Green is a color. Green symbolizes the American Dollar. Green symbolizes envy. Today, more popularly, that color is strongly associated with environmentalism, and it also defines an entire industry worth trillions of dollars. Green jobs are those that produce goods and services that have an environmental benefit.
According to manufacuringnews.com, the green economy employs more people than the fossil fuel economy! Brookings Institute released a recent report, which highlights certain surprising facts about the “green” and “clean technology sector.”
Jobs.com did some of the homework for us and brought forward some very interesting facts. Let’s play a little game of “Did you know” or as my kids put it, “Guess, what?”
The green economy employs 27 million Americans today.
The South has the largest number of clean economy jobs in the country, BUT the West has the largest portion compared to its population. And not surprisingly, California has the largest number of jobs, but Alaska and Oregon have the most per worker.
Before the recession, during the 2001-2010 period, the clean technology economy made some slow, yet steady progress. During the recent 2009 recession, the green economy created “a job explosion” that led to more people being hired in this sector than any other sector in the economy.
But here’s the best part – the part that is most pertinent to us in this industry – the manufacturing and export sectors seemed to have been the main driving force in creating clean technology jobs! As compared to the 9% national average, clean technology jobs within the manufacturing sector comprised a whopping 26% of all green jobs!
For years, Industrialism and Manufacturing have been blamed for the sadly deteriorating condition of our planet, and for creating the worst carbon footprint ever. But today, the very sector that received all the blame is responsible for creating 26% of the green jobs.
In a sincere effort to be more sustainable, most companies are implementing measures to reduce waste and to reduce our corporate carbon foot-print. It is part of our corporate responsibility – alongside food-drives and fund-raisers.
Here are just a few small things we’ve undertaken at Bluff Manufacturing to be sustainable. For starters, we use absolutely no VOC (Volatile Organic Compounds) Paints. We also use nickel slag in our powder coat process rather than sand or charcoal. Nickel slag is not only a reusable, high-density blasting slag (a by-product of nickel production), it is also an ideal abrasive for general-purpose use, including shipyards, bridges and general industrial blast cleaning. Tests have shown nickel slag to provide high productivity improvements over traditional abrasives and it also lasts three times longer than other media thereby creating less waste to dispose of. Bluff’s plants also utilize censor-activated light bulbs, which shut off when there is no movement saving energy. As for recycling, we use recycled metals when possible and we recycle our waste.
We’re doing our part and will continue to think of new ways to become more sustainable. How green is your company? If you’ve made any changes towards sustainability (even small ones), feel free to share with us. We’d like to hear from you.