EPA air standards & Williamson county

Driving into work this morning on my insanely long commute really pinched this morning because of a story i heard on NPR - Apparently Williamson county is one of 345 counties in the US that is now above the new smog limit that's just been set by the EPA.

Besides the obvious (dirty air = yuck!), what bothers me about it all is this:

"The EPA's new smog limit is 75 parts per billion of ozone... The EPA's independent science advisory panel unanimously had said the standard should be no higher than 70 parts per billion...

Industry groups, which had said before the announcement that the limit shouldn't be lowered at all, said they were disappointed with the decision.

The new standard "could have a devastating effect on manufacturing employment," said John Engler, chief of the National Association of Manufacturers. "

ARGH!!!!!!! If you are doing something that is hurting/killing people, then you either need to stop or find another, non-lethal way! Good god! They're "disappointed"?!?!?!?!?!

Well, I'm disappointed that little kids in big cities have asthma at an alarmingly disproportionate rate! I'm disappointed that when i use a sponge to clean off my window sills or outdoor furniture, there's black nastiness that reminds me of what's in my LUNGS (read some more about air quality and health here). I know that Nashville isn't the Bronx, but if I remember correctly from my Geology class back in the day, Nashville is ituated in a 'geographic bowl', where, due to the topography, pollutants get trapped and sort of settle over the city. So there are air quality concerns here that are on my mind. But Industry is disappointed, so let's not get ahead of ourselves...

How very un-green my relatively green job is

Happy post-Turkey day to you all! I must say that I am very thankful for many things, including being in control of my own bowel movements, the luxury of being able to travel to see family, and the game of football. Anyhow, here's my belated offering from last week that, in a haze of sugar and pigskin, I didn't post :)


Most of you know my many and varied feelings about my Day Job, and this isn't exactly the forum to discuss it, but a week or so ago, an email came through the pipeline that seemed relevant to this discussion.

-----Original Message-----
...
Sent: Fri 11/16/2007 1:27 PM
Subject: It's easy being green...

I know that with all of our busy schedules, thinking about what we can do for the environment isn't exactly top of mind. But did you know that by reducing power consumption and monitoring paper usage we can help save money - and the planet?

* 10,000 sheets of paper are used by a single office worker every year and 95% of it is thrown away without being recycled. Businesses that actively manage their printing infrastructures can reduce their overall cost of printing by up to 30%.
* Companies can save 40% to 80% of their energy costs simply by adopting conservation practices like making sure lights are turned off when not in use. Something as simple as making sure you turn off your monitor at night and shutting down your computer completely will really add up if everyone participates.

Please look for ways to save electricity and paper over the next year - it really can make a difference.

Thanks,

Now, I should be happy about this, right? Well, yes, in a sense I am. I appreciate that someone other than me is saying something about this. Since I started work there last November, I have desperately tried to reduce the amount of paper I use. It was just getting ridiculous, printing out every step of the processing for sending out an e-mail. Still, though, we are required to print 3-5 sheets of paper for every eBlast we process, and that's just for the client I work on. I've noticed that, for other clients, there's even more paper. And this is just for e-mail. This is to say nothing of the junk mail they print and mail from the back warehouse.

I don't know much about the environmental impact associated with the energy & resources used for electronic file storage, but at first glance it seems that storing all of these files electronically, on an external jump drive or something, would HAVE to be less impactful than printing out the documentation! Yes, like with my Prius, there is an environmental cost to the production of the microchips, and to the energy supply needed to run the electronics.
However, we can't assume that business will simply stop. So can't we use the reusable microchips to store our documentation? I am sure that the answer lies in the fact that it is "more expensive" to store the data electronically. Which touches back on the idea of economies of scope - the cost of the paper appears less than the cost of the microchips, even though ultimately we are paying a huge price that isn't readily quantifiable.

I asked if we couldn't do all of the documentation electronically, but was told that there still had to be paper documentation of some sort. ::sigh::

So that's my two cents on the first "*". On the second "*", I began to recognize that this person was appealing to people's sense of "cost". But in reality, people don't understand that energy cost as being borne by THEM! They see the Giant Corporation as bearing the "cost," and this has no real impact on their paychecks or their consciouses.

I think that this person's email would have been much more effective had s/he appealed to the employee's sense of morality.

Stakeholder vs. Stockholder - why I'm enamoured with the idea of a B-corporation

Here, at last, is the third corner on the Triumvirate of Why I Keep Leaning Toward Being Green... okay, I'm not fooling anyone, that slogan's never going to catch on, but it did have some nice alliteration and I really like the word triumvirate... anyway, the point is that I keep thinking about the tension between Stockholders and Stakeholders.

I started thinking about this idea because back in May of this year, I heard a story on APM's Marketplace about B Corporations. This guy, Jay Cohen Gilbert, and his non-profit B-Lab, started a movement called B (standing for "Benefit") Corporations. The idea behind setting up a company as a B Corporation is that the corporate governing documents set it up from the outset so that the business is "purpose-driven and create benefit for all stakeholders, not just shareholders." Back in May, their site was only their logo, but now they've got a full site up and running - check it out for the nitty-gritty details.

