Going green offers benefits

The first Earth Day was celebrated April 22, 1970. It sprang from the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson’s New York Times bestseller “Silent Spring.”

History credits Gaylord Nelson, then a U.S. senator from Wisconsin, as the first to realize he could infuse the energy of the student anti-war movement with the awareness of air and water pollution and thus add environmental protection to the national political agenda.

About 20 million people are said to have participated in the coast-to-coast rallies on that first Earth Day. Now, 42 years later, thousands of activities and events will mark the annual observation.

Locally, folks can join the upper Susitna Valley’s 12th annual Earth Day Celebration from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., April 21, at the Sheldon Community Arts Hangar in downtown Talkeetna.

Valley Community for Recycling Solutions is the first industrial building in Alaska to earn a Gold certification from Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED. The Mat-Su also is home to the first building to have any sort of LEED certification; the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center was certified in December 2003. It also was the first LEED-certified building within the U.S. Department of Commerce.

LEED certification is granted by the U.S. Green Building Council, and recognizes environmentally sensitive construction practices.

Fred and Sara Machetanz Elementary School was the first school in Alaska to earn LEED certification, which it attained in December 2009.

And, if the Susitna hydroelectric project is built, we’ll be home to the state’s largest supplier of renewable energy, too.

Sometimes topics such as Earth Day, gas mileage and energy-efficient buildings get tagged with “greenie” labels. But as the price to heat and light commercial buildings continues to climb, saving money – especially public money – on building operations starts to make a lot of sense — dollars and cents.

Take Brown Jug, for instance. A tour of its Anchorage warehouse shows new lighting throughout, new propane-powered forklifts, plastic strip curtains to help keep the cool in the walk-in refrigerators, and a cardboard bailer — all changes the business made to reduce operations costs and waste.

Here at the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, we’re greener, too. In December 2011 we installed a new computer-to-plate machine to streamline the production process. Not only can we produce the plates for the press more quickly, the new process also is chemical free.

We shudder to think about all the newsprint we once added to the landfill, but now many tons of it each year go to the local recycling center or to a local manufacturer who turns our waste paper into new insulation for local homes.

Whether the motivation is saving money or saving the planet, going green has benefits.