The Anheuser-Busch brewery in Houston, TX will have 55% of it energy needs met from landfill biogas. It’s a big move for the country’s leading brewer- AB holds a 49.2% share of U.S. beer sales and is a subsidiary of the world’s leading brewer, Anheuser-Busch InBev- and, if the program is a success, could bring the entire industry along with it. Landfill biogas consists of roughly 50% methane, a green house gas 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide, and is created when organic material decomposes in landfills. It can be converted into alternative fuels, heat, steam or used to generate electricity.

The project is a partnership between the brewery, Republic Services (a leading provider of solid waste collection) and Ameresco Services (the largest independent energy services company in North America). Pipelines connect the brewery to McCarty Road Landfill, the main recipient of refuse from the residents and businesses in east Houston and surrounding suburbs.

In the project’s press release, AB explains, “the benefit of this clean energy project is equivalent to planting more than 121,050 acres of pine or fir trees or taking 97,550 motor vehicles off the road. Additional gas from the McCarty Road landfill also is captured, processed and sold to a local utility.”

Check out our previous posts on various green initiatives by brewers.

[source: Anheuser-Busch, PR Newswire]

PepsiCo this week opened its first overseas “green” plant in China in the western city of Chongqing, part of the beverage giant’s continuing efforts to expand its reach in emerging markets, broaden its portfolio of locally relevant products and achieve a range of ambitious sustainability goals.

The Chongqing plant is the first “green” beverage plant ever built in China - and the first plant of any kind in the industrial center of Chongqing- to comply with rigorous LEED standards. The plant uses over 35 water and energy saving designs and utilizes the world’s most advanced technology, including an environmental management system that monitors water and energy use on every production line and every piece of individual equipment in real time.

The facility is designed to use 22% less water and 23% less energy than the average PepsiCo plant in China. To save water, the plant utilizes a high-pressure cleaning system, water-free conveyor belt lubricant and water-saving fixtures. Plant associates re-use water for landscaping and general cleaning instead of using potable water. To save energy, 75% of the plant’s indoor areas feature natural lighting, including a skylight in the packing area and warehouse. A roof garden insulates the office building and saves energy for cooling and heating.

The new plant is expected to help PepsiCo annually reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 3,100 tons; water usage by 100,000 tons; and overall energy use by four million kilowatt hours compared to the former Chongqing plant. It also will serve as an educational center to raise awareness of good environmental practices among students in the local community.

“This plant reflects our deep and long-term commitment to China,” said Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo chairman and chief executive officer. “It is also an important milestone in our green journey, on which we are partnering with the Chinese government, industry and others to continue to promote the health and longevity of our planet.”

[sources: PepsiCo, PR Newswire]

During the recent Tube strike in London, one commuter decided to capture the thrill and convenience of riding to work on his bicycle. The youtube clips, from kmcyc, which have the feel of a real-life video game, provide a fascinating vantage point of how to beat the chaos caused by the underground strike. As kmcyc writes, “anyone want to see lots and lots of cars going nowhere? Well hop on your bike and cycle around the Tube Strike!”

Maybe the folks at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department have been watching Mark Wahlberg’s 2003 remake of The Italian Job* (with all those great car chases through LA’s subway tunnels and viaducts), or maybe it’s the sweet deal they were able to arrange with BMW (ten bucks a month!). Under a test program approved last week by the County Board of Supervisors, LA County sheriffs will get 17 electric-powered minis and electric charging stations.

“It’s clean-energy, it’s cost-effective and it could prove to be a boon for the county,” says Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore. As Andrew Blankstein explains in his piece for the LA Times, “the cars are being donated by Mini U.S.A., a subsidiary of BMW, and will cost the department a $10-a-month processing fee. Maintenance of the vehicles and charging stations will be covered by BMW. A lease for the car typically runs $850 a month.” In return, the car company is looking for “feedback” about the program.

In the land of crazy freeway chases (OJ, anyone?), it’s good to see a little bit of sanity.

