The Maine SEO Blog

Last night, a few of us from flyte attended the Maine Businesses for Social Responsibility (MEBSR) kickoff of their 2009 Leadership Series – “Social Responsibility is Smart Business”.  This first event was called “Climate Change Leadership and Triple Bottom Line Success”, and had such panelists and participants from larger corporations like FairPoint, Hannaford, and L.L. Bean to sustainability activism groups such as Clean Air-Cool Planet and Climate Counts.

It was great to see how many people came out for the event (even on a snowy evening), not to mention how much there was to learn.

I was floored by the fact that so many businesses are actually taking sustainability so seriously – primarily because it’s easier to go green on a personal level, than on a wide-scale business (especially large corporation) level.  But the same holds true for individuals as well as businesses: consider what you do and the impact it has on the environment.  Reduce.  Reuse.  Recycle.  (On a side note, if you feel like jamming out to the 3 R’s per Jack Johnson, here you go.)

I especially loved L.L. Bean’s packaging innovations: using 100% recycled material for all of their paper boxes and gift bags.  They’ve also installed a brand new system where their green plastic bags (made of 35% recycled material and can be recycled at facilities who accept #4 plastic) are shredded in their very own machine, sent back to the plant which manufactures the bags, and are then reused!  Talk about a great cycle!

One more really cool thing I’d never heard of – all of the panelists received gifts of Carbon Offsets from Maine Interfaith Power & Light.  Essentially, they help offset our carbon footprint by replacing our electricity or travel output with wind power.  Wind Watts would make a great birthday gift!  *Wink wink*

MEBSR’s second event in the series is “Entrepreneurship and Social Responsibility: Partners in Prosperity”, held up in Lewiston/Auburn on February 24.