Danielle and I are extremely proud of our newest designation as a sustainable business here in Sedona. The Sustainability Alliance is truly an organization worth looking into if you are a local business owner here in Sedona and the Verde Valley! You can visit their website here.
From the Sustainability Alliance press reelase below:
Damian Bruno and his spouse, Danielle Giann, work as realtors with Coldwell Banker Residnetial Brokerage. Among other actions, they compost all their food waste. This is important because food waste in the landfill turns into methane, roughly 20 times stronger of a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, which their compost pile releases. And their garden benefits from what’s left over. Bruno said the certification was “a simple and effective way to motivate myself and hopefully others to hold themselves to a higher bar and in the process, help our society lessen its footprint while spreading the concepts of sustainability!”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
From: Sustainability Alliance, www.SustainabilityAllianceAZ.org
Contact: Darcy Hitchcock, 928-554-5171, Darcy@SustainabilityAllianceAZ.org
Re: CERTIFIED SUSTAINABLE BUSINESSES
Date: June 1 2017
3 More Certified Sustainable Businesses in Sedona, the first Gold level!
Do you want your money to go toward organizations that give back to the community? The Sustainable Business Certification identifies and recognizes organizations that are doing the most for their employees, the community and the environment.
The Sustainability Alliance is delighted to announce that the following local organizations have joined the ranks of Certified Sustainable Businesses, including one at the Gold/Sustainable level!
Art/Events—Marty Landa & Pash Galbavy representing Alive Today Enterprises and Inspiration of Sedona (Gold)
Personal Development—Thomas & LouAnn Bruck with Enriching Life Forever (Bronze)
Realty—Damian Bruno/ Danielle Giann, realtors with Coldwell Banker (Bronze)
WHAT ARE THEY DOING?
Here is a sampling of some of the practices that earned these organizations the Sustainable Business Certification:
Damian Bruno and his spouse, Danielle Giann, work as realtors with Coldwell Banker. Among other actions, they compost all their food waste. This is important because food waste in the landfill turns into methane, roughly 20 times stronger of a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, which their compost pile releases. And their garden benefits from what’s left over. Bruno said the certification was “a simple and effective way to motivate myself and hopefully others to hold themselves to a higher bar and in the process, help our society lessen its footprint while spreading the concepts of sustainability!”
Thomas and LouAnna Bruck at Enriching Life Forever said, “Our business is like the rest of our life. We do our best to live sustainably in all that we do. We measure small daily decisions on what impact our choices have on our planet and all of its inhabitants. We encourage everyone to the best of your ability to live in such a way that our future generations will thrive!”
You might know Marty Landa and Pash Galbavy from Inspiration of Sedona, the NGO that shows sustainability-related documentaries in town. They stunned the Sustainability Alliance members by meeting the fully sustainable, Gold level of certification. We figured no one would reach that in the next few years so they hadn’t even printed the badges for the Gold certification!
Imagine being climate neutral. Their solar panels provide most of the electricity they need for their house and their Leaf electric car; they buy green power from Arcadia, and buy carbon offsets for the little carbon footprint they have left. They are also “zero waste” (diverting over 90% of their waste from the landfill) and they clearly demonstrate a passion for improving the world by leading the Inspiration of Sedona. Granted, Alive Today Enterprises is a home-based business, making this achievement slightly easier, but they are still an inspiration. The advantage of having someone reach Gold is they prove it’s possible. If they can do it, the rest of us should be able to get there too!
Landa said, “Being involved in promoting sustainability in both our local community, as well as implementing it in our business, we were very curious to look at the process and see how well we’d do in a sustainable business certification program. We initially thought we’d just test drive it, but were impressed by both the breadth and depth of the questions and the process, yet surprised at how easy it was, so we went ahead and submitted the survey. The ensuing email correspondence with Darcy from the Sustainability Alliance was a learning experience about things we hadn’t thoroughly considered, and where we could make improvements. We’re now further implementing water conservation and having fun doing it. We’re very happy to have gone through the process and to have our home-based business be the first gold certified one! We recommend everyone have a look and at least test drive the survey, as it really makes you think about a wide variety of sustainability issues, and what you can readily do about them.”
Galbavy added, “Evaluating our business processes while we considered the Sustainability Alliance questions was illuminating. It made us reassess some of our practices and caused us to make some simple changes that make running our business better for the planet. It also helped us recognize how much we were already doing. I hope that other businesses will take advantage of the opportunity to go through the questions and to get a free evaluation from the Sustainability Alliance. Parts of it can be challenging and confronting, however, becoming aware of the impact we’re having on the planet and taking responsibility for that is essential for the continued future functioning of all business and continued comfortable living on our earth.”
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Please favor businesses that make our community better. ‘Vote with your wallet’ by looking for the Sustainable Business Certification on the Who’s Certified page. Congratulate businesses you visit that are certified and ask business owners you know have a social conscience to consider getting certified. (www.SustainabilityCertifications.org)
Landa and Galbavy, as representatives of Inspiration of Sedona, recently joined the Sustainability Alliance to bolster our knowledge about climate and energy. You might be interested in our position paper on the upcoming APS rate case. It includes links for you tell the Arizona Corporation Commission what you think. http://www.sustainabilityallianceaz.org/2017/05/make-your-voice-heard-on-upcoming-aps.html
MORE ABOUT THE CERTIFICATION
The certification is a way to recognize and drive business toward companies that do the most for their employees, our community and the environment.
