Blog

Hi! I'm Sarah Buser and I'm the account manager at TradeMark. I have a lot of roles here: project manager, content reviewer, client trainer, accountant, goldfish feeder, so my blogs are probably going to be pretty random. I'm also in charge of our studio's greening efforts, so I thought I'd start with that today.

I just returned from a luncheon for Clean Air Partners (CAP), an organization made up of corporations, government and public organizations dedicated to reducing ground-level ozones in central Texas. TradeMark joined CAP last year as part of an effort to green our office. In today's meeting, they encouraged us to get out there and try to get more Austin businesses to join, so I thought I'd write about the program and the topics we discussed today.

About Clean Air Partners

Clean Air Partners is a program of Clean AIR Force of Central Texas. Any company can join Clean Air Partners - it's free and pretty low-maintenance. The benefits are that it provides your company with resources to reduce emissions and energy usage (including a live person to talk to!). Plus, partners get free publicity - big full-color ads in the Austin Business Journal.

The main focuses of Clean Air Partners are solutions for:

• Commuter emissions
• Business operations
• Energy usage
• Industry-specific processes (e.g. what do about chemicals from printing or dry-cleaning)

For information on how to join, contact Candace Baker - candace@cleanairforce.org. Let me know if you do - I'd love to have someone to sit with at the next luncheon.

The Big Push

Today's meeting focused on the "Big Push" Texas is making in order to keep us from becoming a non-attainment state. Basically, this means that we need to clean up our act in the coming months because we're going to be in big trouble if we don't. If we fail to meet federal regulations on ozone, we're going to become a nonattainment state, which means we are going to have to deal with such ugliness as:

• More heavily enforced emission controls
• Limits on business expansions (particularly for bigger companies)
• Moratorium or prohibition of transportation initiatives, such as building new roads

Texas State Senator Kirk Watson

TradeMark client Texas State Senator Kirk Watson was the guest speaker, and he talked about some of the things going on in the Texas Legislature right now to try to get us ready for our emissions testing. He's currently working on Bill 184, "No Regrets." It explores the free and money-saving ways that businesses can reduce emissions, so that even if he's wrong and pollution doesn't affect climate change, the worst that happens is that we've all saved some money. Sounds pretty good in theory, but he says he's having a tough time getting it out of committee.

More Resources

After lunch, I talked to another Clean Air partner who told me about some other green initiatives he takes part in, including Keep Austin Beautiful's Clean Sweep, which is coming up April 4th. I haven't looked into it too much yet, but I know Austin has some great resources. Here are a few more resources and programs, off of the top of my head:

• GreenChoice/Austin Energy
• Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
• Keep Texas Beautiful

I'll do a more thorough blog entry soon about the efforts we've made at TradeMark and some of the resources I've found in town. I'd love to hear from our friends and clients what you all are doing to help green your companies.