*check out Michael Caine’s original, also with Mini Cooper car chases.

[Sources: LA Times,via Gas 2.0]

The San Francisco Bay Area has always been one of the country’s testing ground for cultural ideas, from Flower Power to solar power, and, in recent years, Mayor Gavin Newsom has positioned San Francisco as the unrivaled leader in green progressiveness. Yesterday, Newsom signed a new rule requiring residents to separate trash, recyclables and compost or face fines. The new rule, due to go into effect this fall, is thought to be the most comprehensive recycling and composting legislation in the country.

In a piece for the Huffington Post, Newsom explains,

“a number of years ago, San Francisco set a lofty green goal–we wanted to divert 75 percent of our resources from the landfill by 2010 and achieve zero waste by 2020. At the time, many people thought our targets were overly ambitious. However, San Francisco is poised to meet these goals. We are currently keeping 72 percent of recyclable material out of our landfill.

We recently conducted a waste-stream analysis and discovered that about two thirds of the garbage people throw away–half a million tons each year–could have been recycled or turned to compost. If we were able to capture everything, we’d be recycling 90 percent–preventing additional waste material from going to the landfill, and creating hundreds of green-collar jobs.

San Francisco already converts over 400 tons of food scraps and other compostable discards into high-grade organic compost every day. It’s so nutrient-rich that the final product is almost jet black in color. It’s snapped up by farms and vineyards across the Bay Area, we can barely keep up with the demand. By requiring all residents and businesses to compost, we’ll increase the amount of “black gold” available for sustainable regional agriculture and improve our environment…

I believe that composting will become second nature for Americans, just like sorting bottles and paper. It will take time, but I believe mandatory composting will spread across the country–improving the air we breathe and reducing our need for landfills.”

San Francisco already offers composting pickup service, even that is something few cities in the U.S. provide, and the new regulations making composting mandatory goes a big step further. Whether mandatory composting will trend like recycling has in most cities remains to be seen, but we’re curious to see which cities will be next. Burlington? Boulder? Austin? Portland?

Read more at the city’s recycling programs site - www.sfenvironment.org/.

We had the chance to spend some time at a remarkable new development in Hinesburg, Vermont, where contractor Chuck Reiss (Reiss Building & Renovation) and architect Rolf Kielman (Truex Cullins & Partners) are leading the way in building tomorrow’s homes today. Set on 24 acres of prime agricultural land on the outskirts of town (not far from Burlington), the South Farm homes have been designed and built to be “net zero,” meaning they will produce all the energy they need on site.

The land was bought in partnership by Vermont Building Resources (which Reiss formed along with a limited pool of like-minded investors) and the Russell Family Farm, and the goal was to ensure a modest but responsible development of this 24 acre parcel. Fourteen acres were set aside for continued farming, while a cluster of six passive/active solar homes was built on a portion of the land’s southern facing slope.

As Kielman points out, the principle of orienting a home on a piece of land to maximize efficiency is not a new concept. “You can go back to some of the basic principles involved in Greek town planning,” Kielman says, “you go to Delphi for example…all these Greek communities sit in these south facing bowls…and this was a perfect south facing bowl,…we could shelve all of these houses into the hillside, put most of the glass to the southside,…it’s a little like a tree, the way it sort of searches for the sunlight to sustain itself.”

Beyond positioning, Reiss and Kielman had to consider a range of factors to help reduce the homes’ overall energy load, including tightening the envelopes (limiting the homes to 1500-2000 square feet), using locally sourced materials where possible and introducing triple pane windows. Other environmental features include geo-thermal heating, radiant concrete floors, super insulated walls and roofs, active PV solar panels and significant south facing glass, which provides solar gain and great views down the valley.

The homes have been certified by the Vermont Builds Green program, which recognized the development’s conservation of agricultural soils and wetlands, location within 3 miles of a school and food store, building design (built into the hillside and with a roof oriented for maximum solar exposure) and its energy rating.

