Great Lakes Green Pages

In November, we attended our first event of the group E4S (Entrepreneurs for Sustainability). It was an informative panel discussion. December was a holiday month, but January marks the beginning of a new year for the group. It kicks off the Third Tuesday gathering series at Great Lakes Brewery. I really enjoyed the last event and am looking forward to the gathering next week. The topic of discussion is Sustainability in Tough Economic Times. Insightful and on target. But who are these people? E4S was started in 2000. They gathered together a group of local leaders in business, government, education, and non profits. These leaders began to discuss how they could make Cleveland a more sustainable place to live. Since that time, membership has grown to over 5500. The scope of the group has grown, too. They are now working on promoting sustainability in all of NE Ohio. The goal is to make NE Ohio a healthier place to live while make the local economy healthier. Their website describes their work:

Building a sustainable economy starts one business at a time, one project at a time. To support these projects E4S provides those who have embarked on the sustainability journey with network connections (CONNECT), and sustainability skills learning programs and resources (LEARN). E4S also provides implementation services to individual company projects and has begun to design and facilitate industry focused economic development projects (DO). Connect, Learn and Do with E4S!

I encourage everyone to register and attend at least one meeting. January’s event is at the Great Lakes Brewery. It is no surprise that Great Lakes Brewery is often the host for E4S events. They are local leaders of their own. Not only do they produce fine quality beers and great food, they are committed to being as environmentally friendly as they can be. First off, they have a triple bottom line approach to business. They strive to be profitable, but to also help the environment, the economy, and the local socio sphere. What are they doing? They support urban renewal projects, they invest in local non profits to help the community and they strive to be environmental friendly as possible.

Among some of the great things that Great Lakes Brewery is doing, they have a zero waste initiative. They are working to close the loop on the systems that they use, with a goal of creating no waste at all. That is a lofty goal. To achieve that end, (and others) they have implemented a pretty far reaching environmental strategy. They recycle. Simple enough, but with business it is more important than ever, an few are doing it!. They even compost a portion of their refuse and urn it into valuable compost using worms. They are as energy efficient as possible-a simple idea that is rarely implemented. They use organic mushrooms, make use of local farms and produce, and share spent barley with local bakers. They buy natural meats, dairy and produce-some of the meats they buy are raised on brewery grains. They support urban gardens and local farming. And beers that don’t get filled all the way aren’t tossed-they are reused by the kitchens or turned into local favorites like Mitchell’s ice creams.

So we all know that Great lakes Brewery makes a great selection of beer. Now you can support a local favorite, and a local leader in the environment at the same time. Be sure to join us at the E4S event next week and see what other like minded individuals are doing these days!

Tags: Cleveland, environment, Events, Go Green, industry

This entry was posted on Friday, January 16th, 2009 at 2:59 pm and is filed under Cleveland, Green. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.