What are "Green Jobs"?

As part of my continuing outreach for DRCC's upcoming River festival, I talked with Melinda Nichols yesterday. Melinda works for Seattle Parks and Recreation in a summer youth employment program which educates youth ages 15 to 24 about urban forestry and related areas. She stated that no one knows what "green jobs" really are, but her students ask her "where's my Green job?". She said that the concept of "green jobs" is difficult because it isn't "real". She said that a first question to consider with respect to creating future "green jobs" is to ask "How can existing jobs be made greener?"

Her comments help me to remember all the many ways companies are trying to become more environmentally conscious and implement sustainable "green" practices that I learned about in Eco-sustainability last year. How can companies change their manufacturing processes so that they eliminate waste, and recycle everything they use? How can companies do the same in providing services to customers and clients?

Melinda also commented that forests in the Seattle area have been decimated by invasive foreign plants including ivy, laurel and blackberries. She said that in order to restore urban forests you can't just remove invasive plants and plant new ones. It's a process of adding back to nature, by adding in native plants and shrubs carefully. Her program gets 70,000 hours annually of volunteer time from volunteers. She also stated that the overall focus of her program is to "elevate their understanding of the world they live in, that this is their world". So part of their environmental education is to go on boat tours such as the DRCC tour of the Duwamish, and the tours by Seattle Pacific University of the Cedar River watershed. In addition her program tries to show its participants that they do have options for livable wage jobs in fields such as urban forestry, GPS, landscaping and construction.

Joyce