Intel, Khol’s and Whole Foods retained their top spots as the “biggest buyers of renewable energy in the U.S.,” as more companies and governments continue to partner with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to increase their green energy purchases. The top 10 renewable energy purchasers according the EPA are: Intel, Kohl’s, Whole Foods, the city of Houston, Dell, Johnson & Johnson, Cisco, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvannia, the U.S. Air Force and the city of Dallas.

As GreenBiz points out, “One notable absence from the top 10 is Pepsi, which used to hold the #3 spot but has since shifted its focus from buying renewable energy to funding on-site renewable energy projects.” On-site renewable energy projects seem to us to reveal a deeper commitment to integrating sustainability into the fabric of the business operations. But the EPA has minimum percentages of over-all energy needs, to prevent large companies from making token purchases.

The EPA’s Green Power Partnership works with some 1,200 companies, cities, states, college and universities to help them purchase solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, biogas and low-impact hydropower energy. Since a large purchase by one company might only account for a small amount of its energy while a smaller purchase provides more than enough energy for a different company, the EPA maintains a list of partners that purchase 100 percent or more of the energy they need. The list now has more than 550 entries.

Read more at GreenBiz.

Five years ago, news that Seventh Generation, a pioneer in the eco-friendly consumer products biz, was making a deal with Wal-Mart would have seemed unlikely. Back then, these strange bedfellows resided on different ends of the responsibility spectrum. But, as we’ve covered in a number of posts on LTT, Wal-Mart has transformed itself into an industry leader in sustainability, demanding greener practices from suppliers, investing in renewable energies at its stores and other impressive green initiatives. Wal-Mart’s CEO Mike Duke, recently emphatically reaffirmed Wal-Mart’s sweeping environmental goals, saying at the company’s “2009 Sustainability Milestone Meeting” that eco-responsibility was no longer optional for companies wishing to be industry leaders.

So, in many ways, the deal makes perfect sense, but for his part, Seventh Gen’s founder Jeffrey Hollender turned to his blog to explain his decision to team with the box store giant.

“A lot of people, some of them among our most loyal long-time customers, will raise an eyebrow (at least!) at this news. Walmart, as we know, has a notoriously checkered corporate past and there aren’t many neutral opinions where the company is concerned. Its reputation hasn’t been great, often deservedly so, and many, including myself, assumed that Seventh Generation and Walmart would never have any relationship. But you can’t see into the future, and it’s always subject to change. Now it has and in ways we didn’t envision.

So why are we selling to Walmart? The short answer is because it’s time and we should. By this, I mean two things:

• First that Walmart is not the same company it was even five years ago. It’s a much different organization that has fairly dramatically and with little fanfare transformed itself into a serious sustainability leader. A few months ago, I wrote a long post about just how much remarkable progress the retailer has made and the tremendous level of positive influence it’s now wielding on its employees, customers, suppliers, and communities. I won’t repeat all that here. Suffice it to say that Walmart has come a very long way and is committed to going a great deal further.
• Second, Walmart’s size means we’ll reach people and places we couldn’t reach before and help countless more families lead safer, healthier lives. From rural outposts to inner cities, we’ll get much closer to fulfilling our mission to help all consumers protect the planet and themselves from harm.”

We’re part of the cheering section for Burlington’s own Green Cab VT, a taxi service that uses vehicles that run on fuels other than petroleum or are powered in part by electricity. The above video (from the good people at UVMtv) provides a glimpse at the operation.

The company was “founded with the undestanding that the current situation in transportation is outdated. The internal combustion engine (ICE) was invented 185 years ago and has stuck around ever since.” As the company’s site explains, “there are enough intelligent people on this planet who realize the damage that is being done by the pollutants emitted by the ICE and the desire for the fuel necessary to power it. We hope to affect some small change in the way that people perceive alternative fueled vehicles”

Hail hail Green Cab!

In another webisode of One Degree TV, we pay a visit to Burlington, VT-based Lunaroma to talk with owner Leila Bringas about some of the benefits of botanically-based essential oils and how mainstream synthetic alternatives are not only confusing our senses but also posing health risks.

The guiding philosophy at Love Tomorrow Today is that positive change in our lives begins with small decisions. It’s daunting and unrealistic to make sweeping and swift changes to our daily lives, to our economy, to our manufacturing, to our health. But, as Leila suggests, pausing to consider small decisions can help guide us in a healthier direction. Or as we like to say, one degree changes…everything.

For more info on the amazing products on offer at Lunaroma, visit them in Vermont and Hawaii or at their web site. Stay tuned for part two, where Leila helps us create a Love Tomorrow Today ’signature scent.’

