This Week's Herman Trend Alert

Navigating the Next Year
 

  The Herman Trend Alert

June 27, 2007

Going Green

Happily for the health of planet earth, the United States is becoming more aware of the need to protect the environment. We are constructing more green hotels, more green office buildings, and even green car assembly plants.

Thanks to enlightened hotelier Dennis Quaintance, the town of Greensboro, North Carolina, will soon have its first green hotel. The 147-room, eight-story Proximity Hotel is a $2.6 Million project that will incorporate many features valued by a standards program called LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design).

Expected to be open in early fall, the Proximity will be one of the first hotels to receive the LEED Gold Certification by the U.S. Green Building Council, the organization that administers the LEED program. Featured in the June issue of Travel & Leisure magazine, the state-of-the-art hotel features reduced water consumption, solar panels on the roof, motion sensors on lights, and low-flow fixtures. Says Quaintance, "Going green is a way to prevent buildings from quickly becoming obsolete".

Subaru of America Inc. has recently launched a new advertising campaign touting their new assembly plant in Lafayette, Indiana as "environmentally friendly". According to their hometown Journal & Courier, the campaign says "the Japanese-owned factory sent its last load of waste to a landfill three years ago." Their motto is "Eliminate environmental risks of our operations". The plant reuses and recycles everything. The company focuses on the three R's of recycling: Reduce; Reuse; Recycle. The best part---the ideas came from Subaru’s employees.

And now for the icing on the cake.... wedding cake, that is. Weddings, too, are becoming green. Grooms and brides are recycling wedding attire, riding in hybrid cars, rather than limousines, and looking for other ways to "go green". Next, for winter weddings, they will be looking for green hotels and other environmentally friendly venues, rather than the large, impersonal catering halls. For summer weddings, anticipate more tents and garden weddings, to enjoy the great outdoors.

As the more environmentally conscious generations (X and Y) take over, expect more examples of "going green" in every aspect of our lives.... a welcome development.


© Copyright 1998-2008 by The Herman Group, Inc. -- reproduction for publication is encouraged, with the following attribution: From "The Herman Trend Alert," by Roger Herman and Joyce Gioia, Strategic Business Futurists. (800) 227-3566 or http://www.hermangroup.com. The Herman Trend Alert is a trademark of The Herman Group, Inc."


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