Businesses Walk Proud Line Between Environmental Sustainability and Economic Success

Author: Julie Shumway

As the world's leaders contemplate environmental issues in the wake of the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, Vermont's state government is taking an additional step forward. The Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has been working to put the currently popular catch phrase "think global, act local" into action for years. According to Doug Kievit-Kylar of the DEC, efforts to promote environmentally sustainable business practices have been his department's goal for over a decade.
A large portion of Kievit-Kylar's work is overseeing state-sponsored incentive plans, such as the Governor's Award for Environmental Excellence and Pollution Prevention.
The Governor's Award was established in 1993 to encourage individuals and businesses both large and small toward developing a more environmentally and economically sustainable business strategy.
The award has recognized over 100 businesses to date that have worked to reduce or eliminate pollutants and other waste at the source. The goal of the DEC is to encourage not only those businesses that are environmentally friendly, but those that are also economic successes.
Middlebury's Vermont Country Soap received the award six years ago as the result of its commitment to using only natural products, building in ways that minimize the negative environmental impact and advocating social justice.
For owner and president Larry Plesent, the awards program is a nice incentive, but it is only the beginning.
"What we have right now is two great conflicting systems of thought. One system is what we refer to loosely as Eastern thought. This is process thinking. The other great system of thought is what we call Western thought. It's really a 300-year-old experiment in specialization," he explained. To Plesent, the issue at hand is how to blend these two thought processes, one oriented towards the whole community and one more individualistic in nature.
At Vermont Country Soap, the goal is to specialize in a field in such a way as to remain profitable, without losing sight of the overall effects of such a practice. As such, the company relies almost solely on renewable ingredients, trains its employees to work in a respectful manner with each other and has created a new line of products that are better for health and the environment.
While the business is currently working on an expansion of its factory and a new soap museum, Plesent cautioned that "growth for growth's sake is insanity. It's a cancer." In his world view, Plesent sees growth as a necessary part of any business' survival, but intelligent growth as the key to true success economically and environmentally.
Another program promoted by the DEC is the Green Hotels in the Green Mountain State program. This is a statewide version of a national campaign to encourage hotels toward a greater respect for the environment while improving their own "bottom line." In Vermont, the program works to put like-minded businesses in contact with each other. The result is a dialogue in which hotels can offer advice on environmentally sustainable projects they have used.
One of the hotels listed as "green" by the DEC, the Anchorage Inn in South Burlington, was working toward environmental sustainability before the program even developed. According to hotel manager Bob McCarroll, the Anchorage Inn was working on a series of environmentally friendly programs as early as 1985. McCarroll stressed, "A good part of this just makes good business sense." The Inn boasts 13-watt bulbs in diffusing lamps instead of the standard 100-watt bulbs for all of its 24-hour lighting.
Water, a major natural resource, is heated in one tank and then stored in large stone holding cells that provide water for the entire Inn as well as heating for the public spaces.
The Inn has also established the Towel Re-use Program, a common feature of hotels in southwestern states where water is scarce. This program gives guests the option of re-using their towels, rather than turning them in to be washed every day, which wastes large amounts of water as well as increasing the amount of detergent used daily.
In another effort to involve the Inn's guests, McCarroll has set up recycling in each of the rooms, as well as low-flow shower heads. The shower heads use .75 gallons of water per minute, as opposed to standard shower heads which use 3.5 gallons per minute.
These more obvious efforts aside, McCarroll points out that "an awful lot of what we do [here] is invisible to the guest." McCarroll said the Inn does its best to walk the line between environmental sustainability and pleasing the Inn's guests. While the Anchorage Inn's staff work to maintain that balance, it is not always possible to convey this message to the guest.
Even so, McCarroll noted that he feels that it is important for businesses, especially hotels, to look not only at long-term benefits for the environment, but also for the economy, when building and renovating structures.
For more on the Vermont DEC, visit their official Web site at www.anr.state.vt.us.