FROM THE FIELD
June 2007
'Green' Light Won't Get Any Greener

When we started this magazine 10 years ago, one of several goals was to make an industry preoccupied with labor costs more aware of energy issues. Given that energy is an expense, and saving energy meant saving money, the topic was obviously a business priority to be dealt with.

The larger "green" topic was less clear as a business proposition. If you talked to somebody about going green, hardcore business types might just write you off as a whacko who didn't understand the profit motive. Sure, some organizations were more forward looking. But for the most part, "sustainable" practices, renewable resources and so on were tough sells. First costs for sustainability back then were often high and hard to rationalize on a payback basis.

But times have changed in just these 10 short years. Public awareness has skyrocketed. Numerous surveys have shown that consumers do care, and a chain restaurant promoting its green initiatives does get positive consideration from customers. A recent survey by MarkeTool confirmed the same for the travel/leisure industry. So green can be a marketing advantage. And as green has become its own industry, knowledge has gone up, and costs have come down. The U.S. Green Business Council has made huge headway, and the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program is high profile. Tax advantages have been created, and information on cost-sensible strategies is spreading. Even the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases qualify as pollutants under the jurisdiction of the Environmental Protection Agency.

And all this consciousness is coming not a moment too soon, and maybe too late. Without stirring up a lot of theoretical debates about how much of the current global warming is or isn't tied to human activity, just look at some basics with your common sense goggles on:

In the past 50 years, the U.S. population has grown by more than 75%.to 301 million. The global population has more than doubled, adding 3.7 billion people, to 6.6 billion total. Did somebody say something about cars and airplanes and fertilizer and fossil-fuel energy production?

"Since 1957, U.S. population has grown by 77%; world population by 227%."

Nah. In the Amazon region we've had people pulling off the nifty one-two of cutting down trees that absorb carbon dioxide to make& charcoal, which then releases& carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Meanwhile, China's Ministry of Resources has announced it will have "serious" water shortages by 2030—this from a country whose current per capita water resources quota is one-quarter the global average. The Chinese Deputy Minister for Construction was quoted saying China has 21% of the world's population and 7% of its fresh water. Other reports vary in specific measurements of the water problems, but staggering percentages of the country's water supplies now are deemed not only unfit for drinking but for human "contact."

Not to focus only on China. Scores of cities around North America are getting into water trouble. And in Phoenix, our gusto for urban real estate development has created what locals call a "heat island," a recent thermal phenomenon that now appears to divert what used to be the area's late-summer seasonal rains.

The examples go on and on. The point is that we need to make fairly drastic changes in how we think and how we build, operate and provide energy to restaurants and everything else. We need to go green because there really isn't any alternative anymore.

If you were waiting for a green light, it isn't going to get any greener.

Brian Ward
Chief Editor