Lunaroma: Part One from lovetomorrowtoday on Vimeo.

If we do the right thing, does it matter why we chose to do it? Skeptics, cynics and conspiracy theorists may not like it, but when a brand does something that is, in balance, a good thing, motive shouldn’t matter. Take Wal-Mart, for instance, though any major brand with a corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative is a prime candidate for this argument. Businesses are in the business of making money, and however well-intentioned it may be, if can’t push any sort of “socially responsible” agenda if it goes broke. Wal-Mart is a lightning rod for criticism, and anyone who has seen The High Cost of Low Price is familiar with the company’s litany of issues. But, as Martin LaMonica writes for CNET, the company has “pushed forward with a risky sustainability initiative at a time when its public image was suffering.” Should we still celebrate the company’s decision to invest in renewable energy at store, reduce waste in packaging, create a “sustainability index” of its suppliers and other positive and industry-changing initiatives despite its former CEO Lee Scott now claiming the company’s rationale for “going green” was purely economic? Yes.

Brands are increasingly seeing the economic benefits of “going green,” though you hardly need an MBA to recognize that “efficiency” reduces waste and increases profit. But Scott’s comments, that these decisions were pure business decisions, were suprisingly frank. “The effort has endured because the motivation was purely economic, said Scott, who was the first featured speaker at the Fortune Brainstorm Green green business conference here on Monday. If it had been done to repair its image, the company would have likely scaled back during the economic downturn last year.”

“What Wal-Mart has done is approach this from a business stand point and not from a point of altruism. If we as a company focus on waste, we can make Wal-Mart a better company and at the same time, become a better citizen,” he said.

LaMonica explains, “the first project within the sustainability push was started by an executive who figured out how to reduce packaging in a Wal-Mart-branded toy. That change eliminated the need for 215 shipping containers. From there, it spread to the point where now people who don’t have an environmentally oriented initiative in the company are “outliers,” Scott said.

These initiatives resonated with consumer expectations, “particularly the 25- and 35-year-old buyers,” Scott said.

Critics are quick to point out that Wal-Mart is the largest private consumer of electricity in the U.S., and with more than $400 billion in annual revenue, its “green” efforts pale in comparison the damaging impact of their stores on the environment. But, as LaMonica points out, “large businesses create demand for green-technology products, which helps bring down the cost of energy-related products, such as solar panels, or consumer goods, such as organic foods.” Doing the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing is something we should each aspire to, but waiting for global brands to make decisions that way…we’re bound to be waiting a long time.

[Source: LTT, CNET]

Woody Jackson's cows, if you've seen a pint of B&J's ice cream you've seen the cows, have become almost as iconic as autumn colors for shaping an outsider's perception of Vermont.

My affection for Ben & Jerry’s goes beyond my Phish Food obsession. As a Vermonter- though, admittedly, like Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield themselves, not born and bred- I see the ice cream maker as the quintessential Vermont company in many ways, a brand that evokes the many contradictions on offer here- it’s quirky and silly but it addresses some serious issues. It’s simple and quite old fashioned- is there anything more Norman Rockwell than making ice cream?- but it’s also innovative and worldly. Like Vermont, the company prides itself on thinking locally, but that also belies a global sensibility (and ambition).

Here’s the challenge for Ben & Jerry’s; it’s part of a huge multinational, Unilever, which bought the company in 2000. Critics are quick to suggest that Ben & Jerry’s is no longer the “prototype hippy business-with-a-conscience,” especially since its founders have by their own admission “no responsibilities at the company and no authority.” Others argue further that Unilever, a “faceless multinational, bestriding the globe, selling detergents and cleaning products” uses Ben & Jerry’s reputation as a “socially responsible fig leaf,” holding it up as an example of how Unilver is behaving well.

But as David Teather suggests in The Guardian, Ben & Jerry’s has managed to stay true to its origins, in part because the “socially responsible” elements are so integral to the brand’s success and core identity. In “Sold up but not out; Ben & Jerry are still the poster boys for Fair Trade,” Teather catches up with Cohen and Greenfield, in London to promote the announcement that Ben & Jerry’s planned to take all the ingredients in its ice cream from Fairtrade sources by 2013.

