Green business: March 2008 Archives

Quick look around your office.

Is everyone wearing green? Are you wearing green?

I think it's great how when there is a holiday that is associated with a color that lots of people in the office wear that color to be festive at work. I know that's why I pulled on my green sweater this morning. (And because I got laughed at for not wearing green to the St. Patrick's Day parade this weekend.)

There aren't a ton of people in my department in green, but looking across other departments, people are wearing green beads or shamrock pins and other quirky Irish accessories.

What's the most festive outfit that you've seen at work today? Leave a comment and let me know.

Getting fed up with modern life, going home and starting a farm is hardly something new. John Wayne's character went home to farm in 1952's "The Quiet Man." (My shameless plug for a great Irish movie on this St. Patrick's Day)

But what might be odd today is the number of people doing it.

St. Patrick’s Day is tomorrow, and you’d have to be living under a rock not to know it, what with all the festivities surrounding the parade and bar specials that have been advertised.

You wouldn’t know by my last name, but I am in fact Irish — thanks Mom — and I love getting my Irish on as much as the next person.

However, I’ve always been a little bit curious about the symbolic, maybe a little over the top, green beer.

Yes, green is associated with the holiday, but unless I’m eating veggies, I don’t really think green food or drinks are the way to go.

But still, I was a little bit curious about where green beer comes from.

According to the new perspective from a Catholic leader on the subject of confessing sins, environmental degradation is an evil of the modern world. Churchgoers would need to confess it. Don't believe me? Here it is.

What happened to the green movement? When did it transform from being all about conservation to being all about consumerism?

Going green is about cutting back --spending less money and wasting fewer resources and in the process leaving less of a carbon footprint.

Today's green movement doesn't conserve at all. It throws away and buys more.

Now that it's hip, trendy and mainstream to be "green," the grassroots movement is getting farther and farther away from it's original cause.

This article in the Washington Post says it best.

That's the bottom line, isn't it? So here are a few tips to really save money on your daily drive, without the caveats of saving the planet that can actually cost you money in the end.

It's just cold economics.

And interestingly enough, the main tip to take away from this: Having a little beater car for the commute can save hundreds of dollars - and hundreds of gallons of fuel - per year. You don't need a Prius to save gas, and you end up helping the planet by default.

So maybe what we need to see on the long road south to Baltimore every morning is a string of cars that looks more like our old high school parking lots than the Detroit auto show circa 2015.