News/Blog
Visit this section of our website often as we will keep you up to date on current issues and articles that have an an immediate and/or future environmental impact on you, your region, your state and your world! It’s your planet, so stay informed!
Some recent environmental topics making the news:
2010 Outstanding Green Business Award
2010 Outstanding Green Business Award Application
The Chamber of Commerce ‘Green and Clean’ Committee will be awarding local companies with the 2010 Outstanding Green Business Award on Earth Day, April 20th, 2010. If your company is doing positive things for our planet, now is the time to be recognized for it. All regional (chamber member) businesses, nonprofit organizations, and government bodies are eligible. Applications must be received for review by April 15th, 2010. For more information or questions please email ekubala@baldor.com; or call (479)648-7694.
Suddenly being green is not cool any more
As the credit crunch bites, environmental policies are being ditched. But oddly we are doing better at saving the planet
Julie Burchill can't stand them. According to her new book, Not in my Name: A Compendium of Modern Hypocrisy, she thinks all environmentalists are po-faced, unsexy, public school alumni who drivel on about the end of the world because they don't want the working classes to have any fun, go on foreign holidays or buy cheap clothes.
The Challenge of Creating Living Buildings
Skip Backus, executive director of the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, discovered something in the process of researching materials for the new building on campus. “We don’t make anything in this country anymore,” he said. Many building materials are still made in the U.S., but simple things like nails and screws are difficult to find. For an ordinary building, that wouldn’t be much of a problem. But Backus is pursuing certification of the building through the Living Building Challenge, which requires all materials to come from within a certain radius of the building site.
The Living Building Challenge was launched in 2006 by the Cascadia Region Green Building Council, a chapter of both the U.S. Green Building Council and the Canada Green Building Council (see EBN Vol. 15, No. 12). A stringent certification system, the Living Building Challenge consists of 16 prerequisites—there are no optional credits. No buildings have yet achieved certification, in part because the Challenge requires buildings to be operational for at least a year before being certified.
Things Going Well
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Working on Countywide cleanups collecting e-waste , until the end of October. All have been very positive, great turn outs. Will be working with City of Fort Smith on citywide cleanup for first time to collect e-waste week of 10/7 until 10/24. Contacting schools outside of Ft. Smith to do in house education programs.
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