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As long as the world is busy refining crude oil for gasoline and other petroleum products, it may as well try to maximize the benefits from the process.

That’s the aim of “cogeneration” plants, such as the newest one put into action by ExxonMobil in Antwerp, Belgium. The refinery there will capture heat from the refining process to generate electricity, “cogenerating” or making dual use of the refining process, according to a press release.

Slowing Down On The Farm: The Story Of The Straus Dairy

August 27th, 2008

By Catherine Girardeau

Marin County dairy farmer Albert Straus started moving toward a “slower” way of doing business back in 1994, when his family-owned farm, Straus Family Creamery, became the only organic dairy west of the Mississippi.

Straus, whose organic ice cream will be scooped out at the Ice Cream Pavilion at Slow Food Nation, has been producing organic milk, yogurt, butter and ice cream under the family name ever since. Straus grew up on his father’s conventional dairy farm in Marshall, California, a town so small it had a one-room schoolhouse, on the shores of Tomales Bay in western Marin County, 60 miles north of San Francisco. He joined the farm as a partner in 1977 and made the risky, but prescient decision to transition the operation from conventional to organic in the early 1990s.

“Someone approached me about doing organic milk for ice cream,” Straus said in an interview in a makeshift conference room above his dairy. “I had no clue what it was. It took me three-and-a-half years to figure out what “organic” meant. No one else was doing it. There was one small co-op in Wisconsin, Organic Valley, but that was it.”

San Francisco Leads Effort Among Cities To Get Commuters Onto Mass Transit

August 13th, 2008

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 measure requiring medium- and large-size city employers to promote — or even pay for — public transit or vanpools for their commuting employees.

It’s likely that many more American cities will follow San Francisco’s lead, particularly those cities that have signed on to the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement (USCPA), and pledged to reduce global warming pollution in their cities by 7 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2012. They will likely be scrambling to usher commuters from their cars and SUV’s and onto mass transit lines, an immediate and proven way of reducing urban smog.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom was an early adopter of the USCPA and the city has an ambitious climate action plan, so it’s no surprise that on August 5, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a commuter measure that would require many city employers to promote public transit or vanpools for their commuting employees. The Commuter Benefits ordinance, introduced by Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, would give San Francisco employers with more than 20 workers three options: pay for employees’ transit passes or vanpools; provide door-to-door shuttle or vanpools, or tap into the federal Commuter Checks program, which allows employees to create pretax commuter accounts.

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Related Topics: · Add new tag, Buses, Commuting, Greenhouse Gases, Mass Transit, Rail

The Princeton Review Features “Green Ratings”

July 29th, 2008

By Nima Kapadia
From degree options to the availability of financial aid and extracurricular activities, college applicants consider a variety of factors when choosing a school.
A college’s sustainability practices are becoming another key factor, and The Princeton Review is trying to help students and parents by including a new category of “green ratings” in its [...]