美国红色保守阵营的绿色环保领袖

绿色环保成狩猎胜地新时尚

位置：南卡罗来纳州哥伦比亚

    南卡是共和党大本营。哥伦比亚市议员丹尼尔•瑞肯曼表示，南方人对环境保护主义持有独特的观点。

    “为环境保护事业做出贡献的往往是运动员、狩猎者和渔民。”

    瑞肯曼认为，要想让人们为环境保护贡献自己的力量，最重要的是要向他们表明，绿色事业具有很强的商业价值。瑞肯曼本人具有商业背景，曾在餐饮业工作过15年之久。

    最近，他帮忙成立了一家名为Waste2Energy的公司，该公司的目标是开发厌氧消化器材，用于从食余残渣中分解出有用的肥料。瑞肯曼表示，当地餐饮企业已提供了24，000吨餐饮垃圾，能为当地农民提供7，000吨有机肥料。

    他说，各种企业无论其政治倾向如何，对这种减少垃圾的方法都表示赞同。

    瑞肯曼说：“这日益成为一个日常的商业决策。”在过去的半年中，他一共参观了二十多家涉及食品生产和包装的企业，“我所到之处，听到的最时髦的词语都是‘零垃圾’。”

    瑞肯曼说：“不论是在哪个领域，每个人都在为环保事业出力。”

Hunter's orange is the new green

Location: Columbia, S.C.

    The South has always had its own breed of environmentalism, says Daniel Rickenmann, who is a Columbia city councilman in the very red state of South Carolina.

    "Most of the people who do a lot for the environment are sportsmen, hunters, and fisherman."

    The key to getting people on board, Rickenmann believes, is showing them that there's a strong business argument tied to green practices. Rickenmann has a business background himself, having worked in the restaurant industry for 15 years.

    Recently, he helped start a company called Waste2Energy that aims to build a device called an anaerobic digestor that can break down waste from restaurants into usable compost. Rickenmann says local businesses have already committed 24,000 tons of food waste, which should generate 7,000 tons of organic compost for local farmers to use.

    Businesses respond favorably to this kind of waste-reduction effort, regardless of political affiliation, he says.

    "I think it is becoming an everyday business decision," Rickenmann says. Over the past six months, he says he visited two dozen local businesses, from food manufacturers to packing companies, "and everywhere, the buzzwords were 'zero waste.'"

    "It doesn't matter what side of the spectrum it is, everybody's moving that way," Rickenmann says.