Rating green businesses

Post Reply New Topic

There are several organizations including the US government that rates businesses in how well they succeed in complying with the attempts to prevent damaging to the environment. This is an attempt to persuade businesses to clean up their operations. This strikes me as a sort of upside down method of approach since there is very little condemnation of businesses that are determinedly dirty and ecologically destructive. It is if the FBI decided to provide a list of the most law abiding citizens to deter crime instead of circulated posters of the ten most wanted criminals.

If so-called "Green" business can deliver their goods and services with overall higher quality and lower prices then they will prevail in the market place. Bottom line: the wallet.

ruveyn

I agree that making these lists is rather pointless, however, I think it would be just as pointless to make them go the other way; what would we do with the information? As long as the majority of consumers don't care all that much, patronizing the good businesses and boycotting the bad ones will only go so far.

What could be done with the information would be for people to use it to guide their investments. They could support the good businesses by buying their stock even if it doesn't perform as well as stock in the bad businesses does; if there were enough people doing this someone might even set up a green mutual fund to pool their money into a block which could not only do that, but consider buying the stock in the bad businesses in the hope of pulling off a hostile takeover, changing the Board of Directors, and turn them into good businesses.

But there is not much hope in that either, is there?

Enough consciousness about dangerous ecological policies might prompt people living where they operate to insist that polluting be prosecuted as it causes serious health problems.

I think NobelCynic is right. For the most part people do not care. Many people are not even conscientious of how they dispose of the waste from a product, much less the waste of the company who produced the product. And when companies are exposed, they just pay a bunch of money and cover their mess with a bunch of dirt and say...see, all better. That is the thing about hazardous waste...hazardous no matter where or how deep it is buried. Outside of rocketing it into outerspace, I cannot see how we can ever escape our own toxins...makes me think of an interesting poem I once read.

Recycle, reuse. For example: The way we make most aluminum cans these days is to melt down old aluminum cans. There energy (per can) involved in recycling is much less than the energy used in processing bauxite ore to make a "virgin" aluminum can. Recycling, in this instance, lowers costs.

ruveyn

Oh, no doubt what you say is correct, and may businsesses are taking a green initiative to cut down on the amount of waste they contribute to landfills. My workplace does this and the greatest hurtle in our recycling efforts is our own people and the fact many simply do not care enought to be personally acountable for what they are throwing in the trash.

Anyway, I got the feeling Sand is more concerned by companies who are polluting our air, streams, and ground water with hazardous waste rather than those who are cutting their own costs by using recycled materials. When I was in my teens, I once saw an orange stream that smelled like rotten eggs and did not have so much as a single crayfish for life in it. I guess people could have stopped the local papermill from dumping into that stream, but what alternatives do we present them for their waste disposal? Pack into metal drums and bury it? Same thing, just takes longer to notice.

The U.S. government is one of the major polluters. The military establishment disregards environmental considerations if they conflict with the Mission.

As to getting people to separate their refuse streams, it is a simple matter to fine citizens who put the hazmats in the garbage or the cans in with the paper. Violations could be noted by the trash/garbage/hazmat pickup operatives and handled by the municipal authorities. Since separation of trash streams is not an overwhelming burden on citizens, a reasonable enforcement system can be set up.

Where I live, people who transgress the refuse separation policy get nasty letters of rebuke from the condominium administration and eventually are sent bills to cover the cost of reshuffling their refuse errors. A few bills soon brings people around to paying attention to their refuse streams. If people put in paint cans or solvents with the paper trash, the pickup people remove them and they are brought to an area where the hazmat can be safely disposed of. It the people who dropped the hazmat can be identified, they are billed. Otherwise all the people in the refuse pickup area have a surcharge tacked on their monthly administrative and maintainance fee. The neighbors soon find out who dunnit and words are exchanged. Problem solved.


ruveyn

No problem solved. The hazmat is properly sorted; now what to do with it. Problem remains.

Obviously you and your associates don't give a damn but lots of people do

Who said I did not give a damn? You may give a damn but lost of people do not. I can gripe all day about the people who put paper, cardboard, and pallets into the dumpsters but I cannot make the people who are doing it care. Besides, even if no one recycled anything, the materials which are able to be recycled still would not be a scratch compared to chemical based industrial pollution. The solvents used to clean the screens of a printing facility cannot be recycled. Is this the type of detriment to the ecology you are trying to discuss here or are you talking about what a business does with its office paper and breakroom trash?

Basically humanity is trashing the planet. If we don't stop we will all die. It is simple as that. Trivializing the problem to waste paper disposal means you have no grasp of the seriousness of the problem.

Perhaps we just have a commuication error, Sand. I feel I am doing no such thing. I was trying to make the point that I see waste paper disposal as the trivial part. I see the whole green initiative as companies trying to give the illusion of being ecologically friendly by pointing to their recycle programs while they are pushing the same amount of unavoidable sludge out the back door. I am no better than anyone else because I buy their products. What does it matter if I recycle my plastic bottles when the company who produces them is poisoining the air with vinyl chloride and tainting the local ground water with dioxins? We currently have over four million pounds of garbage orbiting our planet. Nothing will be done about that either.

And that's precisely why I suggested in the original post that those companies doing the most planetary damage be targeted for public arousal. They are doing far more damage than any group of as*hole terrorists and the government is spending billions on the terrorists and not a hell of a lot about these planetary vandals. People can be made to care.

That may be so in the condominium you are living in, however back when I lived in a condo it wasn't. There were no recycling containers, only dumpsters with bars across the top to keep the bears from salvaging anything eatable.

Where I live now it takes a lot to get the city to pick it up curbside. You need at least a half dozen containers, one for plastic bottles, one for each color glass bottle (brown, green and clear) one for alunminum cans and one for tin cans; and your paper and cardboard need to be tied up into tight little bundles or they will leave it there. I find it easier to take it to the recycling center myself where most people ignore the rules.


And what do you expect the public to do about it once they are aroused?

Last edited by NobelCynic on 20 Sep 2009, 11:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

That is sweet. I kind of feel bad about participating in the grumpy old man jokes, because you often toss out optimistic views of humanity, which I am simply unable to muster. I see people can only be made to care when it directly effects them...such as when they or their loved ones become ill. In the meantime, I can only do with I can personally do so I will continue to have broken pallets pulled from the trash. Maybe I can find out who is throwing them in there and go cut down the tree in their front yard to replace the wood that could have been recycled. That might make them care.