The homes will actually produce more energy than they use, making them each a little utility company.
“Green Mountain Power charges 13 cents per kilowatt hour,” Reiss explains. “It buys back electricity at 6 cents above that rate,…and when rates go up, the house earns more.”

“One of our goals was to say, ‘look, you can do this. This is not something that’s happening in the future.” I personally feel if we can demonstrate that with a subdivision of six homes, I don’t see why we’re building any other way.”

For more, check out the project’s brochure.

View the video on youtube or vimeo.

Daniel Libeskind may be putting the ‘fab’ in prefab. One of the world’s most famous (and often controversial) architects, Libeskind has designed a 5,500 sq ft, two-story villa that can be shipped and assembled anywhere. The villa’s price tag will range from just under $3 million to as much as $4.2 million, and many in the industry see this as a game-changing moment for public perception of “out of the box” homes.

Libeskind, who is perhaps best known for designing the Jewish Museum Berlin, the reconstruction of New York’s World Trade Center site and the Denver Art Museum, has only designed a few residential projects. The villa will boast four bedrooms, four bathrooms, a 900 sq ft “grand room,” and a number of green elements, including both solar and geothermal systems, along with a rainwater catchment system that comes optional.

Libeskind explains on his site, “This is a cutting edge house. A house that has the highest sustainability components in the world. From its insulation, from its geothermal power, from solar energy. It is the really highest level in the world. But, sustainability goes beyond just the technical aspects. A house which is memorable, a house which is beautifully built, with fine materials, a house which will remain for a 100 years. That’s what makes this house sustainable.” But critics are quick to point out that with a house of that size (5,500 sq ft), it’s difficult to take Libeskind’s “sustainability” claims seriously.

But the chic quotient is new to the sustainable prefab industry, so to is this degree of exclusivity. It may be “prefab,” but buyers are assured of “regional exclusivity,” knowing they’ll have the only ones in their area. For more, check out Kevin Brass’s piece in last week’s NY Times.

[sources: NY Times, Inhabitat]

In another example of “finally, someone’s using their head,” British supermarket chain Sainsbury’s has opened what it calls the first “people-powered” store. At one of the company’s stores in Gloucester yesterday, Sainsbury’s unveiled “kinetic road plates”, new green technology that will capture the energy of each car that enters and exits the parking lot, harnessing about 30 kWh each hour, enough to power its checkouts.

According to Alison Austin, Sainsbury’s environment manager, “this is revolutionary. Not only are we the first to use such cutting-edge technology with our shoppers, but customers can now play a very active role in helping make their local shop greener, without extra effort or cost.”

The Gloucester Quays location boasts some other innovative practices beyond the “kinetic plates.” The store plans to harvest rainwater to flush the store’s toilets and solar panels will heat up to 100% of the store’s hot water during the summer. As the store was being built, more than 90% of the construction waste was re-used or recycled.

[sources: The Guardian, via PSFK]

Jim Stevens/McClatchy Newspapers

Countless people buy homes for the location and tear down the existing structures before starting from scratch. But I’m guessing not too many of them get a $100,000 write-off for doing it, but that’s exactly what Mike and Tricia Barry received when they decided to recycle the materials rather than send them all to a landfill. The Barrys, of Danville, CA, took down their home piece by piece and, with the help of California Deconstruction and Building Materials ReUse Network, donated the materials to non-profits like Habitat for Humanity of the East Bay. An estimated 80 to 85% of the house was reused- “wood, windows, appliances, flooring, roofing and even the nails,” even the plumbing, bricks and interior fixtures.

As Laura Casey writes in her piece for The Seattle Times, deconstruction takes about two weeks longer than demolition, and, in the case of the Barrys, the difference in cost was smaller than you might imagine. The Barrys were looking at about a $14,000 demolition bill, and the cost of deconstruction was about $23,000, not counting the sizable tax write-off. Oh, and the feeling of not sending another old house-worth of materials to a landfill.

