How Practically Green Started

Back in 2007, while embroiled in a major green home renovation/life make-over, Susan Hunt Stevens realized that she needed help to answer a few simple questions:  How green are we? How green do we want to be? How do we get there? How do we stay within our budget? How do we keep from being overwhelmed? How do I find other people who are doing this? What’s their advice? And, in our dimmest moments, what difference are we really making? And, if I do all this, what results can I expect?

Susan’s MBA wasn’t helping answer these practical questions, so she enrolled in a graduate sustainable design program at the Boston Architectural College and learned about LEED, an assessment and points system for building green. She began to think about a similar concept for real people and their daily lives. That became the foundation for Practically Green.

What is Practically Green?

The vision for Practically Green is to provide simple and useful tools to help people live green.

Living green means living thoughtfully and living healthy. It means getting rid of the bad stuff in our food and air. It means saving energy—and often, money. Living green is about reducing waste, preserving clean water, and making choices that are good for us, our kids, and our planet.

We say “practically green” because we know we’re all busy.  We know change is hard. We know green can be confusing.  We also think perfectly green isn’t always practical.  Just try explaining to your parents that you can’t fly to see them because it isn’t good for the environment.

We believe that living green is more fun when we share recommendations and experiences with each other. It’s easier to make choices when friendly experts are just a click away. Simple assessment tools can help people understand the benefits of green lifestyle decisions and track the progress they are making. At Practically Green, people are encouraged and inspired to just try one more green thing.

Finally, we know some of the benefits of being green are hard to see and yet, we want to know that all our efforts are worth it.   So we’ve added in rewards, recognition and feedback to give us ways to celebrate progress.

Welcome…and stay tuned.

Welcome to the Practically Green community! We are so glad you’re here.

This blog is just the beginning. We‘ll roll out more tools and features over the course of the year. Please let us know what you think, what you like, what could be better.

Together, we’ll all have more fun, and more positive impact, living Practically Green.