The Power of the Sun
Yesterday marked the 45th anniversary of Earth Day.
Earth Day is always a good day to reflect on the many different environmental initiatives that are taking place around the country.
Since ours is the original “green industry,” it’s especially nice to hear what growers are doing when it comes to the environment. One of the newest projects that caught my attention was at Costa Farms in Miami, Florida.
Costa recently announced that it is turning to the sun to provide power to a large portion of its growing operations.
With more than 3,500 acres of production space, Costa is in the process of installing 861 solar panels covering 22,386 square feet that will generate approximately 386,534 kilowatt-hours with zero greenhouse gas emissions annually. When the installation is completed by the end of May, the solar panels will be responsible for producing 25 percent of the company’s energy requirements.
According to the company, the annual CO2 offset is expected to be 493,487 lbs. or the equivalent of planting 56 acres of trees or removing 45 cars from the street.
Costa is predicting the energy savings that the solar panels will provide will be equal to reducing barrels of oil by 574 gallons, propane use by 185,058 pounds or recycling 85 tons of waste per year.
“Sustainability is a top priority for Costa Farms and for the communities where we live and work,” says Jose Smith, president and CEO of Costa Farms. “With almost 250 days of sun annually, we think Miami could be the leader in solar energy.”
“By switching to solar panels, we’re focusing on doing the right thing for our community, the planet and our company,” Smith adds.
What kind of environmental initiatives have you implemented at your company? How are those initiatives impacting your bottom line? Drop me a line at thodson@greatamericanpublish.com and let me know.
In Case You Missed It
Last week, Team GPN had a chance to travel the highways and byways of California for the 2015 California Spring Trials. Jasmina Dolce was blogging about many of the new introductions we saw during our seven-day adventure. Click here to read what she had to say.
We also were posting photos on the gallery page of www.CaliforniaSpringTrials.com. If you haven’t had the opportunity to take a look at the gallery, just click here.
Wal-Mart to Restructure In-Store Management
Last week, Wal-Mart announced plans to simplify its operations by eliminating a layer of in-store management. The retailer plans to do away with zone managers in its 4,500 U.S. stores and reassign those responsibilities to other managers. The move is expected to affect approximately 14,000 employees. Former zone managers will now become either assistant managers or department managers and their pay scale will not change.
Lowe’s to Host How-To Clinics During National Women Build Week
In May, Lowe’s and Habitat for Humanity will again team up to support the nationwide initiative, Habitat’s Women Build program, that challenges women to devote at least one day to help eliminate poverty housing. Lowe’s will host how-to clinics designed to help to teach construction skills to women who volunteered time to build homes for families in need. Click here to see a video from one of the program’s 2014 projects.
Home Depot Debuts Cyber Week
Piggybacking on the success of Black Friday and Cyber Monday events that take place in November, on April 19, the Home Depot introduced its new Cyber Week. For the past six years, Depot has been offering a Spring Black Friday sales event to kick off the gardening season, but now the company wants to expand on the “event” by offering many different online shopping promotions to increase its sales.
Video Library 
Latest News
see all news »