[source: Laura Casey/Contra Costa Times]

Amsterdam has long been one of Europe’s most progressive cities. The Dutch capital is known for its Red-Light District, its museums, cannabis, canals and cobble stones. Soon it might be known for something else entirely- being Europe’s first “smart city.”

The city has begun a process of modernizing its infrastructure, adding 300 power hookups around the city to recharge electric cars, installing solar panels on bus stops and historic 17th century townhouses alike. While other cities (most notably Stockholm) are aiming to become “smart cities,” investing in renewable technologies and adopting stiff emission controls, Amsterdam is the poster child.

This month, the first 1200 homes were fitted with smart meter systems from IBM and Cisco. Some were provided financing from local banks, including ING and Rabobank, to retrofit their homes with cost/energy-saving upgrades.

Accenture has been brought on to help the city create a smart electricity grid, add smart meters and other broad and ambitious measures to reduce energy use throughout Amsterdam’s business, residential and public spaces.

[sources: Business Week, Accenture]

As a follow up to our post last week about a Memphis-area Burger King declaring on its signage that “Global Warming Is Baloney,” it’s worth sharing Leo Hickman’s conversation with the marketing director of the BK franchise-owner responsible for the signs, Mirabile Investment Corporation.

One of our favorite journalists and a features editor for the UK’s Guardian, Hickman wanted to see if he could get more information from both MIC and Burger King Corp on the growing controversy.  Burger King Corp was quick to tell him “the statement that was posted on several restaurants’ reader boards in the Memphis area and the view expressed by the franchisee on this issue does not reflect Burger King Corp.’s (BKC) opinion or view.” He then reached out to MIC’s marketing director, J.J. McNelis, and, as he explains, his phone call proved to be “one of the more memorable calls [he's] made as a journalist.” It was clear he was dealing with a rogue franchisee.

Hickman writes,

Chris Davis, the Memphis Flyer writer, had said that his calls for a quote had remained unanswered. So I decided to see if a little English charm could draw the evidently coy MIC out of its shell and, to my surprise, I was patched straight through by the operator to J.J. McNelis, MIC’s marketing president. What proceeded was one of the more memorable calls I’ve made as a journalist…here, for your delectation, is the full transcript of the call I had with the soon-to-be-legendary J.J. McNelis. As another well-known burger chain would probably say, we’re lovin’ it:

Me: How does your company react to this story?

McNelis: We’ve certainly observed what’s been going on. A quick answer to what our reaction is would most accurately be described as amusement.

Me: Why do you say that?

McNelis: It’s pretty amusing the amount of fervour that some of the people bring to their arguments on this issue.

Me: People who believe in global warming?

McNelis: No, people on all sides.

Me: Where did these signs come from? Was it the managers in each restaurant that put them up?

McNelis: I don’t have those details.

Me: Have they all come down now?

McNelis: I think so. It’s the best I can tell.

Me: BK Corp issued a statement saying that ‘global warming is baloney’ wasn’t their view and that they had asked you to take them down. Is that your understanding of it?

McNelis: I can’t speak for them. I would think they would run from any form of controversy kinda like cockroaches when the lights get turned on. I’m not aware of any direction that they gave the franchisee and I don’t think they have the authority to do it. The franchisee can put on a sign whatever he wants.

more…

The 71-storey Pearl River Tower

The Pearl River Tower, now under construction in Guangzhou, China is being called the most energy efficient superskyscraper ever built. Once completed, the 1017 foot tower in the capital of Guangdong province will boast wind turbines, solar panels, sun-shields, smart lighting, water-cooled ceilings and state-of-the-art insulation, enough to put just about every skyscraper in the U.S. to shame.

