By Tim Sanders
From SandersSays.com
A recent article in the York Daily Record (The Meaning Of Green) points out how hard it is for consumers to really know they are buying from a ‘green’ company.
Research for my new book (Saving The World At Work, Sept. 16 launch) indicates that many of us want to spend our money [...]
Tags: Blogs · Business · Greener Businesses
By Barbara Kessler
Worried about the stacks of duplicated reports and reprinted Power Points that get passed around at meetings? Maybe you are, maybe you aren’t. But as companies assess the carbon impact of their activities, the paper-choked meeting is becoming an issue, and a UK company is in the wings with the solution: an [...]
Tags: At Work · Briefs · Greener Businesses · Model Projects
By John DeFore
Just because a green initiative pops up in the news doesn’t mean it’s new. Take a blurb in this month’s Food & Wine that puts Rhum Clément’s Première Canne Rum at the head of a list of eco-friendly spirits.
The item touted a green-extreme sounding manufacturing process that is powered by its own [...]
Tags: Briefs · Food · Greener Businesses
By Catherine Girardeau
Let’s face it: Solo car commuters increase both traffic congestion and a city’s carbon footprint.
In San Francisco, those gas-hogging lone drivers soon will be get a clear message to switch to greener forms of transportation, such as buses, train transit and van pools. Earlier this month, the city preliminarily approved a commuter [...]
Tags: At Work · Cities/States · Greener Businesses · Other Transport
By John DeFore
An item in the New York Times last week served as a good wrap-up of recent developments on the LED front, finding places (beyond traffic lights) where light emitting diodes are getting a toehold as replacements for less energy-efficient lights.
But does it, in newspaper terms, “bury the lead”?
Tags: Briefs · Energy/Water · Greener Businesses
By Lynette Holloway
The other day, at the swank Blue Water Grill in downtown Chicago, chef Eric Kendrick held a treasure trove of
Photo by Terri O’Hara
Chef Eric Kendrick and a bumper crop of locally grown food.
vegetables in a huge amber bowl. The haul, plucked fresh from a local farmer’s market, included deep purple torpedo onions, colorful [...]
Tags: GET INSPIRED · Greener Businesses
First branch banking, then online banking, now for act three: Keeping your green in a vault known for its green.
Two Philadelphia bankers with notable environmental experience have announced the formation of e3bank, believed to be the first green “triple bottom line” bank on the East Coast. Everything from the organization’s infrastructure to its product and [...]
Tags: Briefs · Cut Consumption · Greener Businesses
By John DeFore
The collection of world leaders known as G8 may be taking baby steps on cutting greenhouse emissions (the Union of Concerned Scientists called their recent meeting a “sideshow”) with its goal of a 50 percent reduction by 2050 instead of the 80 percent most scientists agreed is needed.
This week Exelon, an electric-energy [...]
Tags: Briefs · Energy/Water · Greener Businesses
By Barbara Kessler
Wal-Mart Stores is joining the Global Forest & Trade Network (GFTN), World Wildlife Fund’s initiative to save the world’s most valuable and threatened forests. The giant retailer also announced this week that it is moving toward making some of the jewelry it sells meet standards for sustainability and social responsibility.
Tags: Briefs · Dress/Decor · Greener Businesses · SHOP GREEN
By Barbara Kessler
Green pest control might sound like an oxymoron to some green devotees who believe in the “live and let live” mantra, or organic gardeners who appreciate that good pests and bad pests balance each other in nature.
Still, there’s the pest you can live with and the one you can’t. Some pests, like weeds, [...]
Tags: Greener Businesses · SHOP GREEN
By Catherine Colbert
Photo: Veruska 1960 | Dreamstime.com
Backyard barbecues and Shakespeare in the Park picnics are the perfect opportunities to whet one’s whistle. But before you pack your cooler or portable wine or tea party, consider ways you can enjoy your favorite beverages – during the holidays and yearlong – while also caring for the [...]
Tags: Food · Greener Businesses · SHOP GREEN
By Catherine Colbert
You sent out your Evite and now you’re working hard to make sure your house is ready for the crowd. Before you put pen to paper to create the menu for your next get-together, pour yourself a tall one, sip some Syrah, or have a spot of tea and relax. Beverage manufacturers [...]
