Alternative ways to be a greener business in Vermont
We try to do right at every turn in our daily lives. In the case of our business, we try to buy services and products from companies that provide the best service and are also smart citizens of this little planet we live on.
We’ve shut down internal servers and moved their load to the ‘cloud’, we outfitted the barn with a high efficiency propane boiler from Houseneeds, we installed a Nest thermostat and even replaced all our bulbs as they burned out with LED lighting.
In the case of being as ‘environmentally friendly’ as we can with electrical generation, sadly, our primary office in Vermont isn’t situated well for solar hot water or solar photovoltaic (PV) panels.
Luckily, our local power company, Green Mountain Power (GMP) gives us an alternative option. GMP has a product called GreenerGMP which lets residents and businesses voluntarily choose to request our power comes from renewable sources like local cows, wind, water, trash, wood and solar. We’ve been paying $0.03/kilowatt-hour more for 50% of our electrical power since they created this alternative renewable program.
While it may sound like tooting our own horn, we’re just trying to get the word out: even if you don’t have the capital to invest in thousands of dollars in solar panels or a windmill, you can still fund their installation and maintenance elsewhere.
And yes, we said “Cow Power”