Tech Go Green recently turned one year old! It’s been quite the adventure for the team and me. I wish I could say that I understand how the world works now, but the truth is I’m just at the start. Since I haven’t had the time to reflect over the year myself, I figured I would entertain the rest of you at the same time by sharing some of my experiences and goals for the next year.
First off, the city council meeting is one of the most intimidating places I’ve ever been to. It’s aired on that channel that you need to flip past to get to video 1. From the formal setting and strict structure of the meeting, it was enough to make my bones shake. Then walking to the podium and then stumbling through my 3 minute speech was impossible. If you watch the video recording on the Manhattan Beach website, you’ll feel nervous from just watching me. But in the end, the city council was very friendly and supportive.
Our organization is in print! We were given the opportunity to write an article for the green issue of the Torrance Magazine. Pick one up at the Torrance chamber for free. Thanks to everyone who helped with the article.
I’ve always loved meeting people. But this one time is definitely for the books. It was at the farmers market in Manhattan Beach, and we were an exhibitor with a booth. One of the items at our booth was bookmarks made from seed-paper. One very young lady (probably 4 years old?) walked back to me after I had given her a bookmark earlier and asked me what a bookmark was. So I gave it my best shot and explained how it is placed between the pages in a book to mark where you left off. Seconds later I heard her explain it to her sister exactly word for word as I had. How cute is that!
Those are just a few of the many experiences I’ve had along my journey. However, let us move on to our future goals for Tech Go Green.
Our most recent project is to create a Green Business Certification Program in our local city of Torrance. With current green trends, one of the most interesting changes is the city’s growing role in going green. States and cities have been sprouting across the nation with green business recognition programs. Reason being, many businesses are going green because they are doing it for the right reasons. Although PR and advertising is a strong motivation, most small businesses are in it because it is the right thing to do rather than an investment. For that reason, acknowledging going green is often left to the already busy city. Although there is LEED, it is costly and only applicable to those that can afford it. In many cases when the city is not already filing the need, non profits have taken on this role: coordinating between the city and the community. For these reasons, we have engaged this specific need in our city of Torrance. Our goal is to make this a strong enough program where we can replicate it in neighboring cities such as Manhattan Beach and possibly Orange County. Much of the program is based off the successful program in the Bay Area. So far we have created the website and worked out an application for Offices and Retail as a pilot. Here is the website so far:
You can also visit it at http://www.torrancegreenbusiness.org
If you are a business interested in this program, please pledge your company and you will be first in line once the program is official.
We hope to continue our Sustainable Business Consulting program for businesses for the coming year as well. With our experience with past projects, this program is the perfect complement to the green business certification program.
Our goal is to become the outreach and support for the community to going green. I will try my best to document our progress because it’s going to be quite the challenge. Wish us luck!