Despite referring to the acquisition by Unilever as a “forced marriage,” Cohen says he is more convinced than ever that business can be a force for good. “If there is any hope for our countries and society in general, it is through business. Business has risen to this level of the most powerful force in society. I mean it used to be that the most powerful forces in society were religion and then nation states and the purpose of those two entities was to support the common good, and maybe they didn’t do everything exactly right, but now those two are subservient to business.” He describes the move to Fairtrade as “certainly the best thing that Ben & Jerry’s has ever done since the acquisition. I think it is the harbinger that the day of first-world corporations making huge profits off the exploitation of the third world is over.”

Then he adds: “Well, it would certainly be a lot better for the world and a much stronger statement if Unilever said everything we sell, all $40bn a year, is now going to be fair trade, but Ben & Jerry’s was never Unilever, and you know, I never had any illusions.”

[Source: The Guardian]

things change

With the United States Postal Service facing $7 billion in annual losses, the U.S. Postmaster General John Potter has recommended eliminating Saturday delivery as soon as next year. People are sending (and receiving) less mail anyway- the slumping economy means less junk mail from credit card companies and advertisers, and online communication and bill payment services have provided an easier/cheaper/quicker alternative to snail mail, with a drop from 213 billion items handled in 2006 to 177 billion last year.

Would we miss Saturday delivery? What gets sent through the mail these days anyway? Birthday cards? Wouldn’t we send those out a day earlier? Checks? All the more reason to opt for e-billing and direct deposits, to save time and paper waste. According to a study in the US, by the Electronic Payments Association and Javelin Strategy & Research, if every American household viewed and paid its bills online, it would reduce solid waste in U.S. landfills by more than 800,000 tons a year and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2.1 million tons.

What would it save us? With the agency forecasting a $238 billion shortfall over the next decade, presumably cutting to five delivery days would help save on labor and transportation costs, not to mention related C02 emissions. And as the volume of items handled goes down and more people rely on electronic communication, would losing Saturday delivery really effect our lives?

I’ll admit, I’m sad to see the art of letter writing fade away- think of how important letters are to historians in piecing together the narratives of past generations? Instead of the long, descriptive, full-thought sentences between FDR and Churchill, or Jefferson and Adams, we’ll pour over the short, uncapitalized email blurbs of Obama and…who?…Oprah? And, it must be said, getting a letter from a friend or family member is always an endearing novelty. But, I also miss bench seats in cars, not having to take my shoes off to go through security, and Conan O’Brien in place of Jay Leno. But things, invariably, change. And wouldn’t it be good for us to take two days off from the realities of the week?

The downside, of course, would be 1) deep cutbacks in jobs, though arguably having a profitable (or close to it) USPS might ultimately save jobs. The agency was forced to cut 40,000 jobs last year alone. 2) Longer lines at the Post Office. And, man, do I hate those lines at the Post Office.

Still, I think we’ll barely notice losing Saturday mail delivery. Any thoughts?

[Sources: AP, SF Chronicle]

In his recent piece for The Atlantic, Joshua Green suggests that The Grateful Dead just may be the fathers of modern social networks. Say what? Well, hang on, he might be onto something. Last year, the band donated its copious archive—“four decades’ worth of commercial recordings and videotapes, press clippings, stage sets, business records, and a mountain of correspondence encompassing everything from elaborately decorated fan letters to a thank-you note for a fund-raising performance handwritten on White House stationery by President Barack Obama“—to the University of California at Santa Cruz. As ethnomusicologists, sociologists, historians and literary scholars prepare to dig in, Green argues “the biggest beneficiaries may prove to be business scholars and management theorists, who are discovering that the Dead were visionary geniuses in the way they created ‘customer value,’ promoted social networking, and did strategic business planning.”

more…

The music industry has always been about excesses. The myth of rock stardom is built upon the license to do whatever you want, consume whatever you want, wear whatever you want. Cameron Crowe nailed it in Almost Famous, especially when Billy Crudup’s Russell yells “I am a golden god!” from a rooftop. While social consciousness has always been part of the fabric of music (think Pete Seeger, Dylan, Springsteen, Bono), it’s really mostly about the sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll.

So it’s refreshing to see some of pop music’s biggest stars come together for The Green Music Group, a coalition of musicians, so-called “industry leaders” and fans that aims to make the music industry green from the inside out.

Founded by environmental nonprofit Reverb, the group is a coalition of Founding Artists (Dave Matthews, Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raiit, Sheryl Crow, Maroon 5, Jack Johnson, The Roots and others), music venues, record labels, publishing groups and non-profit partners that “has officially come together to green the music community.” According to the Green Music Group Web site, actions will include:

1. Creating an engaging online community of musicians, music industry leaders, and music fans all committed to addressing our greatest environmental concerns.

