It’s Not Easy Being Green – or is it?

I’ve often identified with Kermit the frog.  His sentiment “It’s not easy being green” was often the way I felt throughout my earlier years growing up in a conservative ranch town turned sprawled-out suburb.  As a kid it was a challenge to get my family and neighbors to recycle, people thought I was an alien from outer-space when I told them that I was a vegetarian, and our local supermarket did not carry anything labeled “Organic.”

Today, not only is it easy to be green, it’s also become something that everyone wants to be.  This powerful shift is the result of an entire planet waking up to the idea that sustainability is something that makes our lives better and can make business more profitable.  What once was a paradigm of “jobs vs. the environment” has been replaced by “green-collar jobs” and the “green economy.”  This shift is not just the slick efforts of marketing masters. It is the result of real, truly innovative and passionate environmentalists working in every sector and level of the economy.  It is also the result of some very significant changes in state and national laws which incentivize green business over traditional dirty business and create mandates at state and local levels. 

To be sure, it has been a long road to make green easy, and we still have a ways to go.  But, it is clear, that Kermit the Frogs everywhere can wear their green proudly knowing that it is because of them that being green will continue to get easier and easier.