Being Green = Seeing Green

In the mId-1980s, as yet another “bottle bIll” debate raged in the State of Washington, the legislature called for an assessment of the recycling rate. Lawmakers wanted to know if the private sector was doing enough. (As it turned out, it wasn’t, but special interests once again blocked attempts at a public mandate.) Charlie Scott ’70, then a management consultant, was contracted to conduct the study, which he saw as a short-term opportunity. Little did he know that the “waste characterization” business, as he now calls it, would become an integral component of the 21st-century greening of America.
Today Scott is principal and president of Cascadia Consulting Group, Inc., a Seattle-based firm that, through a number of approaches, helps public and private entities strategically implement green practices. They help municipal and state governments research and write policies that often have to navigate cumber-some regulatory systems and stubborn economic forces. They help businesses identify ways to save and even make money by changing their waste disposal methods, reducing the impact of their production and distribution, and developing green products and services. They conduct educational outreach programs for businesses and private citizens alike, often in regard to recycling and composting but increasingly around ways to slow or reverse global warming. And one rather icky niche that Cascadia has developed is surveying waste streams. In other words, Cascadia researchers go to municipal dumps and literally sort through random truckloads of garbage with their own hands—an effort that has revealed some dismal realities. (See the graphic below.)
As if Cascadia’s ongoing success isn’t enough to contradict Scott’s initial, short-sighted vision, recent studies suggest an even more remarkable future. According to a 2007 report from the Natural Marketing Institute, the current U.S. marketplace among lifestyles of health and sustainability (LOHAS) is $200 billion and should swell to $845 billion by 2015 as consumer demand for recyclable or compostable goods and sustainable business practices increases. For Scott, it all points back to a fundamental truth and his guiding principle: “Today, pretty much everybody wants to be green, and soon enough, if you’re a business that’s not green, you’re going to be out of business. So how do you do it? Start by managing the waste stream and by maximizing your energy efficiency.”