Big Glasses - What’s in A Name?

I’ve been in sustainability since 2004 when the magic of green building — construction that rides easier on the planet than code-built bricks and mortar — cast its spell on me. I wrote an article about the first LEED certification for a historic building in downtown Denver. Over the next few years, I racked up green certifications until a partner and I opened a green real estate development company in 2010.

Fast forward to 2018, COVID had closed the world for business as usual, including our business.

In the early aughts in Houston, I had serendipitously bought an antique green worktable with fold-up legs and a handle underneath for easier carrying. The heavy table has old spots where its deep clover-green paint had been worn through to wood grain by (no doubt) actual manual labor, and I and others had waxed over it all, adding layers to its patina and history. It was the only piece of furniture I had with me, other than a desk chair. Everything else was in storage because I was living with a friend. I hadn’t used the table since the time we started our green company, and I’d folded it up and stored it under furniture blankets since it didn’t fit in any of my living quarters.

In 2018, I also began a graduate degree in sustainability, and pretty quickly, my green desk was covered over with paper and real books, way too much of both for a master’s of sustainability student. More books and paper in every direction on the floor made my green desk an island that I had to gingerly step into to get to work.

“Well, duhhh,” an alum lawyer friend said after seeing the photo on Facebook of my desk afloat in a sea of paper. “You have a green desk.” That was it — Greendesk. Or so I thought. One word - trademark. As you can imagine, every other business in ESG and sustainability is named “green (something)”.

After several email exchanges with my attorney, screen after screen of lawyerly and worryingly expensive objections to every business name I spitballed, I was overwhelmed. What the he— was I going to call my business? I rolled over in bed and saw them - my big glasses, reading glasses I take everywhere on my nightstand.

That was it - Big Glasses Consulting. No conflict there with anyone else on the planet in sustainability or ESG.

Like our name, we think creatively, bringing imaginative, unique solutions and approaches to the ESG challenges we’re all now confronted with. At Big Glasses, we provide our clients with nothing less.