Greening is great! The best part is that when you green, you are not only taking a positive step towards rebuilding our environment, when done right there is great potential to save time and money as well. One of the major goals of greening is to reach a higher level of efficiency. How can I do this with less waste? Less waste = more money.
If it takes less energy to do, you’re giving off less greenhouse gases and you’ll have cheaper energy bills. If you can use fewer materials, you are using up less of our precious resources and there are less overhead costs. If you can recycle, there is less waste, and well, there is less waste. At least in theory those are the goals.
Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer, at a speech on Sunday to the Manufacturers Association, declared that Israel’s biggest obstacle to foreign investment and economic growth is it’s own government. “Israeli bureaucracy is a problematic and disturbing factor in doing business,” the Jerusalem Post reports him saying, “The government must deal with this in spite of all the difficulties in grappling with issues of this sort.”
We think that the Israeli government has to green itself up. By becoming more efficient it will cut back on waste. Aside from the obvious greening effect of wasting less paper, it will find that it is saving on much more than that.
Just to point out a few… On phone bills, from less calling back and forth, following the bureaucratic tape. Time, getting more done. If other people trying to work through the system can take less time doing so, the government is saving for them as well. The list could go on forever.
Gov. Fischer has another point right, as well. In business we call this the competitive edge. If the government can get over itself and become more efficient, they will out perform their competitors. If you take the top performers, in any area, and compare them against the bottom performers, in that same area, you’ll see that they learned how to do just a few things, just a little better, and on a more consistent basis.
With the government performing just a little more efficiently, they will not only be outperforming others in the economic sphere, it will be much more pleasant for its citizens and finally, but perhaps most importantly, our world.
Author: Jack Reichert
As far back as he can remember Jack Reichert has been interested in the environment. In the second grade, he rallied all of his classmates to donate one recess a week to cleaning up litter from the schoolyard. That was the same year that a city councilman asked him to help with his campaign because of the letter Jack had written asking him to clean up Boston Harbor. Ever since Jack has followed the development of the international green conscience with anticipation and hope that one day we will treat Mother Earth with the respect she deserves and not turn her into another Giving Tree. For tips, feedback and prophet sightings, Jack can be reached at jack (at) greenprophet (dot) com.