It's not easy being 'green'

Plain Black takes a lot of steps to try and be as “Green” as possible in a world where there's all too much waste. JT mentions a lot of the things we offer in his Black Blog and it should come as no surpise that many of our employees take advantage of the green initiatives that we offer. I thought I'd take a quick minute to relate how this affected my household.

I live a pretty average life. Wife and 2.3 kids (with the .3 coming from the dog and 2 cats we have as well). We've always tried to do our part to conserve where possible. In the past we've recycled and bought some energy efficient bulbs, but that was pretty much the extent of our “being green”. Since Plain Black has started offering some initiatives to it's employees we've tried to take further steps and we're really starting to see a difference. First we're using renewable energy through a program that our local power company offers. If the neighbors wouldn't go bonkers we'd look seriously at taking that a step further and having some way to generate power on our own. But it's still a step in the right direction. We've also started a garden this year. It's already producing so we're enjoying fresh vegetables and berries. It's not going to make us rich, but we do save some money at the grocery store because of it. We've also started composting. Many of our table scraps and yard waste are going to be great fertilizer for the garden. Small changes I know, but the small changes we've made here have resulted in one of the biggest noticeable differences and that's trips to the curb on garbage day. We've gone from 2 barrels of trash a week to 1 barrel of trash a week. There's even times when the 1 barrel is hardly full. For a family of 4, I think we're making some great strides. If we can continue to take the small steps then I think we'll eventually be doing the type of recycling that I believe everyone should do.

I'm not trying to preach “being green”, well maybe I am, but my point is simply that you don't need to take the giant leap from doing nothing to having your house rebuilt with recycled glass. It's the small steps we take every day that can have some of the biggest impact.