2. Facilitating large-scale greening of the music community through touring, venue, and label standards, resource development, green grants mentoring, and viral video and public service campaigns.

3. Providing environmental nonprofits with a megaphone for their cause, allowing them to expand their reach and support base.

4. Creating a sustainable green music guild to support and inform the efforts of the music community and position leaders in the music industry as voices for change, working to shine a light on the most pressing environmental issues of our time.

Green Music Group is the first organization to harness the collective power of the entire music community to affect millions of individual actions, bringing about measurable global environmental change. Green Music Group is not simply green in name – we are committed to a sustainable future both on and off-stage.

[Source: Green Music Group via Fast Company]

It’s being called the “Toyotapocalypse.” Toyota has announced a massive global recall of 437,000 of its 2010 flagship Prius- a mess of brake issues, software glitches, power steering pressure hoses. An additional 40,000 or so of other models are also being recalled. The most popular car brand on the planet is reeling from a major PR body blow. While some industry observers are quick to point out that recalls are nothing new for car makers, why does this feel like the world gone mad? It speaks to the sky high expectations a brand like Toyota has been able to set. Does a brand so synonymous with innovation and discipline fall harder and further when it falters? Can it rebound faster?

One poll we saw suggested that 63% of consumers wouldn’t let this recall put them off buying a Toyota. But 26% of those polled said it would dissuade them from considering Toyota in the future. Extrapolated in a global sense, that could spell a significant number of lost sales. But those people are crazy. Toyota is a fantastic brand that has been challenged. There will be some short term gains for other companies (Ford, Honda, Hyundai) during the scandal, but fantastic brands don’t die easily. We suggest Toyota checks into a sex rehab facility for six weeks. Short of that, we suggest it continue boldy charting a course of innovation and quality and putting its PR department on notice. The cost of dithering- especially in the age of Twitter and the hyper drive of the 24-hr news cycle- is always greater than the cost of acting fast.

While some in Japan view the scandal as a US-media driven news story aimed at fueling sales of American-made cars, our collective dismay has more to do with how much Toyota has succeeded in making us believe its brand message, ‘moving forward.’

Is Coke the most ubiquitous substance on Earth? You can find Coca-Cola or Pepsi just about anywhere on the planet. In war-torn places like Gaza and Burma, from the highest villages in the Himalayas to the most remote reaches of Africa, where clean water may be scarce and the infrastructure to harness renewable energy even more so, you’d probably not have to search too far to find a Coke. So, has Chinese designer Daizi Zheng designed the most useful third world cellphone ever? Forget solar, hydrogen, kinetic, this phone is powered by cola.

Designed for Nokia, which has been a pioneer in green mobile phone technology, the phone runs on a battery that generates electricity from carbohydrates. According to the company, the phone harnesses clean energy from sugary drinks like Coke and Pepsi, which generates water and oxygen and lasts about four times longer than contemporary lithium batteries on a single charge. Oh, and the handset is 100% biodegradable. This represents the lazy alternative to the phone profiled in our last post, about the world’s first truly sustainable phone, one that boasts a hand-crank that allows the user to charge the phone manually.

[Source: The Design Blog]

We may be Macs at Love Tomorrow Today, but we’re quick to acknowledge that Apple doesn’t have a lock on innovation. IBM has unveiled a list of impressive innovations that could to change how people live, work and play in cities around the globe in the next decade. For this, our last post in this decade, we wanted to recognize IBM’s remarkable initiative to create “smarter cities.”

IBM officials point to an important milestone that the planet reached last year; for the first time in history, more people live in cities than in rural areas. An estimated 60 million people are moving to cities and urban areas each year – a staggering 1 million+ every week. Mindful of this unprecedented urbanization, IBM is working with cities to address increasing populations and deteriorating infrastructure, to make them smarter so they can sustain growth, be healthier, more efficient, less polluted. IBM is helping cities develop an infrastructure that resembles a living organism, one that can sense and respond quickly to incidents and save resources.

Earlier this year, we profiled the efforts of Amsterdam and Stockholm to become “smarter cities,” both working with IBM to create smart electricity grids, add smart meters and other broad and ambitious measures to reduce energy use throughout business, residential and public spaces.

As the former mayor of Denver, Wellington E. Webb, has said, “The 19th century was a century of empires. The 20th century was a century of nation states. The 21st century will be a century of cities.” Cities are complex systems of systems, and as our planet becomes more interconnected, more instrumented, we have an opportunity to connect these systems in intelligent ways that can improve our lives. It’s clear that IBM is leading those efforts.

