Welcome to Charleston Green Source, your one stop resource for green living in and around Charleston and South Carolina's Low Country. We offer a comprehensive business directory of Green Businesses, a calendar of local green events, links to green organizations, and a guide for Local, State, and Federal tax incentives and credits.
Some of the resources you will find on this site include local venders and providers of alternative and renewable energy sources, organic and locally grown foods, sustainable development and building, native plants and landscaping, biofuels, socially and environmentally responsible financial services and eco-tourism. We are also a directory of businesses providing environmentally friendly "stuff" and much much more...
Thanks for visiting Charleston Green Source, your local source for low impact living!
A free service of CharlestonGreenSource.com!
Interested in tracking your energy usage? We're pleased to announce the availability of a free online energy tracking tool. The free website, named GreenQuest, is a personal energy dashboard that enables community members to track and analyze energy use for their home or place of business.
Using this software, community residents can track their energy use and cost; compare their building with its peers; evaluate energy saving projects; track their carbon footprint; analyze energy use with AccuWeather weather data; and as an option, obtain an ENERGY STAR building rating (for commercial buildings)
more information
Show me the green...in dollars and energy!
Charleston was recently one of five communities selected to initiate a Green Business Challenge (GBC). The GBC is a voluntary program designed for a broad group of businesses and institutions to consider ways to make their own businesses more environmentally sustainable. Charleston is one of five cities across the country selected by the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) to establish a GBC.
The goals of the voluntary Charleston's Green Business Challenge are to improve environmental performance of commercial and institutional buildings and their operations. Three key elements are reducing a businesses' use of energy, waste and water.
more information
A few suggestions to green your life...but there's so much more!
It's easy to jump on the green bandwagon, but this is not something new and trendy that will make us cool today. Being green is a way of life that many of our parents and grandparents embraced while we thought they were being cheap. Remember how they always turned out the lights and reused those paper bags until they were falling apart? If you don't then your Mom and Grandma were of the consumer mentality that became the norm in the second half of the 20th century. We are now having to re-adjust our thinking to remember our conservative roots. By conservative I'm not talking politics, but the need to be good stewards and conserve our resources.
Fortunately today's awareness of the need for sustainability along with new technology makes it easier for us to live an even greener life than our conservation minded forebearers. Architecture students are taught as part of their regular curriculum to use sustainable materials, take advantage of renewable energy sources, natural lighting, good site planning, and not waste products. "Green" developers not only use green building methods, but work with engineers and consultants on their site plans to save trees and native plants which require less watering and pesticides while incorporating better methods of drainage that do not cause excessive run-off such as pervious hardscape and driveway materials and rain gardens...
more information
