Green thumbs

As you may have heard, Jack in the box is on a mission to offset their carbon footprint. As a starting point, I’ve even resurrected my mountain bike of childhood years, which still bears the scars of many embarrassing and painful moments, for a mighty 4km ride to work on Wednesday 15th October – National Ride to Work Day. As the self-nominated researcher for this ‘green’ project, I’ve uncovered some interesting information, resources and companies all taking advantage of this emerging trend. Let me share with you some of the highlights of what I’ve uncovered.

Forward-thinking farmers now have the opportunity to plant trees and other vegetation on unproductive farming land and on-selling this to companies to offset their carbon footprints. CarbonSMART is one innovative company who heads up this scheme, who pays farmers for their contributions and can even provide funding for trees previously planted in the last 20 years.

There’s also a few innovative people who are producing their own electricity via solar energy, then selling that energy back to the power grid to make a dollar or two.

Then there’s builders, architects, and designers finding their differentials in efficient home design and construction. There’s Solar Design architects that maximise the heat from the sun, organisations that produce look-alike wood products from plastic, and even green directories of where to source green building products – visit the Green Building Council of Australia for more information – www.gbca.org.au.

Plus printers and paper suppliers who are producing top quality recycled paper and products – see our recent project for Harley Survey Group in our Gallery for an excellent example of the quality of today’s recycled materials. Gone are the days of the flecked, lumpy, brown-looking
recycled paper!

The famed ‘ Green Pages‘ is also an organisation that saw a hole in the market and grabbed hold of it – leaving people like Sensis (aka the White and Yellow pages) back in the dark ages.

Then there’s the hundreds of online companies that offer to calculate your carbon footprint, either for free or for a small fee, and then present opportunities to purchase carbon credits to off-set that footprint. Carbon Neutral , for example, has linked with Men of the Trees to fund planting projects all over Western Australia via businesses and individuals wanting to offset their footprints.

Like these businesses, we’ve seen plenty of ‘green’ opportunities in our local area and want to encourage the whole local business community to be involved. We have some exciting ‘team green’ activities in planning that will hopefully set an example and create a more aware and environmentally responsible society (at least locally anyway). So watch this space!