Thanks for all the support this year, and, from those of us at LTT, here’s to a happy, healthy, innovative 2010!

For more on IBM’s effort, visit the company’s dynamic site The Smarter City.

Ford Fusion(Credit: CNET)

It’s a good news, bad news report from Ford. The company has reported strong numbers for its hybrid sales, up 67 percent this year, but the number only represents 2% of the car maker’s overall sales. The bump in hybrid sales comes amidst an overall industry slump of 11 percent.

Ford sold 31,000 hybrid cars through November, more than in any previous year. The Ford Fusion, which was released in March, represents 45% of all Ford hybrid sales for 2009. But as Sebastian Blanco explains on AutoBlogGreen, “this is great, but even in this down year, Ford sold over 1.4 million vehicles so far, making the hybrid portion decidedly tiny (about 2.1 percent).”

While innovative companies like Toyota and Honda have blazed a trail with hybrid technology, US car makers have been slower to stake a claim.

Ford is hedging its bet on future car technology, announcing it will only produce up to 2 million all-electric and gas-electric vehicles over the next 10 years. The car giant says its goal is to make between 10% and 25% of its fleet “electrified” by 2020.

Ford Fusion(Credit: AutoBlogGreen)

With a range that wide, you’d hardly call that a determined leap forward, but Nancy Gioia, Ford’s director of the newly created department of ‘global electrification,’ suggests that Ford will be ready for a plugged-in future. “We’ve finally demonstrated the technology, the life, the durability, the safety (of hybrids)–all of that has reached a comfort zone to make it viable. Now it’s going to be affordability that will drive mass market adoption,” she said.

As we wrote last year, a study by IBM’s Institute for Business Values predicts that by the year 2020 all new cars will be hybrids. Clearly, Ford didn’t get that memo.  It managed to avoid joining GM and Chrysler in the garbage heap and, to be fair, has done some things right recently. But hedging its bet on the technology of tomorrow seems a lost opportunity. Last year, Toyota announced that 100% of its fleet would be hybrid by 2020.

[Sources: CNET, AutoBlogGreen]

The Super Bowl will have a different feel this year. No, we think the AFC will win again this year (the NFC has only won 3 times this decade). The big change, of course, will be that Pepsi is scrapping its entire Super Bowl advertising budget to focus on the new Pepsi Refresh Project. It’s a bold strategy that has the ad world and blogsphere atwitter. Pepsi has earmarked $20 million of its ad dollars to go, instead, towards grants for community-based projects proposed and selected by consumers. as part of the Refresh Project.

The bev giant, the largest advertiser in last year’s Super Bowl, will focus less on a singular event and more on cause-related marketing. Pepsi has also increased their online advertising budget by 60% for 2010.

If Pepsi succeeds, cause-related marketing could well be the next trend, a natural marriage of the corporate responsibility movement and the interactive power of social media. Pepsi has a long record of achievements in both areas, so we’ll be interested to see how the Refresh campaign plays out.

[Sources: PSFK, Wall Street Journal]

What are the secrets to being a great innovator? According to a study published in this month’s Harvard Business Review, researchers have identified five key traits for coming up with game-changing ideas: associating, questioning, observing, experimenting and discovering.

A group of professors from Harvard Business School, Insead and Brigham Young University recently completed a six-year study of more than 3,000 executives and 500 innovative entrepreneurs to determine some commonalities. In essence,  the study asks what makes people like Apple’s Steve Jobs, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Ebay’s Pierre Omidyar and Dell’s Michael Dell tick?

One of the men behind the study, Insead’s Hal Gregersen, told CNN, “What the innovators have in common is that they can put together ideas and information in unique combinations that nobody else has quite put together before.” The researchers call this first skill “associating.” Jeff Dyer of BYU explains, “it’s a cognitive skill that allows creative people to make connections across seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas.”

Dyer continues,

The second skill is questioning — an ability to ask “what if”, “why”, and “why not” questions that challenge the status quo and open up the bigger picture. The third is the ability to closely observe details, particularly the details of people’s behavior. Another skill is the ability to experiment — the people we studied are always trying on new experiences and exploring new worlds. And finally, they are really good at networking with smart people who have little in common with them, but from whom they can learn.

The researchers suggest these traits are largely learned and acquired, rather than innate, and, they say, anyone can become a better innovator. Gregersen proposes that the ability to think differently comes from the ability to act differently.

Here are “five keys to innovation” according to the study:

FIVE KEYS TO INNOVATION

Researchers say they have identified five skills that drive innovation:

Associating: The ability to connect seemingly unrelated questions, problems or ideas from different fields.