As Jonathan Watts writes for The Guardian, China “is in the middle of the greatest building boom in human history. Six of the world’s 10 tallest buildings completed last year were in China, including the 492-metre-tall Shanghai World Financial Centre. Even taller structures are on their way – such as the Shanghai Centre, 632 metres,  and at 600 metres, the Goldin Finance 117 in Tianjin.” The struggles of the world’s economy have not done much to slow the extraordinary pace of development. As Watts explains, “engineers are completing four more tower blocks every day,” but “almost all fitted with air conditioning, heating, lighting and lifts that will run on coal-powered electricity,” making the 71-storey Pearl River Tower so unsual.

If, as one management consultancy suggests, China will “erect up to 50,000 new skyscrapers by 2025,” the success of the Pearl River Tower can go a long way in setting a green trend.

For more, check out the original article here.

With an impressive 8,844 solar panels, Taiwan’s recently finished solar-powered stadium just might revolutionize the sporting world. The 50,000 seat stadium, designed by Toyo Ito, will generate all of its electricity from solar.

A test run performed earlier this year demonstrated that it takes just six minutes to power up the stadium’s 3,300 lights and two jumbo vision screens. Additional ‘green’ features include permeable paving, reusable and locally made materials.

The stadium will generate an estimated 1.14 gigawatt hours of electricity every year, which will be enough to power up to 80% of the surrounding neighborhood on the days when the stadium is unused. The stadium will officially open later this year for the 2009 World Games.

For more, check out Deputy Dog’s article.

We think the ‘street view‘ feature of Google maps has been a remarkable project. The 360 degree cameras, typically mounted on cars, capture street level photographs that allow users to pan, rotate and zoom through neighborhoods in cities throughout the world. While the project has raised some privacy concerns- Greece has banned Google from adding new photos within the country until the company addresses some of these issues- it has been largely embraced as another of Google’s genius innovations.

Some sites have helped fuel this ‘privacy debate’ by collecting the “best of” these candid moments- including a web 2.0 marriage proposal, ‘drunk dude passed out,’ an attempted murder, a flasher and more.

This summer, Google will add a green touch to this celebrated project by sending out a fleet of tricycles to capture map areas of Britain inaccessible by Street View cars. The Google Trike, which the company calls “a mechanical masterpiece comprising 3 bicycle wheels, a mounted Street View camera and a very athletic cyclist in customized Google apparel,” will capture areas of the UK chosen by the public. Britons will chose locations from five categories: castles, coastal paths, natural wonders, historic buildings and monuments and stadiums.

[via CNET]

Last year, we ran a piece on the swirling mass of garbage floating in the Pacific Ocean, often called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. In his recent story for the Telegraph, Richard Grant provides a more in depth look at this “accidental monument to modern society.” As he explains, the mass of debris was first discovered in 1997 “by a Californian sailor, surfer, volunteer environmentalist and early-retired furniture restorer named Charles Moore, who was heading home with his crew from a sailing race in Hawaii.” Moore was taking a shortcut across the edge of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, “an immense slowly spiralling vortex of warm equatorial air that pulls in winds and turns them gently until they expire.” Sea currents converge in the gyre, collecting much of the flotsam from the Pacific Rim. Though, as Grant writes, “fifty years ago nearly all that flotsam was biodegradable. These days it is 90 per cent plastic.”

“It took us a week to get across and there was always some plastic thing bobbing by,” Moore tells Grant. “It wasn’t a revelation so much as a gradual sinking feeling that something was terribly wrong here. Two years later I went back with a fine-mesh net, and that was the real mind-boggling discovery.” Moore continues, “we found six times more plastic than plankton, and this was just colossal. No one had any idea this was happening, or what it might mean for marine ecosystems, or even where all this stuff was coming from.”

There is an estimated three million tons and growing. As Grant suggests poignantly, “when Leo Baekeland, a Belgian chemist, started tinkering around in his garage in Yonkers, New York, working on the first synthetic polymer, who could have foreseen that a hundred years later plastic would outweigh plankton six-to-one in the middle of the Pacific Ocean?”

