Businesses can do a lot every day to go green

By Rick Dandes
The Daily Item

January 28, 2008 10:12 am

— LEWISBURG — Businesses can do a lot on an everyday basis to go green, suggests Jess Scott, an environmental activist and senior at Bucknell University. Ms. Scott is one of the major organizers of Focus the Nation, a teach-in at Bucknell on Jan. 31 that will feature a Business Expo as one of its many daylong events.
Some of those ways include “looking at some basic things used every day in running a business. Watching the use, for example, of paper products and light bulbs. And learning how to reduce the impacts of these products,” she said.
Other ways to go green include carpooling to and from work, meetings, and lunch; making sure all paper for printing is 100 percent post consumer recycled material; installing a water filtering system rather than a water cooler, which is much more efficient in terms of price and reducing the number of plastic bottles used.
These ideas can work for any size business, Ms. Scott said, “but for larger businesses, educating employees on energy-saving techniques is key. For example, encouraging workers to use actual dishes over the lunch hour rather than paper products is a good idea.
Businesses might also consider bringing in a caterer for the lunch hour to cut down on commutes away from the building. These things not only address your ecological footprint, but also build community in the workplace.
The next step for businesses is actually looking at the things they are selling or manufacturing. Something as simple as packaging can have a huge impact on the environmental footprint of a product. Minimal packaging is always best, and cardboard with non-toxic ink is far preferable to any plastic- and there is recycled cardboard packaging.
Looking at the energy you use to heat your buildings or warehouse space and having someone do an efficiency assessment for your business space is a useful idea as well, particularly with the escalating price of energy.
“The movement to “go green” has not yet “caught on fire with area businesses,” observed Sam Pearson, coordinator of the Local Action Network, a volunteer community group in the Valley.
“But the place that you do see green practices,” she said, “are in the local food movement and sustainable farming in the area.
“Besides the Susquehanna Growers’ Market in Hufnagle Park in Lewisburg every Friday afternoon during the growing season, this coming year there will be 6 different Community Supported Agriculture operations in the five-county area.”
CSAs are all food-producing farms that are committed to providing high quality, low toxin, fresh food, at a good price to local consumers and at a good price to the local environment.
Joe and Jackie Detelj left the New York metropolitan area to relocate to this area and change their once frenetic lifestyles. Mr. Detelj, once a high level corporate executive is now a “green farmer,” and he and his wife are chief stewards of Dreamcatcher Farm.
CSA’s provide an opportunity for appropriately scaled, generally small-by-industrial-standards farms to sustain a market presence.
“Risks are shared, environmentally friendly practices are supported and an essential, more direct connection to the food we eat is promoted,” Mr. Detelj said.
How it works is, Dreamcatcher Farm is a subscription CSA. No member is required to work on the farm as a condition of membership, however, the opportunity exists for those seeking to help with a variety of chores and is welcomed and encouraged. A limited number of working shares are available as a mutually agreed upon basis.
Typically, this is how it works: For an up-front fee, a CSA member receives a weekly box of fresh vegetables. The value of food received over the course of the 22-week growing season will be equal to or greater than a similar purchase through established supermarkets. The emphasis is on variety and quality suitable for taste and health as opposed to characteristics suitable for transportation and storage over long distances.
“We have to start rethinking the way we do business,” Mr. Detelj said. “With the price of energy going sky high, we believe that areas like ours may have to be self-sustaining. Growing our own food is part of that. When gas is $10 a gallon, are truckers going to ship California produce across America’s highways?
“And we’ll produce our own energy,” he added. “I want the option to install solar panels or build wind farms versus buying power from an electric company.”