No posty in a long time! Well, hopefully this is worth the wait.
David and I have been scheming up some ways to deliver some quick info in tasty little chunks and video seems like the best way to do it. This first video might be a little rough around the edges but, that’s why it’s introductory… throw some ideas and suggestions our way and rest assured that our ears will perk.
Just a little writeup about the recent “Green Enterprise Conference” in Satsop at which GHP’s own David Quigg spoke and moderated a panel. Take a looksie! Link after jump.
Most of the time with Daily World bits like this though, I would normally just Tweet and leave it at that. Trudging through the normal newspapery writing throughout, it actually wasn’t until the end when I stumbled upon a sentence that made my mind consider a fairly hefty concept:
If we can do it right here, and if we can sharpen our saw and build our relationship here, we’re going to be able to grow our regional green economy… and then it won’t be any job at all for anybody else to duplicate it.
Lisa Smith – Executive director of Olympia-based Enterprise for Equity
Through the peppering of pronouns and adverbs, there is a huge idea there that makes incredible sense and then it dawned on me: if nothing else, this could be a huge first step for any region to discover their “greener” economy. This is the concept I gather:
“Going green means finding what the area can do best with what it has and do that better than anyone else can.”
Mind you, this is my take so, if anyone can read it differently, let me know.
It seems like industry has always made room for this idea in some sense: there’s no reason to force trees to grow in a desert or plant wheat in the mountains, it’s just not efficient or [gulp] profitable. Now, though, we have shifted our concerns and are trying to find ways to do business without taking more than is necessary. The stakeholders in the same equations are broadening: considerations for our fellow community members have now expanded to those that we will never see but are affected in some way by our decisions… thousands of miles away and many generations forward.
So, in an effort to trim down that lengthy quote and wrap up what was just a moment of my pondering, I offer this up as another way to look at the same concept:
Love where you live.
Bonus: Googled “love where you live” before I typed it out here to make sure it wasn’t a song or movie or some catchphrase but I found this little video. I quite like it as a broad idea before it becomes a BBC ad.
Link: Daily World: Daylong conference examines “going green” movement
Don’t worry: it’s in a good way!
I’m astounded.
And from the sound of it, even people at Grays Harbor Paper are surprised by the numbers in the recent carbon assessment from Carbon Solutions Northwest.
Let’s start with some points of reference. These were all taken from the EDF’s PaperCalculator, BTW:
These numbers cover all sorts of things including the use of gas fired dryers, paper decomposition, processing, pulping, etc. Surprisingly, they never seem to drop THAT much in the “nearing zero” sense that we would all love to see. This can be attributed to the energy intensive processes used in the manufacture of all paper. Don’t think that virgin paper has this close of a margin on recycled content though! This is just CO2 equiv…. recycled content automatically means less raw material which is good any way you look at it.
Now comes the Harbor 100 number: 650 lbs. of CO2/ton of paper
Yeah… crazy! There’s a noticeable drop THERE and this is attributed to the unique methods of directing tackling energy hungry processes like electricity and heat generation differently.
Ughhh… sounding PR-y. (You don’t know how much I hate press releases… sorry David!) Seriously though; biomass which is wood waste in most processes was the key to making such a low impact product: producing carbon neutral electrical energy and steam/heat on site automatically fills in the most energy intensive and carbon laden processes. The margin is so huge… I don’t even know what to say so I’ll let the numbers speak for themselves.
Note: So, this is just icing on the cake: Carbon Solutions also has a figure before the carbon neutral electrical energy is taken into account. This number would better represent the CO2 output when just the manufacturing process is considered: 1545 lbs. of CO2/ton.
Impressive.
Link: The real press release pdf
This just keeps going! That last post about how energy is becoming more and more of a priority for businesses; well, it just keeps coming up. This time from the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA) [I assume because people saying NWEEA "neweeeeahhh" would get annoying. Personally, I can't think "Northwest" and not type NW]. A little insight into how other places like Kenworth are making their own strides in this area. So big!
I’m impressed with how quickly the issue of energy is being discussed in the manufacturing industry. Probably because these environments are huge consumers of energy and, when you begin to consider the value that smart energy usage has on not only your bottom line but on reducing wasteful consumption, it just makes sense to incorporate it in a business and manufacturing infrastructure.
Our own John Begley and Eli Recondo get a little screen time on this one so be sure to give it a watch!
Grays Harbor Paper just got a little “virtual fist-bump” from MarketShift Strategies out of Portland. Some great mention of how important the energy generation at GHP has become at the mill. I mean, it’s a big deal since, as the post mentions, paper production is “the second most energy intensive industry group in the manufacturing sector.”
What I’m digging is the fact that it’s a blog post that mentions us right next to Google. (!!!) I mean… it’s pretty obvious that Google has some muscle to flex in the renewable energy department so, it’s kind of an honor.
What I’m not digging is the lack of a comment system. Where’s the love, MarketShift!?
Wild West of Energy from Off The Grid Blog
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