The Country Club of Darien is the first private club in Connecticut to achieve the prestigious Turquoise level in the stringent Vivid Leaf assessment, which covers over 290 sustainability criteria. The Country Club of Darien also qualified as one of the Top 25 greenest clubs in the U.S. on the Vivid Leaf dashboard, providing exceptional membership experiences while being a good steward of the environment for generations to come. As of May 2024, The Country Club of Darien has established itself as a statewide leader and is well underway to becoming a U.S. national leader in sustainability.
Vivid Leaf’s all-encompassing certification is comprised of 4 levels: Beryl (community sustainability leadership recognition), Turquoise (state leadership), Jade (national leadership) and Sapphire (worldwide sustainability leader). Vivid Leaf is the industry’s most comprehensive and broad sustainability certification and real-time dashboard, considering all the following aspects of becoming a fully self-sustained organization:
• conservation of natural resources, such as water, healthy ecosystems, native plants and animals
• energy consumption
• CO2 emissions
• reduction or elimination of pollution and waste
• proper recycling
• preservation of flora and fauna for future generations
• Air pollution
• Usage reduction of pesticides, fertillizers, and elimination of environmentally unsafe products for cleaning, painting, etc.
Driven by a cloud-based mindshare platform, in which clubs from all over the world share what worked well for them in terms of money-saving initiatives reducing energy, water, cleaning supplies, fertilizers, and pesticide usage, the Vivid Leaf real-time dashboard provides The Country Club of Darien with a continuous progress report on their journey to sustainability. It prioritizes potential new sustainability initiatives by environmental and financial impact and alerts the club to increasing resource usage (e.g., a defective pump or A/C unit). The dashboard also allows automatic achievement postings to social media sites and the club’s website to share innovative and successful sustainability initiatives with their members and the community.
“The Country Club of Darien is committed to providing its members with an unrivaled experience of world-class amenities, combined with large areas of preserved nature and wildlife. We will continue to strive to further reduce the environmental impact of our operations, while constantly improving our membership experience,” says Billy Panagiotopoulos, General Manager and COO of The Country Club of Darien.
Dan Bumgardner, CCD President added; “Our thanks go out to Vivid Leaf for this recognition and to the entire CCD team for its efforts on this important initiative. To be clear, we remain committed to ongoing improvement across the entire set of sustainability opportunities”.
“The Country Club of Darien’s commitment to preserving our ecosystem while providing a world-class membership experience demonstrates innovation, vision, and leadership. We were thrilled to learn that continuous improvement in terms of their environmental practices is not only driven by their management but also supported by their board and the membership as a whole,” says Till von Ruexleben, COO at Vivid Leaf.
Contact information:
General Manager l Chief Operating Officer of The Country Club of Darien can be reached at: bpanagiotopoulos@ccdarien.org
Till von Ruexleben, COO and Founder of Vivid Leaf can be reached at till@v-sw.com