With more than four hundred member businesses and organizations statewide, Green Star has been helping Alaskans merge the bottom line with environmental conservation for nearly a decade. The familiar star logo displayed on windows and doors of award winning Green Star members will soon be joined by a second award logo for those who take on the challenge of promoting clean air. At a ceremony on the UAA campus on Tuesday, April 18, Green Star unveiled the new Green Star Air Quality Award. The award will go to businesses that take measures to reduce air emissions and increase efficiency – actions that not only help keep the air clean but may save them money and help avoid future development restrictions.

"We are excited about offering the new Green Star Air Quality Award. Green Star has been helping businesses save money by reducing wastes and preventing pollution for over ten years now," says Steve Shropshire, Green Star Board Member and 1990 President of the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce when Green Star was founded. "Focusing a new award on air quality gives Green Star businesses another level to rise to. It provides a new way to challenge businesses to be environmentally responsible and reduce waste. After all, air emissions are wastes, too, and what could be more important than the air we breathe."

Beginning in 1990 as a unique, cooperative effort between the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce, the Alaska Center for the Environment, and the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, Green Star is now a growing non-profit organization with chapters in seven other states. Taking on air quality issues in Anchorage was the next logical step for a group committed to improving both the environmental health and business climate of our community.

"Anchorage faces many air quality challenges," says Municipal Air Quality Program Manager Steve Morris. "Solving our air problems will require the efforts of many different people and organizations. We see the new Green Star Air Quality Award as an excellent way to help businesses reduce emissions in a very positive way."
The Green Star program is built around a set of voluntary standards. The original Green Star Award standards encourage waste reduction, recycling, and energy conservation. The new Air Quality Award standards add practices like taking the bus and carpooling, plugging in and maintaining vehicles properly, and reducing dust from parking lots.

For more information, call the Anchorage Green Star office at 278-7827 or e-mail greenstr@alaska.net.