When I heard this story, I got to thinking about stakeholders. I'm a stakeholder in a whole slew of things in which I'm not directly financially invested. For instance, I have a big interest in the way The Big Giant Evil Corporation for which I work runs things on a macro and micro scale, but i don't own a big chunk of stock in it so my opinions don't count for much if at all. BGEC is accountable to the people who hold the purse-strings, stockholders who are expecting it to grow their investment. But even though I don't have a big money-covered dog in the fight, I do have my scrappy little this-is-8-hours-of-my-day-and-my-mortgage payment dog in the fight. The thing is, public corporations traditionally don't let that scrappy little one in the ring.

But B Corporations do. The governing documents set the corporation up to survive the marketplace and still do good things for stakeholders - employees big and small, employees' families, the environment, the community, etc., etc.

Sure, you can start out with good intentions and a small little company, running it exactly how you'd like - like how it started here - but then when you're "successful," and BGEC buys you (because everyone has their price), things can change rapidly. Suddenly, instead of being a company that actually cares about an employees's well-being, that thinks about how to make the best partnership possible between employee and employer, it is a BGEC - it's a Wal-Mart or a ConAgra. It's best for the bottom line if the employee is faceless. It looks the best on paper when costs are displaced. Outsource to China, where you only pay $3 a day; cut your ingredients with melamine; use rBGH to make your cows keep making milk. You make your stockholders a whole ton of money, but you make the Chinese factory workers lie to keep their jobs, you make a bunch of well-loved pets ill or dead, you make a bunch of cows do something their bodies aren't supposed to do... and you make consumers complicit in these choices.

So all of these stakeholders - factory workers halfway around the world, pets, cows, the groundwater, consumers, anyone who breathes, kids who are still developing their brains, family farms, government entitlement programs, your body's hormone balance - they are all affected. But that doesn't show up in the BGEC's bottom-line dollar-amount. We're back to the problem of the tragedy of the commons - there's no one owner of the oceans, of the air... so it's not in anyone's dollar-amount interest to steward it.

Phew.

That was pretty intense. Like re-living "SuperSize Me," "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price," and "Fat Land" all at once!

What I mean by bringing up all of that - and there are plenty of instances of "big bag business" picking on the "little innocent guy" - is not to bad-mouth big business. I really think that people who have great ideas and a super-natural workethic (Sam Walton, for instance) should be rewarded with financial success. Financial success allows a person to have more choices - and, I think that that's the carrot I'm chasing - the ability to choose how I spend my days. The more financially success I achieve, the more I have the luxury of choosing from a wider variety of ways to spend my time on earth.

But I don't want my choices to take away choice from someone else!

We're back again to my central goal in trying to "be green" - to try to not be so greedy. I would like to think that society has evolved beyond an animalistic scramble for amassing resources. Yes, resources are limited. But they are abundant, too! If we make respectful, thoughtful choices, lots of people can share in them and be sustained by them!

Yeah, these are all grandiose ideas. I feel silly, sometimes, thinking about them. But my ultimate goal is to be a happy soul on this planet, and I think that thinking about my choices can increase my chances of being happy. So here we are, faithful readers. I've got a lot of different choices to think about, so you'll be hearing a lot more from me. I hope I'll be hearing from you!

All Kermit references aside - being green in Nashville isn't exactly pie.

This first post to livegreennashville, I suppose, ought to give you readers some sort of box to put me in, or at least a little idea of the why/how of me writing this.

My senior year at Vandy, the powers that be (the oh-so-beloved "Science & the World" requirement) led me to take a class called Oil & Water in the 21st Century.

Now, degree requirements being what they are... ever-changeable in their minutae but constant in their arbitrariness... I approached this class with the main goal of doing as little work as possible without damaging my GPA.

However, that class was one of the few experiences I had as an undergrad that has continued to inform my life and captivate my day-to-day thoughts currently.

The main "macro" idea that I took away from that class was that of The Tragedy of the Commons. It has provided a solid underpinning to my thoughts on being "a citizen of the planet" and "green" and "granola"... and lots of those cheesy epithets that I don't like to label myself with.

Anyhow, I guess what it comes down to is an effort to not be selfish, or gluttonous, or rude. And having a giant carbon footprint ultimately just seems sort of presumptuous and arrogant.

Hence, I'm trying, in little ways, mind you, to be a little bit greener in Nashville.

When I started looking for resources to help me, I didn't find much. Either I'm not looking in the right places or there's just nothing there... but I hope that this blog will ultimately provide a resource for anyone wishing to get a little greener here in Music City.

If you've got any suggestions/comments/calls for revolution you'd like to send my way, don't hesitate! I'd love to hear about how other people are finding ways and means to lower their carbon footprint in the city and surrounding areas.