Green Right Now

California this week honored 21 companies and organizations with the Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Awards, the state’s highest prize for contributions to environmental issues.

The Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Awards program was established in 1993. Recipients are selected by a large panel of evaluators and the Secretaries of Cal/EPA, the Resources Agency, Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, the Department of Food and Agriculture, the State and Consumer Services Agency, and the Governor’s Office. It honors projects in nine categories.

Here are the 2008 award winners in each category with comments from the California EPA:

[Read more →]

By John DeFore

East of Las Vegas, Times Square is surely the king of flashy, attention-grabbing and power-hungry signage. Soon, though, one of the intersection’s most novel advertisements will be one that doesn’t draw a single watt from the grid.

Construction is set to begin this month on a massive billboard for copying giant Ricoh, to be mounted at the corner of 7th Avenue and 42nd Street, that will run solely on wind and solar power generated at the site.

[Read more →]

By Harriet Blake

The benefits of a rooftop garden are not only environmental, but extend to the human spirit. At the Ulfelder Healing Garden atop Massachusetts General Hospital’s Yawkey Cancer Center, those benefits are realized.

The 6,300-square-foot foliage-filled healing garden gives cancer patients and their families a much-needed retreat and helps the hospital conserve energy at the same time. It is just one of the many Boston sites included on tours during this week’s GreenBuild International Conference, a large annual gathering of builders and remodellers sponsored by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).

Bringing green design into health care and hospital building is a growing trend across the U.S.. At Dell Children’s Medical Center, which opened in Austin, Texas in 2007, green has been the focus from the ground up. In fact, says spokesperson Matilda Sanchez, the hospital is waiting to hear if they have achieved “platinum status” in the Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) program sponsored by the USGBC. Among the many green elements at Dell is a four-story interior healing garden with a waterfall that starts on the top floor, as well as a three-acre healing garden with a labyrinth that can be seen from many of the hospital rooms.

“Dell is setting the bar for hospital buildings,” says Sanchez. “While we were still under construction, many other hospitals looked at what we were doing. There was even a delegation from Australia who came to get ideas.”

[Read more →]

By Barbara Kessler

Wildlife habitats might not have the same impact on global warming as electric cars, but they help hold down corners of nature that are threatened by climate change, human development and the contamination of outdoor spaces.

So raise a toast to Anheuser-Busch, which has been supporting wildlife conservation for many years and can now boast of hosting ten wildlife habitats certified by the Wildlife at Work, a program of the Wildlife Habitat Council.

[Read more →]

By John DeFore

Now that bringing your own shopping bag to buy groceries is no longer seen as aberrant behavior, and is inching in some places toward the norm, foes of throwaway plastic bags can open new fronts in their war: the dry-cleaner bag, for one, which reportedly accounts for three hundred million pounds of landfill-clogging waste each year.

Last month, dry cleaning and laundry professionals at an Atlantic City convention were introduced to a new product designed to do away with those single-use bags: The Green Garmento, a more durable polypropylene bag that shifts forms as needed for continual reuse. At home, it’s a duffel bag for collecting dirty clothes and taking them to the cleaner; at the cleaner, it can be reconfigured as a zippered garment bag, keeping items fresh until customers pick them up.

[Read more →]

By Shermakaye Bass

If skiing or snowboarding is your brood’s idea of the perfect family vacation, then ask yourself: What could make it even “more” perfect?

Powdery white slopes and alpine valleys? Maybe a white Christmas? Chances are when you think of skiing, you think of things white, not green. But the green-ski movement, prompted by U.S. groups like the Ski Area Citizens Coalition (SACC), an outgrowth of nonprofit Colorado Wild, and National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) “Sustainable Slopes” program, is changing that – little by little.

A fairly young endeavor (SACC started in 1999; Sustainable Slopes in 2000), the movement’s emergence reminds us that as healthy and nature-loving as this sport might be, it hasn’t been known for its environmental sensitivity.

