Chautauqua Climate Change Initiative: November 2024
In 2014 Junk Free Skin began in a small retail space in Buffalo, New York, where the founders set out to create a bath and body line using clean ingredients and truly sustainable, plastic-free packaging at an affordable price. Today the company is a thriving manufacturing facility equipped with the latest technologies and delivering products nationwide. If you visited Chautauqua this past summer, you may have picked up a free sample of their foaming hand soap at the Chautauqua Climate Change Initiative (CCI) table on Bestor Plaza.
I got to see Junk Free Skin’s founder, Tom Akers, at the Western New York Sustainable Business Roundtable (WNYSBR) annual summit mid-November. WBYSBR is a collaborative of public and private sector organizations working together to demonstrate how businesses can integrate sustainability into their operations to benefit staff, the environment and their bottom line. Tom and I spent the day with dozens of businesses and institutions from across Western New York (WNY) who are charting a sustainable future for the region and reviving the economy in the process.
Another home-grown sustainability initiative helping to transform the region is RetoolWNY based out of Jamestown. With the tagline of “build it here, build it clean,” RetoolWNY is working to raise awareness of economic opportunities for cleantech companies, and encourage the development and expansion of climate-related technology businesses in the region.
With billions of dollars of planned and potential clean tech investment on the horizon — ranging from hydrogen fuel to advanced batteries to solar panels — what’s good for the climate is also good for business.
For the past couple of years, Chautauqua Institution has collaborated with RetoolWNY and WNYSBR to showcase the role that businesses can play in building a climate resilient and prosperous future for our region.
In July 2023, we hosted Going Green: Growing Our Workforce, Our Community & Our Economy. This forum featured manufacturers, workforce training experts and sustainability leaders from across the WNY region who focused on innovative workforce recruitment and training programs that can help build opportunities in the climate tech/clean tech sectors.
In 2024 we hosted The Circular Economy: Working Toward a Waste-Free World. This forum featured experts from the Center for Sustainable Materials Management, Subaru, Inc. and Finger Lakes Reuse, who focused on how businesses are successfully reducing and eliminating landfill waste, benefiting the climate and their bottom line.
Chautauqua isn’t just talking the sustainability talk, we’re walking the walk. We took a big step forward in May when the board of trustees adopted a resolution calling on the Institution to develop a climate action plan that essentially brings the greenhouse gases emitted by our operations down to zero by 2050, a goal that aligns with New York State’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act as well as dozens of businesses and institutions in our region. On our website you’ll find details of the board’s resolution and Institution’s action letter.
At the start of the historic 2024 season, President Michael Hill issued a letter on behalf of Chautauqua Institution leadership accepting the board’s challenge and pledging to reach the “net-zero carbon” goal within 20 years. As president Hill stated, “… we believe in the power and potential of Chautauqua to tackle these challenges and help shape a sustainable future.”
We have a long journey ahead on the road to net-zero carbon, and we hope many of you will come along with us. Stay tuned for opportunities to engage as our process takes shape in the months ahead. In the meantime, rest assured that, as so many businesses and institutions in our region have already discovered, being a sustainability leader isn’t just good climate sense, it’s good business sense.