A new experimental community on the outskirts of Freiburg, Germany is getting some attention for thinking outside the box, I mean car. As Elizabeth Rosenthal writes in her piece in the NY Times, the town of Vauban is completely “car-free”- “except the main thoroughfare, where the tram to downtown Freiburg runs, and a few streets on one edge of the community.” Car ownership is allowed, but residents can only park their cars in two large garages at the edge of the development, “where a car-owner buys a space, for $40,000, along with a home.”

Rosenthal continues,

As a result, 70 percent of Vauban’s families do not own cars, and 57 percent sold a car to move here. “When I had a car I was always tense. I’m much happier this way,” said Heidrun Walter, a media trainer and mother of two, as she walked verdant streets where the swish of bicycles and the chatter of wandering children drown out the occasional distant motor.

Vauban, completed in 2006, is an example of a growing trend in Europe, the United States and elsewhere to separate suburban life from auto use, as a component of a movement called “smart planning.”

more…

X-men Origins: Wolverine has taken in about $130 million domestically, and it’s on pace to be another hit in the Marvel Comics franchise. While the film has (rightfully) received tepid reviews from critics (”How do you make mutants dull?”- “In terms of tone and content, Wolverine is a nearer match to Daredevil than Iron Man.”), we have to give the mega movie some props for incorporating a little bit of green into the production. We saw this video from ZapRoot about how the film was part of the Green Screen Initiative, a program aimed at reducing the environmental impact of movies. The initiative was directed by the Queenstown government, and, based on its success, will be a blueprint for all films shot in that region of New Zealand.

The production was able to divert almost 92% of its waste from landfill, saving about $55,000 and 670 tons of garbage. Insert joke about not diverting enough of the film’s garbage, like, for example, the dialogue. And, quite clearly, a film of this scale can hardly be considered a ‘green’ film, but we hope this type of initiative becomes a trend in Hollywood. These blockbusters will continue to exist, but if filmmakers can incorporate and further develop green thinking…we’ll all be better off, even if the movies suck.

If you watch television here in the United States, chances are you’ve seen the IBM ad about creating “smarter traffic systems.”  IBM worked with the City of Stockholm to implement smart toll systems to reduce gridlock, lower emissions and save the city’s residents time and money. It’s a great reminder that much of the technology we need to build a cleaner, more efficient tomorrow already exists and, in some forward-thinking cities, is being implemented with success today.

The Stockholm Trial reduced traffic by 25%, and the city saw a drop in emissions from road traffic of up to 14%. Greenhouse gases have fallen 40% in the inner-city. For more info, IBM has a more complete summary of results.

Two reasons to pick up the latest issue of Rolling Stone - the Bob Dylan interview by Douglas Hinckley, and an article entitled “The Mayor of Hell” by Janet Reitman. Hell is Braddock, PA - pop. 2500, poverty stricken, in the shadow of Carnegie’s first steel mill. The mayor is John Fetterman, and his crusade may be one of the most daunting and significant urban revitalization projects in our country. I encourage you to pick up the magazine and check out the city’s website - where we got these photos.

To raise awareness about what he calls “undoubtedly the greatest challenge of our age,” Prince Charles has launched a new video about the Prince’s Rainforests Project. Along with a supporting cast that includes Harrison Ford, the Dalai Lama, Daniel Craig, Robin Williams, Joss Stone, Pele, his sons- Princes Will and Harry- and a couple of frogs (Kermit and the project’s mascot, a digitially-created frog, created by Framestore, the effects team behind The Golden Compass), Prince Charles explains that now is the time to leverage “global determination for change on a vitally important issue”.  “Our aim,” he explains, “is to build an online community to call, from the bottom up, for urgent action to protect the rainforests, without which we will most certainly lose the battle against catastrophic climate change.”

As Harrison Ford suggests, “what happens in the rain forest has an immediate and powerful effect on our lives. I believe it is our moral responsibility to protect the environment, to save what we can of the planet’s resources for future generations and our children.”