Questioning: Innovators constantly ask questions that challenge the common wisdom. They ask “why?”, “why not?” and “what if?”

Observing: Discovery-driven executives scrutinize common phenomena, particularly the behavior of potential customers.

Experimenting: Innovative entrepreneurs actively try out new ideas by creating prototypes and launching pilots.

Networking: innovators go out of their way to meet people with different ideas and perspectives

[Sources: CNN, HBR]

In an effort to give fledgling ‘plug-in’ technology a fighting chance, a group of industry CEOs are supporting a proposal to roll-out electric vehicles in eight cities to demonstrate viability in those markets.

The so-called Electricifcation Coalition, which includes the CEOs of Nissan Motor, FedEx, PG&E, and battery maker A123 Systems, held a press conference in Washington, D.C. on Monday to make their that light-duty electric vehicles are the only technology that can cut oil imports and reduce carbon emissions in the near term. The group laid out a roadmap (click for link) prescribing what’s required to make electric cars available at large scale.

The Electrification Coalition calls for a “foothold strategy.” Up to eight cities would create a number of incentives for electric vehicles, such as preferential parking and public charging stations. They would apply for government incentives and then test out the system to help bring electric cars to “critical mass,” explained David Crane, the president and CEO of power generator NRG Energy.

In addition to existing federal tax credits, the coalition wants to provide incentives for cities dedicated to bringing in electric vehicles.

[Source: CNET]

“There is no such thing as a green product,” Sustainable Minds co-founder and CEO Terry Swack reminds us at the start of her walk-thru of her company’s new life-cycle assessment (LCA) software. Swack explains, “all products use material and energy and create waste. There is no explicit definition of what “green” means. The best we can do is make products “greener” than the ones we made today.”

Sustainable Minds’ new Web-based program is aimed at doing that, helping companies make greener design choices and understand the impacts of products and their parts. Swack says, “typically 75% of manufacturing costs are committed by the end of the concept phase. These same decisions often lock in the environmental performance of the product.” Through methodical life-cycle assessment, like the sort in SM’s software, it’s possible to provide “real time analyses that allow users to make informed trade-offs between standard product design criteria such as performance, cost, and aesthetics, with environmental impact - well before product design is complete, and before changes are costly or impossible to make.”

Users can assess entire products, assemblies, sub-assemblies and parts. By using current products, users can set benchmarks to compare new designs against.

The software analyzes impacts from manufacturing, use, end of life and transportation, using the Okala Methodology, which evaluates 10 environmental impact categories: global warming/carbon footprint, acid rain, ecotoxicity, ozone depletion, water eutrophication, photochemical smog, human respiratory, human toxicity, human carcinogens and fossil fuel depletion. The software is optimized for household appliances, housewares, consumer electronics, industrial and commercial equipment, and outdoor and sporting equipment.

[Source: GreenerDesign, Sustainable Minds, PSFK]

Earlier this month, we wrote about Whirlpool’s plans to make all of its appliances “smart-grid” compatible by the year 2015. Yesterday, the company announced that it had received $19.3 million in U.S. Department of Energy funding as part of the Smart Grid Investment Grant Program. Whirlpool, which owns a broad range of home appliance brands including Maytag, KitchenAid, Jenn-Air, Amana, Brastemp, Consul and Bauknecht, will use the government funds to help it reach its goal of making a million smart-grid compliant dryers ready for market in 2011. The company will match the DOE’s grant over the next two years. And by 2015, the company says, it will no longer make “dumb” appliances at all.

Whirlpool’s announcement comes on the heels of President Obama’s announcement that $8.1 billion will be spent on 100 smart-grid projects in 49 states, $4.7 billion from utilities, while the remaining $3.4 billion will come from the U.S. government as stimulus money.

If you’re anything like me, you can’t get the “five…five dollar foot long” tune out of your head. I only just managed to stop singing Jared’s song- you know the one, “got real big on burgers and fries, not he’s down to a smaller size…,” oh god, I’ll be singing that for months. Anyway, the good news is that if it’s got you craving a Subway sandwich, it’s a craving you can feel good about. The SUBWAY restaurant chain is making good on its pledge to make its restaurants and operations more environmentally accountable, with the opening of a handful of energy efficient “Eco-stores.”

Last winter, Subway announced that the brand’s first Eco-Store in Kissimmee, Florida, had received LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) silver certification. There are currently five SUBWAY Eco-stores open and operating, three others of which are currently pending LEED certification.

