Set sprinklers to water the lawn or garden only - not the street or sidewalk.
Use the microwave to cook small meals. (It uses less power than an oven.)
Purchase "Green Power" for your home's electricity. (Contact your power supplier to see where and if it is available.)
Scrape, rather than rinse, dishes before loading into the dishwasher; wash only full loads.
Cut back on air conditioning and heating use if you can.
Turn off appliances and lights when you leave the room.
Catalog mailings are nearing full swing now, with mailboxes being deluged by hefty full-color enticements to get that Christmas shopping done by phone.
Obviously, online shopping is more prudent, ecologically speaking. However, at the recent Business of Green Media Conference in Boston, the printing industry showed signs of taking green issues seriously.
Consumers can “take solace” in the fact that many catalogs are recycled and others are certified as coming from sustainable forests, said Beth Reardon, a corporate accounts manager with Appleton Coated, one of more than 30 companies represented at the conference’s Expo.
Appleton Coated, a paper company that sells under the Utopia brand, uses virgin fiber but does not use any fiber bleaching, said Reardon. None of their pulp comes from old-growth timber or rainforests. It’s all 100 percent certified by one or all of the following: the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) or the Canadian Standards Association (CSA).
These certification groups were created as a result of concern for the planet’s forests. They review companies’ practices to assure that they do not use old growth or rainforest timber, or engage in disreputable forestry practices that can lead to habitat loss or the displacement of human residents.
[Read more →]Tags: Briefs · Business · Green Right Now · Greener Businesses
We all know the drill: “Paper or plastic?” But when it comes to receipts there hasn’t been a choice — until 
now. allEtronic, a Fullerton, Calif., company knows that paper receipts are a nuisance and wants to rid the retail experience of those paper tag-a-longs that billow out of your purse, bulge inside your wallet, and languish in Rubbermaid containers in your closet.
Tags: Briefs · Business · Forests · Green Right Now · Greener Businesses
By John DeFore
The idea of training plants to grow into odd, useful forms isn’t a new one. It’s been done for ages, has been the subject of enthusiast-penned books, and in recent years has attracted the interest of fine artists and architects.
Now two professors at Tel Aviv University hope to move eco-architecture into the commercial realm, designing products that can be sold and grown around the world.
[Read more →]Tags: Business · Green Right Now · Greener Businesses · Home Building
By John DeFore
There may be a few billion reasons to worry about the environmental impact caused by rapid development in China and India, but one Chinese company has taken a green step serious enough to earn it a first-of-its-kind award from our own U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The EPA’s Combined Heat And Power Partnership has been handing out awards to American companies since 1999, encouraging industries that use various technologies to produce both heat and electricity from a single fuel source. But it has never given one to a foreign company until now.
[Read more →]Tags: Briefs · Business · Green Right Now · Greener Businesses · Manufacturers · Nation
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 with companies that are doing the right thing for people and planet. The bad news is that companies are happy to offer that attribute, at least in how they market themselves.
Tags: Blogs · Business · Greener Businesses
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 electronic device called MeetingPod.
[Read more →]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 waste materials. What it doesn’t mention is that this is the way Clément has done things for at least seven decades.
[Read more →]Tags: Briefs · Food · Greener Businesses
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.
[Read more →]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”?
[Read more →]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 Tom Kessler
The battlefield cry “charge” is taking on new meanings. Portable fuel cell systems from SFC Smart Fuel Cell AG won first and third prizes in the U.S. Defense Department’s inaugural Wearable Power Competition, the DOD announced.
Nearly 170 designs competed in the event, which was established by Department of Defense Research and Engineering to “encourage innovation in energy systems carried by personnel during field missions.” The systems, attached to a military vest, were required to provide 20 watts of average electric power, have peak-power capability up to 200 watts and weigh no more than 8.8 pounds.
By John DeFore
Honda is shifting gears in its strategy for hybrid cars. Judging from announcements at last week’s Paris Motor Show, the automaker has decided that the hybrids most likely to succeed in the marketplace are models with a standalone hybrid identity — like Toyota’s Prius, which is not available with a conventional gas engine — rather than those, like Honda’s Civic, that are already familiar in all-gasoline incarnations.
So while Chrysler’s new plan will speed up electric vehicle roll-out by building on existing cars, Honda will now focus on “dedicated” hybrid models like the new Insight Hybrid, which it expects to have in showrooms early next year. (Perhaps confusingly, this new car recycles the name of a previous Honda vehicle, a gas/electric hybrid that was discontinued a couple of years ago due to poor sales.)
The five-passenger car will be followed by two other dedicated hybrids — within the next four years, Honda intends to introduce both a compact similar to its Fit and a sports car resembling the CR-Z. The Insight’s fuel efficiency figures are not yet public, pending full EPA review, but company spokespeople have said its performance should be comparable to the existing Civic Hybrid, which gets a combined 42 mpg.
Though no price has yet been mentioned, in a press release the company boasts it will offer the Insight at “a price significantly below hybrids available today” and therefore expects to sell 200,000 cars a year, with half that in North America.
Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media
Catalog mailings are nearing full swing now, with mailboxes deluged by hefty full-color enticements to get 
that Christmas shopping done by phone.
Obviously, online shopping is more prudent, ecologically speaking. However, at the recent Business of Green Media Conference in Boston, the printing industry showed signs of taking green issues seriously.
Consumers can “take solace” in the fact that many catalogs are recycled and others are certified as coming from sustainable forests, said Beth Reardon, a corporate accounts manager with Appleton Coated, one of more than 30 companies represented at the conference’s Expo.
Appleton Coated, a paper company that sells under the Utopia brand, uses virgin fiber but does not use any fiber bleaching, said Reardon. None of their pulp comes from old-growth timber or rainforests. It’s all 100 percent certified by one or all of the following: the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) or the Canadian Standards Association (CSA).
These certification groups were created as a result of concern for the planet’s forests. They review companies’ practices to assure that they do not use old growth or rainforest timber, or engage in disreputable forestry practices that can lead to habitat loss or the displacement of human residents. [Read more →]
