Green Lane -- Sustainable Business Network

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Jones & Roth, a Eugene certified public accounting and business consulting firm, is the first business in Lane County to receive the Re:think Recognition Award for its efforts in reducing the firm’s environmental impact.

Re:think, a new program for businesses in Lane County, helps businesses learn to conserve resources which results in saving money. Participating businesses that meet conservation bench marks are eligible to receive the Re:think Award.

In January of 2009, we launched GreenLane. The past year has been spent identifying the direction our organization is to take, as well as digging into the nuts and bolts work of developing a Steering Committee, creating committees, and creating our first Board.  When we began last year, we were a handful of people with a lot of energy and excitement about what GreenLane could be.  We ended this year with the strong support from the Eugene and Springfield business communities, as well as the structure in place to continue making this vision a reality.  

Every two weeks, members have the opportunity to meet at our networking lunch.  The past year, we’ve been working to shape these meetings as not only a time and place for members to get to know each other and share resources and ideas, but also to bring valuable educational opportunities and information.  In September, we accomplished this with joining with the City of Eugene.

Eugene Mayor Kitty Piercy greeted members at the lunch, and spoke about the city’s focus on sustainability.  GreenLane members then broke up into four groups and met with representatives of Eugene’s Sustainability Initiatives.  Each group focused on a particular topic. 

Ethan Nelson focused on green building, and outlining the city’s new Green Building Incentive Program for commercial and residential properties. 

We’d like to thank the following for participating as speakers at our Networking lunches, as well as our Special Evening Events in 2009:

This committee formalized the networking meetings by structuring content to support GreenLane’s mission statement of providing education, marketing, networking and sharing of resources. We created opportunities to facilitate network meetings, including a networking facilitator, speaker chair, chair of board announcements and educational minutes. Big Green Events, graciously donates space at Mallard Hall and is currently providing catering for our networking meetings. Big Green Events is a GreenLane member who supports local farms and local businesses.

The focus of the education committee has been how GreenLane can best fulfill the educational needs of our community. We’ve educated our members through networking meetings, attending various events, providing opportunities for major organizations such as the City of Eugene, the University of Oregon, the Springfield Chamber, to meet with GreenLane members and to focus community-wide alignment of goals as well as reaching out to identify what the members of GreenLane want in our community.

In April of 2009 the policy committee formed to formalize the Bylaws, establish policy through which each committee can operate, as well as implement standards for all GreenLane members to create legitimacy for the organization as a whole. In 2009, we researched the best tool for analyzing each member’s sustainability efforts, while creating opportunities for education along the way.  We identified a partner organization, B Corporation, to help us through this process.

We had our first meeting in July.  We immediately identified our focus on engaging members through discovering what members are doing around sustainability and how to promote their efforts.