Chuck It Recycling News & Updates

Green buildings typically involve greater initial costs to achieve important green objectives such as improved energy efficiency, increased use of renewable energy (on site and off site), and diversion of waste from landfills for reuse or recycling. These changes create local and US jobs and offset wasteful consumption of energy (some of it imported from anti-democratic nations) and improve productivity and the US trade deficit. Each of these aspects of green design – efficiency, renewable energy and waste diversion — involves increased employment compared with conventional non-green buildings.

Energy Efficiency

The typical green school uses one-third less energy than conventional schools. This reduction is a result of a combination of things, including better design, more energy efficiency equipment, and installation of energy efficiency measures such as increased insulation. A 2004 Massachusetts report found that every $10 million in additional energy efficiency investments contributes about 160 short-term jobs and 30 long-term or permanent jobs. Assuming about $200,000 in additional energy efficiency related investments in a green school relative to a conventional school, investment in energy efficiency creates three short- term jobs through additional work and half of a long-term job per school. The average income for a permanent job created can be conservatively estimated as $38,000, indicating a long-term annual increase in salary in-state for each green school of $19,000 (half of one fulltime job created from increased energy efficiency). On a 20 year discounted basis, and assuming salaries grow at inflation, this is $250,000 of direct in-state salary created, equal to $2/ft2 for a typical 125,000 ft2 school. This calculation does not include the positive net employment impact of short-term jobs created.

Only 2.5 jobs are created for every 1,000 tons of waste disposed, while 4.7 jobs are created for 1,000 tons of waste diverted.

Labels: green news, recycling

Seventy-five percent of U.S. buildings will undergo a retrofit over the next two decades and idle factory space is there for the taking, notes Tay Yoshitani.

The most recent government employment reports have been disappointing because they show a profound lack of job creation on the part of the private sector.

In addition to calling the health of the overall U.S. economy into question, many analysts say that the latest data raise troubling issues about the viability of clean technology as a positive force for 21st-century prosperity. After all, we've been told repeatedly that legions of new green-collar jobs will materialize and generate growth for communities all across the nation.

I believe the analysts are wrong; my view remains that the creation and proliferation of well-paying green-collar jobs in America will ultimately help us address the biggest employment crisis since the Great Depression.

In fact, after assessing a host of other statistics and reports, I think it's safe to forecast a far-reaching and broad-based green jobs revolution over the next decade.

When all is said and done -- from my perspective, at least -- the green jobs revolution will improve the economic quality of life in hard-hit states such as Ohio, Michigan, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania. It will boost prospects for a wide range of people who are currently electricians, plumbers, machinists, and sheet metal workers, not just the scientists, engineers and software programmers. It will help transform countless numbers of solid, established and much-needed blue-collar jobs, which anchor local communities today, and turn them green for the 21st century. And it will help spawn a new and muscular manufacturing sector here in the U.S. that will be globally competitive.

If you look closely and carefully, you can see tangible signs of the green jobs revolution starting to take hold everywhere today. Buildings are being retrofitted for greater energy efficiency; new energy systems are being installed; electric infrastructure is being rebuilt; and smart irrigation systems are being put in place.

This represents meaningful and next-generation work for -- among others -- many of the nation's 1.7 million truck drivers, 969,000 carpenters, and 400,000 welders. Indeed, I believe that over time the green-collar job revolution will eventually start to replace a good number of the 4.1 million blue-collar jobs we've lost in the United States since 1998.

My optimism about green collar job creation in the U.S. is based on four fundamental aspects of the latest available data, each of which reinforces important and supportive trends:

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Labels: green news, recycling

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