Green, with Envy

What makes a lawn care company, such as mine, "green"? Is it the use of battery powered equipment? The water conservation practices I provide to my customers? Or is it the composting of the green waste I collect from my weekly en devours that allows me to promote Ecoscapes as a friend of the environment? In part, I guess all of these make Ecoscapes greener than the other guys. But does that really make me "green"?

I do, after all, need to do a little bit of travel to visit each customer. This requires a truck, which consumes fuel and adds to the same carbon emission levels I'm trying to reduce. Also, the batteries in my equipment aren't charged by the sun. They're plugged in nightly at my office, pulling resources from the power grid which more than likely generates its energy from the burning of fossil fuels. There is a lot to take into consideration to be considered "green".

I considered each of these factors when I formulated the concept behind Ecoscapes of Las Vegas. I want to be the greenest of the green. The gold standard for the environmental services I offer. I'm not doing it to get in on the latest fad. I am doing it because I genuinely care about the world we live in. I have been a passive environmentalist all of my life and now I have the opportunity to do something to actually help. But, would there be a market for it in Las Vegas?

The answer, I learned quickly, was that there wasn't. At least not for a Sierra Club certified company like I was proposing. Most potential customers who are willing to sacrifice certain details of a truly hardcore environmental lawn care company, would probably not agree with the mode of transportation needed to get the people and machines to their homes and would simply haul the man powered push mower out each weekend to cut their lawns themselves. Or, being that "its a desert out there", wouldn't have much to maintain in the first place.

A good business professional may not agree, but I decided that I wasn't willing to compromise my position towards protecting the environment. Maybe I needed to re-think my approach. After looking around and evaluating the potential competition, I decided that my services were as good, if not better than anything that was out there. So why did I need to solely promote my "green" side when I could simply show people that being green did not mean compromising having green?

And thus, Ecoscapes of Las Vegas was born. Our slogan, "Lawn care is our business, the environment is our concern" is more than just a marketing ploy. The most hardcore environmentalist may take issue with a couple things, but at the core of everything thing we do is the belief that we are truly making the place in which we live a better place. And to us, that count for something.