Two years ago on Earth Day I launched this green blog. In two years I have written 353 posts. Compare this to my “pink blog”, my personal blog launched in 2005 to travelogue our first trip to Italy, which has 519 posts since 11/05. Clearly I spend a lot more time talking green than pink!
I posed a question to some of the folks I work with – has Earth Day been greenwashed? Is it overcommercialized? We quickly agreed this was one “holiday” where it didn’t matter. The more people who recognize the need to pay attention to what is happening in the environment around us the better! Any positive action in this direction is good!
When I first started this blog I was working for a real estate broker who focused on right-of-way road improvement projects and relocation work for SeaTac Airport (3rd runway nose remediation). If an agent sold a home it was gravy since we also were paid based on our contract work. The focus of my blog was to just share what I knew and what I learned. I was a lone green voice, especially amongst the people I worked with.
Even moving to a Built Green Certified Community didn’t do the trick since many people living here just saw it as a new development inside the city limits and were only interested in the real estate aspect of the community and not the great variety of opportunities to build community – especially in alignment with “green” here. In the fall of 2007 I took the first ever offered Built Green training for real estate agents – I had been bugging them for months and they finally offered a course at NSCC. It was great to sit in a room full of eager learners and to absorb new information.
My move to GreenWorks Realty last November was like a salve to a worn-out runner. It is such a blessing to be surrounded by people who agree that the Earth needs our help – and education is the key to that. We all spend a lot of time educating ourselves and then passing that education along to others.
To honor Earth Day I gave two tours last Saturday – a green tour of my neighborhood, an international award winner when it comes to its management of runoff (High Point in West Seattle), and a tour to others in West Seattle interested in helping us build a canine off-leash play area for dogs. High Point is full of open space and the developer agreed to let one of the spaces go to the dogs instead of the kids (who have lots of open space and playgrounds to play in.) It was a great day to meet new people. And as always, I educated.
Today I will just learn more to share with others at a future time. And maybe do some greening around the office. I participated in a webinar last week sponsored by Sustainable Industries, “Greening Your Office Operations”, and need time to go through all of those links!
No doubt you will learn something new today – be sure to share it with someone you know!