Fayetteville Among Cities Nationwide Pushing For Sustainability

FAYETTEVILLE -- Forget Congress or even the General Assembly -- cities increasingly are on the front line in the push for sustainable, more environmentally aware development, officials and experts said Wednesday.

Tennessee, New Jersey and other states have programs to certify cities for their sustainability effort, and the National League of Cities launched a program this year to provide sustainability guidelines anywhere.

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Program

To find out which businesses have been GreeNWAy certified or how to join the program, go to

www.fayettevillear.…

Locally, the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce's GreeNWAy Initiative has certified almost three dozen businesses in several industries for taking steps to save resources and money.

"Everyone has something to contribute," Mayor Lioneld Jordan said during a roundtable Wednesday at the Fayetteville Public Library to discuss the program and other sustainability efforts. "We do this together, and it works."

Climate change caused by fossil fuel emissions, which climate scientists widely agree is happening, has many skeptics in politics. But saving energy and water is fairly straightforward and can benefit businesses' reputations and bottom lines, said Steve Clark, chamber president.

GreeNWAy works by providing chamber members with an array of more than 100 ways to make themselves more sustainable, including catching rainwater, recycling paper or reminding people to turn off the lights. Businesses must meet a certain number of suggestions to qualify for two years, and with each renewal, the requirements grow.

The University of Arkansas Enactus team, formerly Students in Free Enterprise, works with the chamber to make sure businesses tell the truth, Clark said. The students bring passion and impartiality to the process and prevent "green-washing," or riding the eco-friendly wave without committing to it, he said.

The key to GreeNWAy's success is allowing businesses to choose which adjustments they can handle instead of setting costly requirements some can't meet, Clark said.

"We wanted to take actions that any business could do today," he said. "You have to learn from experience."

The program's participants include the city's buildings, Sam's Club, Dickson Street Pub, Clubhaus Fitnes and almost 30 others.

Adventure Subaru, off Fulbright Expressway, joined partly by using efficient lighting and water fixtures and other sustainable material in the construction of its building two years ago, said Susan Idlet, marketing director for the dealership and a member of GreeNWAy.

"I think Fayetteville thinks ahead and responsibly," Idlet said. "It's just such a sweet spot for people who care about the planet."

Wednesday's roundtable was organized by Green America, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that says it aims to make the U.S. more sustainable by working with businesses and consumers.

The group is focusing on mayors to get more local people involved in the sustainability conversation, spokesman Adam Jegley said. In a related event Wednesday, Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola spoke about starting a hybrid bus fleet.

"It's a huge issue going into the next hundred years and beyond," Jegley said, referring to pollution, use of fossil fuel and other human activity impacting ecosystems -- and the humans in them -- worldwide. "There's just little things we can do."

The local tactic has caught on across the country, said Michele Halsell, managing director of the university's Applied Sustainability Center. The center's working on an Arkansas-wide certification program, similar to GreeNWAy, aimed at cities overall instead of individual businesses.

Such programs "are popping up everywhere," Halsell said, pointing to other states. "This is a way bigger trend than just Fayetteville."

Companies with energy-saving goals want to be in cities with the same priorities, Halsell said. City governments decide whether to build trails for biking to work, for example, and whether to make recycling easier. During his roundtable, Jordan proudly pointed out such policies.

"If you are a smart mayor and you are trying to keep an eye on the bottom line ... you need to be paying attention to that," Halsell said.

The same principle holds regionally, Halsell added: Northwest Arkansas, with its reliance on coal and natural gas, could start to fare poorly in companies' eyes when compared to Oklahoma, with its growing use of wind energy.

Ultimately, sustainable practices must benefit people, the economy and the environment all at once, Halsell said. In today's world, none are separate from the others.

"Every time you walk outside, you're in the environment," she said. "Fundamentally, you can't have an economy without ecology, and you can't have people without clean air and water. These things all go together."

NW News on 07/17/2014

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