The past semester we had the opportunity to work directly with Ryan Johnson who is a board member on the Arizona Green Chamber of Commerce. The goal of this project was to create a comprehensive database that compiled sustainable businesses all over Arizona. The efforts behind creating this is to encourage businesses to increase their efforts on sustainability initiatives, as well as having this information available for consumers to make wiser decisions on their shopping patterns. This is something which has already been seen in many cities around Arizona. They have certified businesses and ranked their efforts based on a point system they created. 

The biggest challenge we faced when carrying out this project was knowing how to rank sustainability efforts and how we could have broad enough criteria for various business industries. We decided to review all of the various criteria available that were being used by cities around the state and created a general point system based on effort on the areas applicable to sustainability. This was created into a google form that will be published on the AZ Green Chamber of Commerce website in order for businesses to apply to be featured in their database. Along with this, we automatically included businesses that were certified by other cities and included them in the featured page that will also be published on their website.

Overall this project helped build relationships, develop problem-solving skills, and critical thinking. The efforts put forth from the team reflected in the end project delivered to the Green Chamber of Commerce which was pleased with the results and will be available to the public in the near-future.  

 

Written by Samantha Rosales 

AZ Green Chamber of Commerce Fall 2019 Project Team: Samantha Rosales (Project Lead), Kevin Goddard, Olivia Kurschat, Mia Czarnecki

 

 

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