Mount Washington Valley residents and businesses took a collective “green” leap forward recently with the kick-off of the Mount Washington Valley Climate Challenge, a multi-town effort to reduce environmental impacts.
The Mount Washington Valley Chamber of Commerce Green Team initiated the effort at the chamber’s Business to Business Expo, held May 5 at the Mount Washington Resort in Bretton Woods.
The chamber formed the Green Team late last year with the charge of promoting and encouraging environmentally sustainable business practices that lead to positive, measurable business, community, and environmental results in the Mount Washington Valley. (Yours truly was chosen to serve as chairman.) The team set about developing a program in which area businesses and residents could participate to collectively adopt “green” practices, and it hit upon the Climate Challenge.
The group teamed up with the New Hampshire Carbon Challenge, based out of the University of New Hampshire, and with the help of the organization’s co-directors, Julia Dundorf and Denise Blaha, designed a Valley initiative based on the statewide challenge’s Web-based carbon estimator.
The Green Team knew it wanted to encourage electricity conservation, recycling, carpooling, and reductions in solid waste and air pollution, and was trying to come up with a way to measure the community’s progress toward those conservation goals. Green Team member Chuck Henderson of Chuck Roast, the mountainwear manufacturer, introduced the team to the New Hampshire Carbon Challenge folks and their work. It became quickly apparent that changes in one’s heating fuel use, electricity consumption, driving habits and other practices could be measured in terms of their greenhouse gas output, something that has come to be known as a “carbon footprint.”
Relatively minor changes in behavior can result in fairly significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and, with the help of the New Hampshire Carbon Challenge’s carbon estimator, Web site visitors can measure their individual carbon footprints and gauge how they can reduce their impact by doing such things as replacing incandescent lightbulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs, recycling, and trading old appliances for newer, more energy-efficient models.
In addition, the estimator reveals how much money one can save by changing those day-to-day habits. In preparation for the Climate Challenge kickoff, the team produced a limited number of cloth shopping bags, screen-printed with Climate Challenge information, to raise awareness of the challenge while simultaneously encouraging the use of reusable bags. Sponsored by The Mount Washington Valley Chamber of Commerce, the Nereledge Inn, Settlers’ Green, the New Hampshire Carbon Challenge, the Mount Washington Observatory, and the Appalachian Mountain Club, the bags were provided to those who took the challenge or signed a challenge pledge card at the Business to Business Expo.
More information on how to participate in the Mount Washington Valley Climate Challenge is available by clicking on the Green Team link at mtwashingtonvalley.org.
Rob Burbank is the public affairs director for the Appalachian Mountain Club in Pinkham Notch. His column, “Outdoors with the AMC,” appears in the New Hampshire Union Leader “Get Out!” section.
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