The Kissimmee Eco-Store boasts an impressive range of green features, including: high efficiency heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, remote condensing units for refrigeration and ice making equipment, day lighting and controls for high efficiency lighting, LED interior and exterior signs, low flow water fixtures, and building and decor materials from sustainable sources. Repurposed/recycled materials were used in construction and furnishing, and there is an increased emphasis on recycling in customer areas.

“SUBWAY Eco-Stores are designed to reduce energy, and water consumption and waste by using more efficient equipment and practices,” said Bill Schettini, Chief Marketing Officer for SUBWAY. “They are built by using cost effective, eco-friendly material in the interior and exterior design and decor, as well as products and treatments that extend the life of the elements and equipment. Our Eco-Store program is just one area where we are trying to make our restaurants and operations more environmentally accountable. As a worldwide chain, we have also taken steps to reduce packaging and develop more energy efficient distribution practices. We are proud of the efforts we have made, but we also recognize that there is much more to do.”

Subway is the world’s largest sandwich franchise, with close to 40,000 locations in 91 countries, so it has a lot of ‘greening’ to do, but the company has the potential to drive the industry in this direction. We’ll follow this trend, as it rolls out more Eco-Store locations.

[Source: PRNewsire, Subway]

(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)

Ford is hedging its bet on future car technology, announcing it will only produce up to 2 million all-electric and gas-electric vehicles over the next 10 years. The car giant says its goal is to make between 10% and 25% of its fleet “electrified” by 2020.

With a range that wide, you’d hardly call that a determined leap forward, but Nancy Gioia, Ford’s director of the newly created department of ‘global electrification,’ suggests that Ford will be ready for a plugged-in future. “We’ve finally demonstrated the technology, the life, the durability, the safety (of hybrids)–all of that has reached a comfort zone to make it viable. Now it’s going to be affordability that will drive mass market adoption,” she said.

As we wrote last year, a study by IBM’s Institute for Business Values predicts that by the year 2020 all new cars will be hybrids. Clearly, Ford didn’t get that memo.  It managed to avoid joining GM and Chrysler in the garbage heap and, to be fair, has done some things right recently. But hedging its bet on the technology of tomorrow seems a lost opportunity. Last year, Toyota announced that 100% of its fleet would be hybrid by 2020.

[Sources: LTT, Ford, CNET]

If you have an iPhone, odds are you’ve geeked out on apps. Even my 18 month old has some favorites (Peekaboo Barn is genius!). A year ago, we wrote about some of our favorite ‘green apps’ and mentioned that TreeHugger came up with a compelling list of apps that will help save gas, energy, time and money in four main areas of life: Gas, Driving and Car Maintenance, Traveling, Carpooling and Mass Transit, Home Energy Use, and finally, Greener Shopping. It’s time to add to that list.

Go Organic! [Free] finds organic grocery stores and Earth Day events near you. 

shopgreen: [$0.99] based on information you enter about your green habits, the app alerts you of promotions from local businesses.

MyMpg: [$2.99] helps you maximize your fuel efficiency. It evaluates braking forces and acceleration, tracks stats and improvement in gas mileage over time.

Green Lemur: [Free] offers advice on green tweaks, with a tip of the day on how to lead a more sustainable lifestyle.

iRecycle: [Free] provides information on where to recycle/dispose items. Choose from over 100,000 locations from coast to coast.

Yowza: [Free] finds coupons for nearby retailers that you present digitally rather than having to cut them out of newspapers and magazines.

[sources: EcoSalon,TreeHugger, Grist]

I expect we’ll be hearing more about the latest contender in the quest for energy efficient lighting,  ESL (electron-stimulated luminescence). This new type of bulb works by using accelerated electrons to light up a phosphor coating on the inside of a glass bulb. ESLs have no delay, no flicker, can work with dimmers, and creates a light quality that’s similar to incandescents and halogens. Vu1, the manufacturer, put together the above documentary to list the many reasons for claiming the ESL bulbs are the better choice.

CFLs have long been hailed as the green alternative to incandescents, but critics point out some major flaws. For one, CFLs contain about 5 milligrams of mercury, a small amount but enough to prompt some jurisdictions to ban dumping them in the trash. Burnt-out CFL bulbs should be disposed of with hazardous waste where possible or returned to the retailer, which then recycles them. The EPA recommends evacuating the room if a CFL bulb breaks. ESLs contain no mercury. Light quality remains a problem for CFLs, while the light from an ESL is “essentially indistinguishable” from incandescents, according to the company.

