Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, BALLE, Conference

Last week I attended the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, BALLE, Conference in Denver. I sure was able to pack in some treats for this first time visit to Colorado included dinner at scrumptious vegetarian restaurant Watercourse Foods, (try the country fried gluten, you won’t be disappointed). I also made a quick visit to beautiful Boulder; dusty brown mountains surrounding quirky down-town.

The conference held a Manufacturer’s Summit at the New Belgium Brewing Company in Ft. Collins. Some of the topics we covered at the Summit included how to be local, global and responsible, and sustainability standards. I had a chance to talk to the group about our farm partnerships and sustainability staff training program.

The highlight of the trip, apart from spending time with friends and making new ones, was a tour of the New Belgium brewing facility. I have a new company crush! (I know it’s strange, but I get little crushes on cool companies that are doing well by doing good). The brewery itself has some really interesting green building features including: waste water bio-digester which produces around 20% of their natural gas needs, sun-tubes for part of their lighting, pine-beattle wood floors and staff photography for art in the plant. In addition to the neat-o green building features the atmosphere there hummed with creativity and playfulness. They even had community hula-hoops for anyone to use parked outside the front entrance, need I say more?

Enough for now. Stay tuned for my next blog post: an interview with Mary Rick, program director at BALLE.