Green or Not Green - Which Is It?

It’s hard for me to make any complaints about the company that Karlo and I work for. It truly is a GREAT place to work and I consider us both very lucky to have the jobs we have. But sometimes this place just kills me. Lately the owners of the company have really been on a ‘green’ kick. We have to consider the environment on just about every decision we make. Some things are good – for instance they now offer bio-diesel fuel here at the office. You can fill up your car and have the money deducted from you pay. I guess that is a perk, only the fuel is more expensive than going to the gas station. BUT, it’s better for the environment.

And speaking of spending more money to be green . . . we now have a new directive that we must print all our brochures of super special, highly recycled paper. This is costing us an additional $20,000 just for the remainder of this year. We got our first brochures back from the printer last week and they LOOK like they are recycled paper. There’s little flecks of Lord knows what, all over the place. Is this supposed to be a good thing? Costs more, looks worse. I don’t get it. And that is money that can be in our bonus checks, so that’s the hardest part to swallow.

And that’s not even my biggest gripe. This weekend we came to the office to do some biking. Even on a Sunday afternoon the AC was too high for me to be comfortable walking around in shorts and a T-shirt. What is up with that? We have to UNPLUG our printer every night because it uses what is called “phantom” energy just by being plugged into the wall. And YET we are running the AC fans all night and weekend? Does that make sense? Yes, it’s a geothermal system, but still. Aren’t we wasting some sort of energy here?

I’m all for helping to save the environment, but sometimes I have to hide or bring home an empty peanut butter jar because I’m too lazy to wash it out for the recycling bin . . . and I’m terrified that the ‘recycle natzi” will catch me throwing it away. And now I am faced with even unnecessary guilt just bringing fruit to work. From now on, peels and cores need to be deposited into the compost station! For heaven’s sake, we now have a “compost team.” A TEAM. What exactly entails being on the compost team? I’m betting monitoring who throws their peels in the garbage and ridiculing them. And I thought I had a stress-free job. So much for that!