How green is your business?

    I must confess: I am becoming increasingly fixated by Al Gore: Why didn’t we elect him way back when? How might things be different if we had? I do remember “hanging chads” and all that business: more popular votes and not enough electoral ones: a topic for another occasion.     I just bought “True Green at Work.” And, Mr. Gore’s “Our Choice: How We Can Solve the Climate Crisis” didn’t come in the mail today, but it has a tracking number. Mr. Gore is worrying me. There are those folks who think it’s all a bunch of hooey. There just seems to me to be more evidence than we can ignore. How far can we stick our heads in the sand (polluted red tide sand at that)? I just don’t believe it’s all a conspiracy to make us spend money on “greening, and conservancy.” Really, do you think the polar bears are being paid to look destitute and ice-homeless?
    I got the Ken Burns National Parks book this fall: majestic, amazing, and depressing. Are we doing everything we can? Between fits of Chicken Little — the sky is falling — paralysis, I am hearing an increasingly large voice on my shoulder to do better, to be a more responsible steward for our children. I am also pleased to report, albeit a bit frightened, the Caribou School System is indeed talking to our children about recycling! On occasion this fall, a smallish person has been notifying me of a variety of things, “the milk jug is recyclable Momma” etc. So, I continue unplugging all the appliances, turning off the lights, and saving change to bring my children to zoos to see the polar bears someday.
    As you think about not just economic development, but also ways to be more conservative, and cost effective in your small businesses, it is true. There is money to be made, jobs to be created, and monies to save every day by trying to “be green.” Jobs we might even create here in Northern Maine. Yes, I’m still stumping for “potato farming” to be one of our two indigenous resources to map with Mobilize Maine.
    Simultaneously, shouldn’t we consider what each of us can do in our existing businesses every day? Economist Sir Nicholas Stern reported in his 2006 report to the British Government that 1 percent of the global gross domestic product needs to be invested to mitigate the effects of climate change, but the failure to do so risks the global GDP being 20 percent lower that it would be otherwise. Without action, from every last one of us, together, the cost to everyone will include the housing 200 million environmental refugees (displaced by rising sea levels and desertification).
    Since it’s the time of the year where we hope snowgoers are beginning to think of us, and our trails, it occurs to me this could be a pleasant side effect of an otherwise dismally depressing reality: environmental refugees. I haven’t checked the maps yet to see if we’ll be a destination spot, but it occurs to me. There’s a way to get them to stay: we can keep being decadent carbon users, and when it all falls apart, they’ll have to come live here with us. Oh, oh, oh my goodness … I hear groaning.
    The “True Green at Work” book includes, on the first page: Coffee! Did you know coffee is the world’s second most valuable legal commodity behind oil? Buy fair trade coffee! Use a mug. One mug is reportedly associated with 30 times less solid waste and 60 times less air pollution than the equivalent consumption of said necessary legal liquid in paper or foam cups. Not only are you saving money not spent on paper goods, you’re can also make a statement. The one I’m coveting at the moment is black and green and says, “Don’t make me call the flying monkeys.”
    Did you know you can calculate your own business carbon footprint? Yes, at www.ghgprotocol.com, Greenhouse Gas Protocol, an initiative of the World Business Counsel for Sustainable Development, you can track not just your business, but your suppliers, and the use of your products! Calculate your footprint, and then you’ll know where you need to go to become carbon neutral! Or how about being “in the red even?” Who knew there would be a time when being at a deficit could be desirable and sought after!
    Mr. Gore wrote a children’s version of “Our Choice.” While O’Brien ribbed him on Late Night about it not being the stuff of bedtime stories, his rational that it is the young people, our young people, who will be poised to chose careers which may well bring about the solutions we need to save the climate crisis — seemed like a good answer to me. We must change our attitudes; perhaps we need our young people to prod those of us shivering and complaining about “global warming” being absolute hooey into being active participants in our shared solution! “True Green” seems like a great book with lots of practical applications. Stop in, we’ll loan it to you! In the meantime, don’t forget the hand sanitizer, and take care!
    Wendy Landes, MPA, is the executive director of the Caribou Chamber of Commerce & Industry. She can be reached in person at 24 Sweden Street, Suite 101; by telephone at 498-6156 or via e-mail at wlandes@cariboumaine.net.