Tags: Food · Greener Businesses · SHOP GREEN
By John DeFore
For a movie that explicitly addresses the perils of overconsumption, Pixar’s WALL*E is being used to promote an awful lot of consumer products.
One tie-in in particular is rankling Greenpeace. It seems that the lovable robot’s image has popped up on boxes of Kleenex, a product the activist group has criticized with a “Kleercut” campaign that asserts, “it takes 90 years to grow a box of Kleenex” because the product’s manufacturer Kimberly-Clark “all but refuses to use recycled paper in its products.” (Among other things, they’re trying to get parents and teachers to reject the company’s tissues in classrooms.) [Read more →]
By John DeFore
Mitsubishi Electric announced Wednesday that it will quadruple its capability to produce solar cells, jumping from the 150 megawatts it currently produces each year to an annual 600MW capacity by 2012 — a more ambitious goal than its previously stated one to get to 500 MW by 2013. Current production levels are already triple what they were four years ago. [Read more →]
Residents of the Dallas/Fort Worth metro area will again get a chance to trade in their pollution-emitting old clunker for a newer, less polluting car with the help of state money.
The North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) reports that it has about $12 million for the second year of the AirCheckTexas Drive a Clean Machine campaign, which began taking applications in mid-August. [Read more →]
For those yearning to hear more about the Democrats’ energy plans, Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s vigorous 
speech Tuesday night at the Democratic National Convention in Denver opened a more detailed dialogue on the subject.
Schweitzer, a first-term Democratic governor who chose a Republican lieutenant governor, called for “a new energy system that is clean, green and American-made.” He lamented U.S. dependence on foreign oil and what he labeled the Bush Administration’s single-minded focus on drilling to extract more oil, not just abroad but also domestically. [Read more →]
By John DeFore
The changing schedules of fall foliage may be a headache for nature lovers who time their forest vacations to maximize viewing of autumnal reds and oranges. But they could be good for the environment those travelers set out to enjoy.
According to a new article in the journal Global Change Biology, a team led by Michigan Tech forestry professor David F. Karnosky has established that increased levels of atmospheric CO2 “act directly to delay the usual autumn spectacle of changing colors and falling leaves in northern hardwood forests.” [Read more →]
By Nima Kapadia
J.C. Penn
ey Company has announced plans to expand its renewable energy program with solar and wind projects that will provide electricity in 10 stores and one distribution center. In addition to these initiatives, J.C. Penney will also seek Energy Star certification for 200 stores by 2011.
“Hosting these solar and wind projects will add to our knowledge of the benefits and potential applications of renewable energy programs at our facilities,” said Mike Ullman III, J.C. Penney’s chairman and chief executive officer. [Read more →]
By John DeFore
Last Wednesday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced his desire to turn the city into a wind-power titan, sprinkling the city with turbines and building huge wind farms off the coasts of Brooklyn, 
Queens and Long Island.
Speaking at the National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas, he issued a formal request encouraging green power entrepreneurs to submit plans for a range of sustainable energy projects. But what got the most attention was the suggestion that “perhaps companies will want to put windfarms atop our bridges and skyscrapers, [Read more →]
By John DeFore
Saturday marked the end of a tour hoping to convince Americans that hydrogen-fueled cars are not as far away from practicality as we might think.
The Hydrogen Road Tour ‘08 was an explicit (if partial) answer to the lament “what does it matter if I can buy a hydrogen car, if I can’t get fuel for it?”: Starting in Portland, Maine and ending in Los Angeles, the varied cars in this caravan covered the continent while running entirely on hydrogen. [Read more →]
By John DeFore
The New York State Fair began yesterday in Syracuse, and while many of us associate such events mainly with deep-fried food and concerts by (ahem) bands whose stars have faded, this fair may also debut a future star: An early version of an electric car whose makers think it could win a $10 million prize — and get 100 mpg. [Read more →]
In yet another indictment of industrial farming methods and another threat to fish, researchers are reporting vast growth of ocean “dead zones.” Once rare, dead zones are multiplying and now total more than 400 around the world’s coastal waters, putting stresses on marine life by upsetting the underwater food chain, according to an August article in the journal Science. [Read more →]
