Photo: The Japanese Garden in Van Nuys. Part of the Tillman Sewage Treatment Plant.
Want to earn $2,500? Write a 500 word or less essay on living green for “Greenlight Financial”:
“Greenlight Financial Services, a leading direct-to-consumer mortgage lender, has launched an essay contest to create awareness and promote healthy and sustainable living. The winner will receive a $2,500 cash.
Greenlight is inviting consumers to write about why it’s “Good To Live Green” as it relates to protecting the environment in the home, office, school or auto. Entries of 500 words or less will be judged on creativity, articulation and strength of theme. The essays must be submitted through www.greenlightloans.com by July 20, 2006, and winners will be announced the week of August 7, 2006.
We would like to drive awareness to environmental issues and use a platform that is not only beneficial to our community but also for our earth. “It has always been a priority of Greenlight’s to give back to the community,” said Joann Pham, CEO of Greenlight Financial Services. “It’s important to us to take a leadership role and create a dialogue with our customers on this very important issue of the environment. Positive change comes through the flow of ideas and we hope that all our customers will submit an essay.”
Here in Van Nuys 
All things being equal, yes, homeowners are more likely to purchase a detached single-family house than a unit in a multifamily building or a rowhouse–simply because single-family houses are almost never built with the intent of rental, while multifamily housing often is.
That said, encouraging homeownership doesn’t necessarily have to contribute to urban sprawl. Homeownership rates are very high in Japan and Korea, for example, and yet you don’t see anything that remotely resembles American-style sprawl in those places. Gas-wasting sprawl ultimately derives more from low-density zoning and underpriced automobile travel (especially parking) than from the availability of mortgages.
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Well the best revenge would be to write an essay and win. All the polluters take a sanctimonious and hypocritical stand on the environment. Look at Mobil, Shell, Ford, GM.
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here’s the irony: that twenty-five hundred is probably about a fifth of what they gouge the unwitting mortgage consumer (read 90% of mortgage consumers)…”Greenlight Financial–making the world more inhabitable for the folks we one ay hope to rip off…”
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You’ve got the
greenwash.
This contest is an attempt to build brand awareness and market share under the guise of a sanctimonious commitment to helping the “environment.”
For just the promise of a $2,500 downside plus costs to promote the contest, Greenlight can continue making millions by enabling a lifestyle of overconsuming land, materials and energy.
The biggest contribution Greenlight could make to the environment is to go out of business.
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