Conversations on Website Conversion discussion

To green your human resources, you can follow the same outline as greening other as other aspects of your business. It revolves around the same two principles as many greening program: reducing paper waste and decreasing energy emissions. Getting your employees involved in your greening practices is not only essential to the success of those programs, it is the basis of green human resource practices. You can provide benefits to employees to encourage their contributions to greening the impact of your business. You can offer commuting benefits such as incentives to carpool, or opportunities to telecommute.

HR Administration is another great candidate for greening. There are a lot of places to eliminate paper waste by moving digital. Even hiring can be made greener. You can accept resumes online, and replace initial interviews with a phone interview.

What changes to HR practices can your business support? What kind of benefits might you enact to get your employees involved in your green mission?

I went to a poetry reading tonight and felt this poem was relevant to the discussions we are having. It's long but worth the time is takes to read; it's very INSPIRING!

Green Long Beach Poem

In these last days of this Iron age
We are evolving with subtle shifts in
Understanding, as we share our experiences
Wisdom is coming back,
She’s wearin common sense clothes and is
Carrying scrolls and books we burned
Way back in the day
Cuz we were afraid of our own history,
connectivity and interdependence
with the natural world,
But lady wisdom will unfold the scrolls,
to reveal what they say....

Slow down,
Breathe in, breathe out,
Allow yourselves to feel,
Then do the work and build

And these are the truths of the past ages,
Housed in symbolic code
Lessons of the ancients
Suggesting

Our ancestors studied and understood the cosmos,
Tracking the slow precession of each constellation,
masters of time and impermanence,
comprehending the force on the back of all existence,
Pushing us forward to gain experience

Supposing that
We are part of a larger cycle,
Hurtling through space at 400 thousand miles an hour
A fractal existence packed within a tiny seed
Of a planet,
Germinating and incubating until its time to bloom

Reminding us
That we evolved in the natural world
Seeds longing to grow and expand beyond space and time

But in the experiment of modern civilization,
We have been violently separated from nature,
from that which birthed us
Yet IF it is a war against nature
That is being waged
Trees will always conquer concrete
The ocean will swallow our greatest cities

Still, we hide under the PR campaigns that proclaim
we're Going green, seeing these changes through
rose-colored glasses,
avoiding the inner work of truly transforming our
psychology

NEWS FLASH!
Corporations that have recently gone green include:
British Petroleum, McDonalds, NBC, General Motors, and
Frito-lay, and Pepsi.

While we continue to oppress workers, and
Feed ourselves poison,
Going green isn’t always as fresh and easy at is seems
To truly be in nature, and of nature, we have to
Create new systems that feed into ecology,
Leaving behind those built on exploitation and
a debt-based economy

Going green means
Seeking information and educating our community,

But I’m preaching to the choir,
When y’all are ready to sing,
So exist defiantly

Be eco-terrorists planting seed bombs in the city
Until a field of poppies replaces the parking citation
office, grow on rooftops, share resources
And help us build networks that
Will allow us to unplug from the Oil machine

In these last days of an iron age,
We are seeing crisis as an opportunity for
Transformation and change,

All we need to do is keep
Breathing in
Breathing out
And living mindfully

Peace.

-Tony Damaco, Long Beach resident

You're right Shelby - this fits in perfectly with what we've been reading.

Like the poem too.
This chapter is a hard one; would I 'advertise' on my resume that I believe in environmental sustainability? No. Would I apply to a company with a green mission statement? Yes. Will we ever see the day where there is 'green discrimination'?

There is a little bit of green discrimination going on in our everyday lives, I just don't know if we notice it. Take Starbucks (or any other coffeehouse) for example--if you bring in your own cup, they give you a discount. It may seem like they're just taking off the cost of giving you a cup, but the cost of a manufactured paper cup is negligible, especially compared to the $5 drink you're about to put in it! In this case, the reward for being a little greener is immediate.

Going to school in Seattle, I guess a lot of the green-ness just fades into what I expect as "normal." All the buildings on campus have compost bins, and all the plates and utensils are compostable (those new corn-plastic utensils are amazing!). There are posters at each can showing what is compostable, recyclable, and what is just "trash." I've even seen students walk past a trash can, pull out compostables, and replace them into the right bin.

Maybe rather than advertising a belief in environmental sustainability (which could come across as a little odd), you could get some kind of green certification from a seminar, and include that on your resume. It would show your beliefs, and that you are willing to learn and do something about it.