A man of (lights, camera,) action
Chuck Schwartz (left) of LI Green is hoping to expand his professional relationship with VP Joe Lapiana and New Media Marketing.
By Z
So who should beam aboard the New Media mothership today but one of the hardest-working men in show biz, Chuck Schwartz. Chuck, friend of New Media VP Joe Lapiana and oodles of environmental causes, was down the street visiting Wales-Darby headquarters and dropped in for a quick how-do.
Chuck is director of LI Green, a Stony Brook-based nonprofit aiming to improve energy efficiency in thousands of Long Island homes. In tandem with the Suffolk County Energy Alliance and several influential friends inside Stony Brook University, Bethpage Federal Credit Union and Suffolk County’s corridors of power, LI Green champions construction projects that stimulate both energy efficiency and economic development.
Now, you can’t swing a Toyota Prius without hitting an Island nonprofit engaged in a similar mission. But none of those parallel associations is more effective than LI Green, which Chuck describes as “more of an in-the-trenches organization.”
That makes gobs of sense if you understand LI Green’s two primary functions. The group performs free energy audits that help Island homeowners create more comfortable conditions while reducing utility costs – even lining up “approved implementation partners” to do the renovation work and arranging “below-market financing if appropriate,” according to www.ligreen.com.
LI Green also operates the LI Green Drinks networking program, and no, that doesn’t mean they serve only wheat juice and grasshoppers. Green Drinks is all about business-to-business awareness-building for people who deal in “green” – clean techs, environmental engineers, ecologically sensitive builders, “a whole gambit of professionals,” Chuck says, “from energy to food.”
They meet about four times per month at six established locations around Long Island, and Chuck eagerly hopes to add a seventh to the rotation: Wales-Darby HQ. That’s one of two things bringing him to Islandia this morning; the other was his burgeoning television career.
It seems LI Green recently performed a Free Home Energy Study at the Nassau County residence of an independent TV producer who, it turns out, was developing a new program about cost-effective, energy-efficient home renovations. The producer was taken with LI Green and asked Chuck to appear in the pilot, discussing boiler efficiency against the backdrop of Wales-Darby’s glittering Energy Learning Center.
“Wales-Darby has the most amazing space on Long Island for energy technologies,” Chuck notes. “It’s a great background for the work we’re doing and for what they hope to promote on the show.”
If the pilot is picked up and becomes a series, Chuck could be a regular contributor – a technical-expert sort who pops up to discuss greening techniques. “Like Bill Nye the Science Guy,” he says, “only focused on energy efficiency.”
For now, the future reality-TV star continues to happily spread the word about his group and its good deeds. While LI Green is not officially a New Media client, Chuck’s had peripheral contact with Joe Lap about a few marketing details and is already envisioning a more substantial relationship, including involving New Media in a Green Drinks event at Wales-Darby this fall.
“That’s what it’s all about – marketing,” Chuck says. “Networking. If we’re going to be successful at growing this green-renovation marketplace – it’s still in its infancy – we’ve got to start thinking strategically. The market is so broad, and we need to start thinking about it as a whole.
“We’ve got to work together to do that,” he adds. “And right now, that still isn’t happening as much as it needs to.”