Category Archives: Sustainability

How Green Careers Are Changing Every Industry and How You Can Join In

Posted on Friday, 21 August, 2026 by | Leave a comment

By Oliver Lambert

Students choosing majors, mid-career professionals considering a pivot, and hiring managers updating job descriptions are seeing the same shift: green careers growth is no longer confined to energy or conservation. The challenge is that eco-friendly job roles and environmental responsibility jobs often hide inside familiar titles, making it hard to tell which skills matter and where the opportunities are real. As the sustainability impact across industries accelerates, more teams are expected to reduce waste, manage resources responsibly, and report progress in plain business terms. A clear view of the career shift to sustainability helps people spot where their industry is changing and what that change demands.

Understanding Sustainability in Everyday Business

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Posted in Careers, Ecopreneurship, Education, Sustainability, Technology

How Everyday Work Habits Can Boost Your Career and Help the Planet

Posted on Wednesday, 25 February, 2026 by | Leave a comment

By Dean Burgess, Excitepreneur

Environmental advocates and community planners often carry climate anxiety into the workday, then hit a familiar wall: big goals, tight budgets, and slow coordination can make impact feel distant. The challenge isn’t caring, it’s translating that urgency into choices that fit real calendars, real teams, and real constraints. Sustainable work habits make progress visible and repeatable, while technology for sustainability can turn routine decisions into measurable momentum. The payoff is steadier confidence, stronger credibility at work, and a more consistent positive environmental impact.

Quick Summary: Career Growth Through Sustainability

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Posted in Carbon Footprint, Climate Anxiety, CO2 Mitigation, Community, CRCS, Ecopreneurship, Energy, Sustainability

How Remote Work Is Quietly Reshaping Our Environmental Footprint

Posted on Sunday, 21 December, 2025 by | Leave a comment

Photo by Ian Harber on Unsplash

By Dean Burgess, Excitepreneur

When millions began working from home, few realized that the shift might quietly redefine our personal relationship with the planet. Commuter traffic thinned, cities grew quieter, and households began humming with a different kind of energy demand. Today, as hybrid and fully remote work become the norm, the environmental consequences—both positive and complex—are coming into focus.

Key Takeaways at a Glance

  • Remote work drastically reduces daily commuting emissions but increases home energy usage.
  • Household electricity and heating patterns now shape individual carbon footprints more than travel.
  • Paperless workflows and digital tools can meaningfully cut waste.
  • Eco-friendly home offices multiply the benefits of remote work when combined with renewable energy and efficiency upgrades.
  • Sustainability is not automatic—it depends on conscious personal choices.

The Double-Edged Carbon Equation

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Posted in Carbon Footprint, Community, Ecopreneurship, Getting Started, Sustainability

Planning a Stylish, Sustainable Wedding Without Compromise

Posted on Friday, 26 September, 2025 by | Leave a comment

Image by Freepik

By Dean Burgess, Excitepreneur

Choosing sustainability for your wedding doesn’t mean sacrificing elegance. It means caring—about waste, about impact, about memories that last beyond the day. Whether you’re deep in planning or just beginning, there are grounded, effective ways to reduce environmental strain while honoring your values and keeping things visually stunning. This guide walks through seven essential decisions, each with a practical shift that cuts excess without cutting style. You don’t need to reinvent your wedding. Just rethink the standard defaults.

Rethink Where and How You Host

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Posted in Green Wedding, Sustainability

Everyday Tech for a Greener, More Sustainable Lifestyle

Posted on Tuesday, 2 September, 2025 by | Leave a comment

Image via Pexels

By Dean Burgess, Excitepreneur

In a world where technology often feels like a double-edged sword, it’s refreshing to see how everyday devices can actually support a more sustainable way of living. The key is to think of tech not as a luxury, but as a tool to reduce waste, save energy, and minimize your impact. From your home to your personal habits, even small changes can ripple outward when powered by the right gadgets. As we all grapple with the urgent need for sustainability, everyday tech provides both practical solutions and a sense of control over our choices. In this guide, we’ll explore how to make the most of what’s already at your fingertips to live a little lighter on the planet — without giving up modern convenience.

Automate Energy Use With Smart Home Devices

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Posted in CRCS, Sustainability, Technology

Building a Smarter, Greener Home from Start to Finish

Posted on Tuesday, 15 July, 2025 by | 1 comment

Image by Freepik

By Dean Burgess, Excitepreneur

Creating a modern home that’s both eco-conscious and smart-enabled isn’t just a trend. It’s a design evolution that blends sustainability with control, efficiency, and long-term savings. Whether you’re building from scratch or remodeling your current space, combining eco-friendly principles with innovative technologies offers a unique kind of payoff: lower energy bills, a smaller environmental footprint, and a more intuitive living space. Let’s walk through seven foundational layers that shape an eco-smart home, starting with the materials that make up its shell.

Start With Sustainable Materials That Insulate and Breathe

Forget fiberglass and foam boards. Today’s high-performance insulation is smarter and more natural. Take cork, for example. Harvested without cutting down trees, cork is biodegradable, renewable, and impressively effective at regulating temperature and sound. A London homeowner recently chose to wrap their entire house in natural cork insulation solutions, creating a cozy shell that breathes. Unlike synthetic materials, cork adapts to changes in moisture and temperature, reducing the risk of mold and stabilizing indoor comfort. For anyone designing an eco-smart shell, that’s a triple win.

