over 60%.
• Combining and reducing the frequency of trans-Pacific shipments reduced our usage of packing materials and generation of transportation-related pollution.

ADI recently announced that the Wilmington campus would become its new global headquarters, which entails constructing two new LEED-certified buildings. These buildings will incorporate cutting-edge energy-efficiency technology, solar panels to support energy usage, and new collaboration and social areas that will draw the best and brightest employees for years to come.

Fallon Health| October 11 | Mechanics Hall | Worcester

Fallon Health uses grants and community/employee engagement to address barriers that affect the health and well-being of under-served communities. By addressing some of the most basic barriers, such as transportation, education, housing and access to food, the health plan can identify the underlying root causes of poor health outcomes.

The commitment to hunger relief extends throughout Fallon Health.  Employees throughout the organization are encouraged to volunteer in the community”and are provided eight hours of paid work time to do so. Employees volunteered 6,428 hours of their time in 2017.

Over the last 12 years, Fallon has distributed $1.8 million to hundreds of hunger-relief programs and helped 726,000 individuals throughout the state who are food insecure. Those efforts help to prevent avoidable health-related expenditures because food insecurity leads to more doctor visits, hospital stays, emergency room treatment, prescription medication and home health care.

Indirect costs associated with hunger weaken the state’s economic health through lost work time, low productivity and premature death.

Each year, Fallon’s Senior Leadership team kicks off the new year by going directly into the community to understand the barriers at street level. They volunteer their time by preparing and serving community meals for children and their families at a local Boys & Girls Club.

The company believes in helping people access food where they live and learn. Employees built or renovated food pantries at the Boys & Girls Club and the South Worcester Neighborhood Improvement Center in Worcester (SWNIC). During the holidays, Fallon supports families with personalized and bountiful holiday meal kits in addition to new toys and much-needed clothing. Employee donation and corporate giving in 2017 for the holiday program totaled more than $17,000.

Fallon is also working on an innovative, sustainable solution modeled after the “Open Door Pantry” in Gloucester and the “Food is Medicine” approach in Lowell.  The company has partnered with the Lowell Community Health Center (LCHC), Mill City Grows and the Merrimack Valley Food Bank (MVFB) to lay the groundwork for a food pantry to be housed in the MVFB. Fallon solidified its commitment with a $50,000 donation to the project.

Sanderson MacLeod| October 18 | Wistariahurst Museum | Holyoke

Many manufacturing companies have adopted continuous improvement initiatives, but few small employers have adopted them as comprehensively as Sanderson MacLeod, a maker of twisted wire brushes based in Palmer.

The company initiated a continuous improvement effort while establishing a LEAN culture under which employee teams identified waste.  Sanderson-MacLeod says involving the work force in improving the company created a rewarding experience.

“Our teams include employees from various positions. We encourage everyone to share their ideas ” what the problem is and their thoughts on how to go about researching the issue and finding a solution to it.  When we first started the process, we mentioned “LEAN” multiple times a day ��_ now it is hardly mentioned as it is just a part of who we are.  It is in our culture; our employees are always looking for a way to improve our processes,” the company says.

Adopting LEAN culture is a big challenge for small companies – many start the LEAN journey and then stop after a few weeks or months.  The process requires a culture shift that is supported throughout the entire organization.

Sanderson-MacLeod says the move to LEAN manufacturing has made the company measurably more efficient, producing more parts in a shorter amount of time. On-time shipping metrics improved, and lead times decreased. The result ” the company has brought in additional business based upon its ability to produce quality parts delivered on time.

Employment has increase 23 percent since the process began.

Berkshire Sterile Manufacturing, Inc.| October 25 | Hotel on North | Pittsfield

What if you could create a sustainable, sterile drug manufacturing facility from the ground up?

Chances are that it would look a lot like Berkshire Sterile Manufacturing, a three-year-old startup that specializes in manufacturing small-scale injectable drugs for clinical trials with an isolator that ups the quality of the clean-room product.

Berkshire Sterile describes itself as a state-of-the-art fill/finish contract manufacturer providing formulation and sterile filling as well as analytical development and stability services to the biotech and pharmaceutical industries. All sterile filling operations at BSM are performed utilizing isolator-based technology.

BSM also offers terminal steam sterilization of syringes, specialty filling and lyophilization of vials and syringes including dual chamber liquid/liquid and liquid/lyo configurations.

It’s an operation that is generating significant economic growth in the Berkshires.

The company has hired more than 80 professional positions in the past 3.5 years.  More than 10 of those employees have purchased houses in the area.  Clients come from all over the US and overseas to visit the facility, bringing a lot of business to local hotels and restaurants

BSM worked with several suppliers of pharmaceutical manufacturing equipment to design and produce an isolator-based manufacturing line that could produce sterile injectable drug products in vials, syringes and cartridges. A flexible design of the system allows multiple drug container types to be filled in the same manufacturing line.  The drugs that BSM produces are primarily new drugs in development and clinical trials to treat various therapeutic areas including cancer, osteoarthritis, cardiac diseases and pediatric orphan diseases.

The use of isolator technology not only provides better assurance of drug sterility, it reduces requirements for large volumes of heating, cooling and dehumidification/humidification required for traditional cleanroom environments. The technology also reduces the requirements for sterile gowning and testing reducing trash and consuming fewer valuable resources.

Twin Rivers Technologies Manufacturing Corporation| November 1 | Easton Country Club | Easton

Twin Rivers Technologies, one of the largest Oleochemical producers in North America, executed two projects – a Combined Heat and Power/Heat Recovery Steam Generation (CHP/HRSG) facility and Regenerative Thermal Oxidizers – that created measurable benefit for the environment while underscoring the company’s significant role in the community.

The Combined Heat and Power (CHP) facility utilizes natural gas and incorporates Heat Recovery Steam Generation (HRSG) to generate high pressure steam for the manufacturing operations, as well as providing a significant portion of the electricity needed.  The direct benefit of the project is an increase in steam capacity and therefore production capability, as well as improved reliability for heat and electrical utilities.

The indirect benefits of the CHP/HRSG project have been just as impressive.  First, the installation helped reduce the company’s reliance on heavy fuels like #6 and #2 oils. This helped to reduce the overall emissions of the facility by decreasing volatile organic compounds, Nitrous Oxide, carbon monoxide, particulate matter and other pollutants released to the atmosphere.  The facility is reliable and can operate without interruption if power goes out, preventing costly shutdown/startup operations where raw material, fuel, electric and manpower losses significantly affect the viability of any business.

The Regenerative Thermal Oxidizers replaced a packed-bed water scrubber that had been installed in 1998 and proved to be an ineffective odor-control device.  The direct benefits of the project were the reduction of odors from the facility that impact the surrounding community and the savings of water used to supply the former odor control unit.