• Skiing in Aspen

    Going Green, Not Always So Easy (A perspective from the Aspen Skiing Co.)

    Stories of corporations going green are everywhere. Companies are hiring “sustainability” managers, making large reductions in GHG emissions (despite only a few policy incentives), and publicizing their sustainability profiles in their quarterly financial reports.

    While this is great news if we are really heading towards a paradigm shift from business as usual to a more sustainable model, getting there isn’t always very easy. In a Business Week article titled “Little Green Lies“, a former Rocky Mountain Institute employee who now works at Aspen Skiing Co. explains the struggles of going green.

    From the story:

    “Environmental stewardship has become a centerpiece of corporate image-crafting. General Electric (GE ) says it is spending nearly all of its multimillion-dollar corporate advertising budget on “Ecomagination,” its collection of environmentally friendly products, even though they make up only 8% of the conglomerate’s sales. Yahoo! (YHOO ) and Google (GOOG ) have proclaimed that by 2008 their offices and computer centers will become “carbon neutral.” Fueling the public relations frenzy is the notion that preserving the climate is better than cost-effective. But Schendler, who only a few years ago considered himself a leading proponent of this theory, now offers a searing refutation of the belief that green corporate practices beget green of the pecuniary variety.”

    “His former mentor [Amory] Lovins says Schendler could find further cost-saving energy efficiencies with more support from his superiors. But this mind-set, Schendler warns, could influence companies to pursue exclusively projects with quick payoffs: “The idea that green is fun, it’s easy, and it’s profitable is dangerous. This is hard work. It’s messy. It’s not always profitable. And companies have to get off the mark and start actually doing stuff.”

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