It’s So Easy Being Green

While surfing the internet, watching the tube, flipping through the paper, scanning bus and BART advertising, the message is clear: green is here, and here to stay. What used to be hippie babbling of green house gases and global warming is taking a serious tone having everyone hopping on the eco-friendly, sustainable, organically made, no-emissions bandwagon.

Now I don’t usually think of St. Anthony’s as an environmental agency, as a conservation focused non-profit, but looking around lately I might change my tune. Today I caught myself in what felt like a karmically charged moral dilemma between tossing my apple core in the garbage or making the 15-foot journey to do the responsible thing and compost it. Of course I composted it, it comes as second nature now. It is an institutionalized behavior; recycle and compost are the first options, then if you must, in the garbage it goes.

The mantra goes beyond our office work, and this sustainable ideology guides our direct-service protocol as well. The Dining Room composts or recycles 70% of its waste, and our new building will be the first direct social service organization to have a green building. It is reassuring to know that even in the health and human services work that St. Anthony Foundation is dedicated to, we remain conscious and pro-active in our efforts to keep a healthy city and environment for everyone.