Seattle-based Vu1 has been working on the ESL for five years. The new bulbs are expensive- around $20/bulb, but can last up to 6,000 hours, about three to four times the lifespan of incandescents and comparable to CFLs. They also produce 50% less heat than incandescents.

[sources: CNET, Gizmodo]

Some are calling it the new ‘black gold.’ Sewage may be a dirty business, but it may also be a lucrative one. Waste Management is betting on a future in sewage-to-biofuel, joining forces with the largest refiner in the U.S., Valero Energy Corp., to blend wastewater “crude” into gasoline. As Tina Casey explains in her piece for CleanTechnica,

The two companies have invested in Terrabon LLC, which was formed in the 1990’s to commercialize three technologies including a biofuel process called MixAlco.  With a half-billion people (and counting) contributing to the feedstock in the U.S. alone, it looks like sewage could be the answer to the search for a truly sustainable biofuel.

Until now, the sewage-to-biofuel picture has been somewhat modest.  Norway is experimenting with biomethane busses, San Antonio has a sewage biomethane program, and sewage grease is being tapped as a potential fuel. The partnership between Waste Management and Valero takes it a giant step further into the mass market.  It means that Terrabon will have access to a high volume of organic waste as a feedstock for the process, along with a major customer to receive the organic salts and convert them to biofuel.  Given the national scope of these operations, looks like it’s finally showtime for sewage.

From a distance, we’ll be tracking Waste Management’s success in turning poop into gas!

[Source: CleanTechnica]

The trash can hasn’t really changed in thousands of years. It’s not hard to imagine a first draft of Plato’s Republic ending up in something similar to the bin under Shakespeare’s desk. It’s just one of those things that achieved its useful/design equilibrium a long time ago. But BigBelly Solar is making a compelling case that it’s time for an update.

The Needham, MA-based company’s solar-powered trash compactor is catching on with municipalities looking to cut costs. The units cost between $3100 and $3900 (or lease for $70 to $90) depending on purchase volume, but the BigBelly says they typically pay for themselves in about two years. The can holds around five times as much trash as a traditional trash can, resulting in fewer collections, reducing money spent on man hours, fuel, and garbage trucks. According to BigBelly, the compactor, which has a wireless indicator that signals that the unit is ready to be picked up, cuts the need for trash pickup by up to 80%.

“We’re very excited to bring the benefits of on-site solar compaction to such a wide group of customers nationwide,” said Richard Kennelly, vice president of marketing for BigBelly Solar. “These compactors are made from recycled materials, and even work in areas that don’t receive direct sunlight.” Matt McKenna, CEO of the nonprofit Keep American Beautiful (see our earlier post about them) cites consumer reports that suggest “that convenience and accessibility of public trash and recycling receptacles are a major influence in encouraging them to dispose of waste properly and to recycle more.”

We’ll be seeing these contraptions popping up more and more. Jim Poss, BigBelly’s founder, was recently called one of “America’s Most Promising Social Entreprenuers” by BusinessWeek. And at last week’s U.S. Conference of Mayors, garbage heavy hitters Waste Management announced that it has become the exclusive waste and environmental services company distributor of BigBelly solar compactor technology in North America.

Watch this video of the BigBelly trash can.

*repost LTT looks back on first year

It’s fitting that the agency that enabled us to view our own planet from a distance, providing mankind with a new environmental perspective, is building a place here on Earth to protect that vision.

Forty years after the Apollo 11 lunar module touched down at Tranquility Base, NASA is creating a research center at its Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, CA that will develop sustainable design, green technologies and other innovative projects.

Sustainability Base will provide a window to the future on Earth. An intelligent, cognitive, intuitive building designed to be native to its place. NASA ingenuity applies lessons from space exploration to living sustainably on Earth.

The building itself will be a state-of-the-art net zero complex, powered by ground-source heat pumps from 72 geothermal wells, solar hot water collectors and a network of sensors to react to changing conditions, such as sunlight, temperature, wind, and energy usage, all monitored by a web-based smart meter.

NASA expects to use 90 % less water than an ordinary equivalent-size building.

“Cradle to Cradle” author William McDonough has been contracted to design and build the $20.6 million building, to be completed by the end of 2011. NASA expects to get the Platinum level LEED certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, the highest level.

“Leadership is often described as being taken to some place you would have never gotten to on your own,” says McDonough. “The kind of leadership has exhibited in space is exactly the kind of leadership we need exhibited on Earth.” He continues, “the world needs a whole new way of thinking about the way we design and make things because the current designs are destructive to the Earth and its systems, and we need new designs that are positive.”

We’ll be following this closely!

[Sources: CNET, NASA]