Chamber aims to lead local environmental sustainability movement

First in a four-part series.

“The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty,” Ross Perot once said, “the activist is the man who cleans up the river.”

The Green Valley Sahuarita Chamber of Commerce wants to be one of the major movers when it comes to promoting waste reduction and water and energy conservation among the merchants it serves.

One of its Economic Development Committee action teams is already trying to build some important strategies to educate, encourage and support local businesses in an effort to “go greener” than they already are.

In this four-part series, this newspaper will chart the progress of each of the three components of this plan.

“It’s very easy to talk to people as individuals and point out simple things — some obvious, some not so obvious,” Richard Ducote, community affairs director for Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold at the Sierrita mine, said to his fellow team members at their fourth meeting in early September.

His colleagues nodded in agreement as he pointed out a couple of ways a business owner could make an easy change to conserve energy, which is Ducote’s piece of the environmental sustainability plan they’re working on.

“One area I see, for example,” he said, “is over lighting.”

“It has to start with the individual,” said Ed Coad, the former Green Valley Recreation facilities manager, now managing Echo Construction Inc.

In charge of the team’s water conservation component, Coad wants to help businesses become proactive in water management. Like the others, he hopes to focus on education and awareness that will aid in promoting daily communication, employer to employee and vice versa, from the smallest shop to the largest companies.

“Most companies are not proactive,” he explained as he pointed out the sometimes too common mistake of waiting to fix something until it becomes a bigger problem that contributes to wasting water.

“New businesses need to be educated as well,” added Jim DiGiacomo, executive director of the chamber. He believes strongly that if the organization through this action team’s efforts can disseminate accurate and useful information that opens the eyes of business owners and employees, they will want to participate.

“It’s just good business,” he said.

Economic Development Committee Chairman Tim Wolfe, Tucson Proving Ground manager for Caterpillar, one of the largest industrial recyclers in the world, knows this team has its work cut out for it in getting businesses first aware of what they can do, then motivated to follow through.

“In the first phase, we need to keep it simple and effective,” he says. “Let’s break this down into manageable chunks.”

The group is now investigating ideas for promotion and marketing, costs and ways it can help create opportunities for local businesses to participate.

The team is establishing relationships with major water users, waste haulers and energy providers to identify existing programs and explore new ones.

The members hope to begin educating businesses and launching projects in the community during the next two years, which will eventually culminate in 90 percent of businesses as active participants in water and energy conservation and recycling by 2013.

State Farm Insurance agent Mark Heltemes, in charge of the recycling component, is already discovering some of the myths and mysteries of what seems like an easy thing to do.

“Very few businesses in this area are set up to do recycling,” Heltemes said, and yet he knows the goal can be met. His and the chamber offices have been doing just that for a few years now.

All team members agree that it doesn’t have to come from the top, as evidenced by Wolfe’s story about Caterpillar engineer Dan Killion, who came up with a detailed proposal for recycling bins and followed through with the marketing, purchase, labeling and tracking process. Now 93 percent of materials are recycled.

“He had the initiative to ask the question and educate me,” Wolfe said, which is why the team hopes anyone locally who has ideas they want to share will call the Green Valley Sahuarita Chamber of Commerce at 625-7575 or e-mail to GreenValleyChamber@aol.com.

This valley could get a lot greener.

Green Valley resident Mike Touzeau is a freelance writer for the Green Valley News and Sun.