For more info on the Prince’s initiative, visit the project’s site.

All the world’s a stage, so perhaps it’s no surprise to see Broadway acting on behalf of the planet. We’ve covered a number of the recent initiatives on Broadway (from green billboards to the partnership between the city and the theater community called ‘Broadway Goes Green’). The latest to hit the Great White Way is the new Henry Miller’s Theater, the first ‘green theater,’ set to open in September with Roundabout Theater Company’s revival of the musical “Bye Bye Birdie.”

As Patrick Healy writes in his NY Times piece, “the 1,055-seat theater, on 43rd Street between Avenue of the Americas and Broadway, was built on the site of a theater planned by the actor Henry Miller, which opened in 1918,” and “is the first newly built Broadway house in more than 20 years.”

The green touches include use of recycled and local materials, waterless urinals in the men’s washrooms, among others. Click here for more photos of the project.

We saw this video on CR Blog, from Acne advertising, about a successful ad campaign they created on behalf of Swedish airport bus company (Flygbussarna). The project’s goal was to “challenge the status quo about what belongs on the road, the car or the coach.” The math is very straightforward- a car averages 1.2 passengers, while a bus can carry 50. Meanwhile, a bus produces the equivalent emissions of about 4 cars. The result was a 300 ton piece of advertising, a bus ’sculpture’ made up of crushed cars (see photos below). The campaign was so compelling, the agency explains, that the installation received unexpected interest from television and radio, and it caused major traffic delays as curious drivers along the airport road would slow down to get a better glimpse.

[images via CR Blog]

As more cities in the United States address the “plastic bag issue,” from outright bans to proposed bag taxes, a new study in the U.K. should provide some encouragement. New figures released by Britain’s Waste & Resources Action Programme (see our previous post about WRAP) show that the use of plastic bags has fallen more than 25% over the last two years as shoppers switch to reusable bags. The study also shows that the “amount of plastic used [has been] reduced by 40% in the same period by using less plastic for each bag and recycled materials.”

As Louise Gray explains in the Telegraph, “the target to reduce the environmental impact of carrier bags was part of an agreement with UK Government and retailers have now agreed to try and cut use of plastic bags by 50% by May this year. This would save 130,000 tons of carbon dioxide – equivalent to taking 41,000 cars off the road.”

We need only look at the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the swirling mass of trash the size of Texas floating between California and Hawaii, to see the impact of our country’s consumption of plastic bags. Just as they have in Britain, retailers here in the U.S. need to seize the opportunity to make a difference. Imagine the impact of reducing the amount of plastic bags used here in the U.S. by 26% in two years!

In his post last week for the Huffington Post, San Francisco’s Mayor Gavin Newsom wrote about the need to invest in safe, renewable forms of ocean energy. It’s worth a read, and it reinforces the notion that the Bay Area will continue to be this country’s testing ground for green innovation.

He argues that wind, wave, tidal and current power “will help secure our future prosperity, create thousands of new jobs and reduce our dependence on foreign oil.” Newsom has “submitted an application to the federal government to develop an underwater wave project off San Francisco’s Ocean Beach that could generate between 30MW and 100MW of power.” In addition, Newsom and co. are “actively working to develop a tidal power demonstration project in the San Francisco Bay that demonstrates the promise of technologies that capture tides.” It’s a compelling vision, when one thinks of the amount of energy it takes between tides as water rushes through the relatively small opening of the Golden Gate.

Read the post, and watch the above video of Newsom explaining the potential of these projects.

Last year, we did a post on the Vatican’s efforts to become the world’s first carbon zero state. It’s looking good! The Vatican recently unveiled plans to build Europe’s largest solar power plant. The project will cost an estimated $660 million, and the 100 megawatt installation will generate enough energy to power 40,000 households, well above the electricity needs of the city-state’s 900 residents. According to Bloomberg, the plant would spare 91,000 tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere and will “turn the enclave into an electricity exporter to the nation that surrounds it” by 2014.