Article courtesy of the Adirondack Daily Enterprise

TUPPER LAKE - "Green" jobs have often been thought of as those associated with alternative energy or occupations such as organic farming, but for some, the scope is much wider than that.

On Monday, at the first-ever Adirondack Youth Climate Conference at The Wild Center in Tupper Lake, one of the ideas that came from a panel discussion on green jobs was that any job can essentially be green, and that it's more about one's consciousness in doing the job than the actual occupation.

"You just have to apply your environmental consciousness to whatever field you go into," said Celeste Bickford, a student at Saranac Lake High School. "I'm really interested in biology, and art is a really big focus of mine. So whatever I do end up choosing, I'm definitely going to apply a green aspect to that."

Perhaps the day's best example of how that idea can be applied to the job market was from Jen Webb, whose family owns and operates the Golden Arrow Hotel in Lake Placid. Webb was part of a six-person panel of North Country professionals who discussed green job opportunities. The panel ranged from Ian Ater, who owns a small organic farm in Keeseville, to Rich Kroes, who telecommutes from Lake Placid as part of his job as product strategy director for Oracle, an international software company that employees 85,000 people.

Webb talked about how her family took the initiative in 2005 to have a more sustainable hotel. Today, their efforts toward being sustainable range from having a comprehensive guest recycling program to a "living roof," which means they have soil and plants on a section of it that help with stormwater management and also with controlling temperatures in the building. The roof helps air in the building stay cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

All these sustainable practices wouldn't be possible without the input of staff, from the bottom up, Webb said.

"Usually when you're thinking of green jobs, front desk clerk of a hotel is not the first thing that comes to mind, (nor is) housekeeping, maintenance - but every job at the Golden Arrow is a green job," Webb said. "And the reason for that is because the employees are all experts in their various fields."

That theme that a "green job" can be found in nearly any field seemed to resonate with some of the attendees and organizers. Zachary Berger, who graduated from Lake Placid High School in June and conceived the idea for the Adirondack Youth Climate Conference, was impressed with Webb.

"She's turned her hotel into an amazing business with not only her being green, but all of her employees being green," Berger said. "In housekeeping, they all had to take the initiative to learn about green housekeeping. Her facilities managers have to take steps to have green pools and actually have a green roof. Just the fact that she turned all the jobs there into green jobs, that really struck me as powerful."

For Saranac Lake High School junior Meadow Hackett, the idea that struck her as interesting during the panel discussion was interconnectivity of technology and the environment, two things that can sometimes seem to be at odds. But technology allows options such as telecommuting, which can cut down on activities such as driving to work and therefore one's carbon footprint.

"I definitely thought it was interesting to hear about the software engineer from Oracle, because it's really cool to see how technology and the environment can be related, especially in this day and age because we're so focused on computers and everything that that entails," Hackett said. "Most people think of them as separate entities when they can be connected easily."

Wild Center Director of Programs Jen Kretser said the purpose of the panel discussion was to expose the students to a variety of jobs in the green market, which includes many opportunities that are in their infant stages.

"Here in the North Country, we have a real opportunity to take advantage of this growing green job sector," Kretser said. "We are looking at ways we can expose young people, which are really our next generation of leaders, to these different job markets. (We want to) give them the opportunity to see, what does it mean to be in building analysis? What does it mean to do research on wind power? What does mean it mean to start an organic farm?"

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Contact Mike Lynch at               (518) 891-2600         (518) 891-2600 ext. 28 or mlynch@adirondackdailyenterprise.com