Vermont Environmental Consortium

July 3, 2007
"Green Makeover" Shows Vermont Principles at Their Best
by
Daniel Hecht

This week’s column offers a personal perspective on a major project spearheaded by my organization, Vermont Environmental Consortium. VEC instigated it, around fifteen organizations helped to make it happen, and if you’re a Vermont business person, you’re about to receive the end result in the mail.

“The Green Makeover: A Video Guide to Greening Up Your Business” is a 37-minute documentary that shows businesses how to save money by putting in place energy efficiency measures and other environmentally-friendly business practices. It’s styled after the popular TV makeover shows: Lots of technical pointers and good advice set in a reality-based, entertaining format with some risqué humor and general absurdity tossed in.

The basic message: “Make more money. Save the planet. What’s not to like?” That is, being energy-smart cuts expenses and improves profits. In business, green is the new black – that is, to stay solvent in the future, go green now. Plus, it’s hip.

As Al Gore explained in An Inconvenient Truth, a Pacala-Socolow stabilization wedge is a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, shown on a graph as a narrow, near-horizontal triangle. Widening with time, it deflects downward the line of atmospheric heat accumulation. If Vermont businesses act on the tips shown in our film, we’ll have introduced our own razor-thin but spreading wedge -- benefits bequeathed to a future that could use a few breaks.

Originally, I had expected only to raise funds, assemble the advisory team and priority technical points, and hand things off to production professionals who could turn these elements into a film. Due to the whimsy of circumstance, however, I ended up scripting the video, directing it, and appearing in it. Also serving as contract manager for the retrofits at Johnson Woolens, budget manager, promoter . . . My first film production experience. Many of the learning curves I took were more side to side than up, you might say, sometimes threatening to throw the whole thing right off the rails.

Still, it was a blast.

We wanted to convey a cultural message along with the technical and financial ones, to overcome preconceptions resulting from the historical dissonance between “environmentalism” and business. Early on, environmentalists’ foremost concern was, and sometimes must still be, an effort to STOP activities that may make money but damage the environment: polluting the water, cutting the last redwoods, spraying DDT. In the minds of many, pro-environment meant anti-business.

Then, when the government began acting to clean up pollution or control resource extraction, business felt acutely the heavy hand of regulation and enforcement. “Environmentalism” came to be associated with expensive compliance efforts or disruption of established ways of doing business.

Increasingly, though, economic and environmental benefit can be seen as convergent, and in Vermont we’re fortunate to have many public agencies and nonprofit organizations that help businesses get greener and more profitable.

The film’s introduction makes the point with a humorous contrast: Three cold, suspicious G-man types in black suits get into a car as the voice-over talks darkly about environmental compliance audits. That scene comes to a screeching halt when we meet the actual staff of our assistance organizations, the friendly, personable “green makeover” team.

The team then tours the rambling JWM facility from top to bottom, pointing out opportunities for improvement. Peter Crawford, of the Vt. Small Business Development Center, Logan Brown of Efficiency Vermont, Chad Cliburn of the Vt. Dept. of Environmental Conservation, and Jon Haehnel of Foam-Tech checked out lights, furnaces, insulation, packaging, waste management, paper products, everything.

Act Two shows retrofits and repairs at Johnson Woolens as well as visits to four other businesses which have already gone green and are saving substantial sums as a result. Finally, as any good film must, this one ends with terrific out-takes. We caught Sen. Leahy belly-laughing with Jim Lampman of Lake Champlain Chocolates, Sen. Sanders joking with the film crew, Rusty DeWees improvising in absolutely hilarious form, and Willem Lange deriding his own performance.

Noting this impressive cast – which should include Jon Gailmor, who wrote and performed the positively contagious theme song – brings me to the most rewarding dimension of my film-making experience: the way so many Vermonters gave time, expertise, and money to make it happen.

Two U.S. senators, who probably have a few other items on their schedules, carved out time to appear in our little flick. A professional actor, a popular musician, and a well-known author/commentator donated their talent. Busy CEOs made time for interviews and let us run amok in their facilities. Technical experts from a dozen organizations volunteered their time and know-how.

As for money: We needed plenty of it to fund production, pay for retrofits, and duplicate and mail DVDs to 3,800 Vermont business people.

Invariably, our public agencies and nonprofit organizations stepped up. People like Rob Ide of the Dept. of Public Service, Ellen Kahler of Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, Bill Noyes of the Vt. Dept. of Economic Development, Beth Sachs of Efficiency Vermont, and Peter Crawford of the Vt. Small Business Development Center (the true steadfast hero of this project, who, contrary to my kidding, doesn’t really steal clothing off store shelves) and others instantly understood the project’s purpose and pitched right in.

This widespread willingness to join such a partnership effort – interagency, public sector and private sector, for profit and non-profit organizations, people famous and obscure – inspires me. It shows an egalitarian, collaborative spirit that just may be Vermont’s most valuable asset in facing the challenges of energy supply and global warming.

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“The Green Makeover” will be mailed free to 3,800 Vermont businesses on July 6. To request a DVD, contact VEC at vec@norwich.edu or (802) 485-2455. Free distribution of the video has been paid for by generous sponsorships from Lightspeed Publishing, Middlebury College, Trust Company of Vermont, Efficiency Vermont, Vermont Dept. of Public Service, and Vermont Dept. of Economic Development.

Daniel Hecht is a novelist and executive director of Vermont Environmental Consortium. For more information on any Green Grapevine topic, contact vec@norwich.edu.

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