Digital Paperwork, Real Control Continue reading →

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Posted in Energy, Green Construction, Local Entreprenurship, Sustainability

Building Green from the Ground Up: Crafting a Sustainable Business and Marketing Plan

Posted on Tuesday, 10 June, 2025 by | 1 comment

Image: Freepik

By Dean Burgess

Starting a business today means thinking beyond profit. If you want to build something that actually matters—something that lasts—you’ve got to take sustainability seriously from the start. It’s not just about the environment either; it’s about ethics, longevity, and aligning with a growing base of conscious consumers who demand more from the brands they support. Designing an eco-friendly business model and a marketing plan to match isn’t just a smart move—it’s becoming the only move that makes sense.

Rethink Your Supply Chain

Take a hard look at every link in your supply chain, from raw materials to delivery. If you’re serious about sustainability, that means digging deep into where your resources come from, how they’re made, and how they’re transported. Work with suppliers who share your values, even if it means spending a bit more at the outset—because cutting corners here undercuts everything else. Keep it local where possible, and cut out unnecessary waste at each step. Continue reading →

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Posted in CRCS, Local Entreprenurship, Regenerative Development, Sustainability

How to Build a Water-Wise Yard That Doesn’t Look Like a Desert

Posted on Thursday, 22 May, 2025 by | Leave a comment

Image by Freepik

By Dean Burgess

Start here: your lawn is thirsty, overworked, and wildly out of step with the world it’s living in. That lush, endless green might look good in a magazine, but it’s guzzling water like a 1970s Cadillac. If you’re serious about building a yard that saves water without sacrificing style, you’ll need to rethink everything—what you plant, how you irrigate, even who you call when the hose starts leaking. It’s not just a cosmetic shift. It’s a full reset.

Think Native, Think Thriving

The first move? Ditch the high-maintenance imports and start planting with purpose. Native plants are a smart choice because they’ve evolved to survive exactly where you are. No pampering, no chemical cocktails, no wasting gallons trying to keep them alive through a hot July. These are the kinds of plants that hold their own against drought and still manage to put on a show—goldenrod, milkweed, echinacea, and more. You’ll end up with a yard that buzzes with bees and butterflies instead of resentment. Continue reading →

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Posted in CRCS, Gardening, Getting Started, Sustainability

Start Where Your Feet Are: Taking Real Action for What Matters to You

Posted on Monday, 5 May, 2025 by | Leave a comment

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By Dean Burgess

It’s easy to feel like you’ve done your part, especially in the age of armchair activism. But if you’ve ever felt the disconnect between your values and your daily choices, you’re not alone—and you’re not powerless. Taking real, tangible action for the causes that matter to you doesn’t require being loud or perfect or running for office; it just takes showing up where you are, as you are.

Listen Before You Leap

It’s tempting to dive headfirst into advocacy, especially when a cause hits close to home. But if you want to create change that actually lands, your first step should be listening—not speaking. Talk to the people most affected, attend town halls, join local groups doing the work, and ask questions without assuming you already know the answers. You’ll learn fast that showing up with humility makes you a much more useful ally than showing up with a bullhorn.

Find the Cracks That Need Filling Continue reading →

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Posted in Climate Change, Community, Getting Started, Regenerative Development, Sustainability

Executive Director’s Year-End Letter

Posted on Monday, 16 December, 2019 by | Leave a comment

The Climate Crisis and What We’re Doing About It

Financing the Transition to a Regenerative Economy
With the Aim of Restoring the Climate and the Earth

Download PDF version of our year-end letter here

Executive Director’s Year-End Letter 2019

“Being alive right now means rethinking boundaries, pushing on the walls of your imagination. It means feeling around in this world for another one.” (Dan Zak, “Everything is Not Going to Be Okay: How to Live with Constant Reminders that the Earth Is in Trouble,” Washington Post)

Dear Friends and Supporters,

2019 has been a pretty tumultuous year for us, including both substantial achievements and disappointing setbacks. The good news is that Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) legislation is on its way in New Jersey, with both the Legislature and the Governor endorsing some version of this long-awaited financing tool. We expect PACE to be operational in 2020, and it could be as early as first quarter.

The first version of PACE legislation was introduced and passed into law in 2011; unfortunately it was flawed, and the Christie Administration took advantage of these flaws to block any meaningful action. Our organization, operating as New Jersey PACE, has been seeking to amend this law for more than seven years, during which time we co-authored at least three prior versions that were rejected. While in retrospect it seems unreal, there were good reasons to believe that PACE could be implemented in each of these years, despite the resistance of the banking industry and of the Governor’s staff at the time.

Evolving and Expanding the PACE Model

But since PACE is still not available in New Jersey (and many other jurisdictions), we continue to seek demonstration projects for the two alternative clean energy financing approaches that we have developed in partnership with structured finance experts, including a major NJ social impact investment fund. Once successfully piloted, these “PACE/Alternatives,”* as we’ve called them, including our New InterCreditor Clean Energy (NICCE, pronounced “nice”) and Deed-registered Renewables & Energy Efficiency Measures (DREEM), will provide commercial property owners anywhere in the US with access to PACE-like financing, regardless of whether PACE is allowed in their jurisdiction.

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Posted in Climate Change, Cohousing, Community, Contribute, CRCS, Energy, G4CM, Global Issues, New Jersey, News, NJPACE, Nonprofit Activities, Regenerative Development, Sustainability, Transformation