[Read more →]

By Tom Kessler

The Philadelphia Phillies are still trying to close out the World Series, but the team has already been declared winners off the field. The National League Chanmipions were among the winners cited in the Environmenal Protection Agency’s 2008 Green Power Leadership Awards. The announcement was made at the the National Renewable Energy Marketing Conference in Denver, Colo.

EPA’s Green Power Partnership is a voluntary program helping to increase the use of green power among leading U.S. organizations. The program encourages organizations to purchase green power as a way to reduce the environmental impacts associated with conventional electricity use. The EPA says the program has hundreds of partner organizations buying billions of kilowatt-hours of green power annually.

[Read more →]

From the Environmental Protection Agency

The 2008 Green Power Leadership Awards were presented in conjunction with the National Renewable Energy Marketing Conference, held October 26-29 in Denver, Colorado.

Small Residential/Commercial Green Power Program or Supplier of the Year

PaloAltoGreen (PAG) draws renewable energy from 100 percent new, local and regional wind and solar resources, all from projects that have come on-line since 2005. Just five years since the program’s launch, total sales are 59 million kilowatt hours annually and the customer participation rate is 20.4 percent, the highest rate in the nation.

[Read more →]

From the Environmental Protection Agency

The 2008 Green Power Leadership Awards were presented in conjunction with the National Renewable Energy Marketing Conference, held October 26-29 in Denver, Colorado.

Partner of the Year

This is the fifth year that EPA has recognized WhiteWave Foods Company with an EPA Green Power Leadership Award. The company has a rich history of supporting green power, beginning in 2003 with its first purchase of renewable energy certificates (RECs) for the Silk® Soymilk brand operations. In 2004, the company began buying RECs to cover the operations for the Horizon Organic® brand, and in 2006 for the electricity used at the company’s corporate headquarters. In 2008, WhiteWave added the International Delight® and Land O’Lakes® creamer brands by increasing the company’s overall purchase to more than 98 million kilowatt-hours annually.

[Read more →]

From the Environmental Protection Agency

The 2008 Green Power Leadership Awards were presented in conjunction with the National Renewable Energy Marketing Conference, held October 26-29 in Denver, Colorado.

Partner of the Year

Intel Corporation, a world leader in silicon innovation, develops technologies, products and initiatives to advance how people work and live. Currently, Intel powers over 46 percent of its U.S. facilities through the purchase of more than 1.3 billion kilowatt-hours a year of renewable energy certificates (RECs) generated from wind, solar, geothermal and biomass sources. Intel’s purchase ranks among the largest in the Green Power Partnership, placing it on EPA’s National Top 50 and Fortune 500 purchaser lists.

[Read more →]

From the Environmental Protection Agency

The 2008 Green Power Leadership Awards were presented in conjunction with the National Renewable Energy Marketing Conference, held October 26-29 in Denver, Colorado.

Partner of the Year

Cisco Systems, Inc. is a multinational company with annual revenues of more than $39.5 billion. Cisco is a worldwide leader in networking technology that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Cisco believes that technology has the power to help the world manage its environmental challenges and is using networking technology to reduce its own environmental footprint. In June 2008, the organization announced a corporate global greenhouse gas reduction goal of 25 percent in absolute terms by 2012, sending a strong message that corporate growth and environmental protection can go hand in hand.

[Read more →]

From the Environmental Protection Agency

The 2008 Green Power Leadership Awards were presented in conjunction with the National Renewable Energy Marketing Conference, held October 26-29 in Denver, Colorado.

Green Power Purchasing Award

Headquartered in Park City, Utah, Powdr Resorts owns seven resort complexes across the United States, including Park City Mountain Resort in Utah, Killington Resort and Pico Resort in Vermont, Mt. Bachelor in Oregon, Boreal Resort and Soda Springs Resort in California, Las Vegas Ski and Snowboard Resort in Nevada, and Gorgoza Park, a tubing park in Utah. Powdr Resorts’ annual purchase of nearly 50 million kilowatt-hours of wind-derived renewable energy certificates (RECs) is enough to supply 100 percent of the operation’s total electricity use.

[Read more →]