Better living starts with “better know how.” That is, you have to know how and why to make those one degree changes. That’s why we like the EPA and Department of Transportation proposal this week to overhaul fuel economy labels to reflect how electric and alternative fuel vehicles stack up against gasoline passenger vehicles. The agencies propose grades for cars, ranging from A+ to a D. Apparently, there are no failing grades, though we suspect the Hummer might qualify if it was still in production. The grades will be based on mileage, greenhouse gas contribution and other types of polluting emissions. Consumers will be able to compare cars against all other vehicles, not just cars in the same class.

This type of grading system will, we think, have a profound effect on how cars are perceived. It’s one thing to know, on some level, that you car isn’t as fuel efficient as other cars. It’s another entirely to know you’re driving around a D+.

What grade will your car receive? Hybrids such as the Ford Fusion, Honda Civic, and Toyota Prius will get an A-minus, with a MPG rating between 40 and 58. Fuel-efficient cars such as the Nissan Altima, Toyota Corolla, and Volkswagen Golf will be given a B-plus for mileage between 30 and 30 miles per gallon. (Click PDF to see the full list of mileage and grades.)

Any Ferrari drivers out there? You’d get a D rating, where mileage is 12 miles per gallon or lower.

Officials expect to be finalized with new rating system early next year and used in 2012 model year cars. The published labels will be available for public comment for 60 days.

[Source: CNET]

Every so often, the e-media vs. paper-media debate flares up again. We’ve covered it a few times on this blog, including a One Degree TV clip of our conversation with Brad Robertson of GannettLocal. Earlier this year, in a post about the growing landscape of E-readers, we noted that it was easier to measure the considerable environmental impact of the publishing world, from deforestation, to waste water and carbon emissions. Measuring the relative impact of E-readers (from manufacturing to daily use) was, at least then, more difficult. Last week, Brian Palmer examined this question in his piece for Slate, Should You Ditch Your Books for an E-reader? As the infographic (left) suggests, the planet might prefer you to read your books electronically.

Palmer explains, ”environmental analysis can be an endless balancing of this versus that. Do you care more about conserving water or avoiding toxic chemical usage? Minimizing carbon dioxide emissions or radioactive nuclear waste?” But, in quoting Cleantech, which aggregrated a series of studies on this subject, Palmer delves into the numbers that shapes this debate.

A few excerpts from Palmer’s piece for Slate:

A single book generates about 7.5 kg of carbon dioxide equivalents—the value of all its greenhouse gas emissions expressed in terms of the impact of carbon dioxide. That includes production, transport, and either recycling or disposal. (Attention students: Your textbooks are particularly bad, releasing more than double the CO₂ equivalents of the average book.)

Apple’s iPad generates 130 kg of carbon dioxide equivalents during its lifetime, according to company estimates. Amazon has not released numbers for the Kindle, but independent analysts put it at 168 kg. Those analyses do not indicate how much additional carbon is generated per book read (as a result of the energy required to host the e-bookstore’s servers and power the screen while you read), but they do include the full cost of manufacture, which likely accounts for the lion’s share of emissions. (The iPad uses just three watts of electricity while you’re reading, far less than most light bulbs.) If we can trust those numbers, then, the iPad pays for its CO₂ emissions about one third-of the way through your 18^th book. You’d need to get halfway into your 23^rd book on Kindle to get out of the environmental red.

Water is also a major consideration. The newspaper and book publishing industries together consume 153 billion gallons of water annually, according to the nonprofit Green Press Initiative. It takes about seven gallons to produce the average printed book, while e-publishing companies can create a digital book with less than two cups of water. (E-book publishers consume water, like any other company, through the paper they use and other office activities.) Researchers estimate that 79 gallons of water are needed to make an e-reader. So you come out on top, water-wise, after reading about a dozen books.

E-readers also have books beat on toxic chemicals. The production of ink for printing releases a number of volatile organic compounds into the atmosphere, including hexane, toluene, and xylene, which contribute to smog and asthma. Some of them may also cause cancer or birth defects. Computer production is not free of hard-to-pronounce chemicals, to be sure, but both the iPad and the Kindle comply with Europe’s RoHS standards, which ban some of the scarier chemicals that have been involved in electronics production. E-readers do, however, require the mining of nonrenewable minerals, like columbite-tantalite, which sometimes come from politically unstable regions.

[Source: Slate]

We spotted this post from PopSci:

You may not have heard about it during your local traffic report this weekend, but anyone negotiating the Beijing-Tibet expressway in recent days is painfully aware of the problem: a 62-mile jam that slowed traffic to a crawl between the Chinese capital and Jining city. But while such huge traffic jams aren’t unheard of, China’s traffic woes are unique in their duration – the current traffic snarl (it’s still ongoing) has been unfolding since August 14, making for nine days of gridlock.

This story provided welcome perspective this morning, after my 8 minute commute was stretched into a “maddening” 15 minutes (!!!), on account of the annual late-August arrival of anxious parents and excited college freshmen. I’m not gloating. The thought of a nine day traffic jam makes my brain hurt. But a story like that reminds us that “one degree change” is, by necessity, a relative concept. Course corrections throughout the day depend on the choices each of us face. The single greatest influence on what those choices may be is where we live. It’s easier here, perhaps, than other places to consider “pace, space, and interface,” that is, to take a moment to consider our pace of life, to connect with our surroundings and notice our interactions (with each other, with products and technology).

But we’re also lucky to travel, and we know that, while the choices that we can make everyday aren’t achievable by all, one degree change is realistic for everyone anywhere. We spend a lot of time in Asia, and we’re working to build a design community that uses LTT as a lens to develop products and practices to support the growing concerns of a new generation, living in the one of the most densely populated places on the planet.

Why “one degree change” is a relative concept, innovative solutions are often born out of the most challenging of situations. Somewhere in that 62 mile long traffic jam, there’s an innovative thinker saying, “how could we do better?”

According to PopSci, the Beijing-Tibet expressway traffic jam puts squarely into focus the global impact China’s car manufacturing boom is having. “While Detroit declines, China is quickly becoming the world’s largest auto economy. China is selling passenger cars to its own citizens at a pace that seems unfathomable during an overall global economic decline (last year China automotive market moved 13.6 million cars, compared with 10.4 million in the U.S.). China is also on the brink of becoming a major automotive exporter, meaning Chinese manufacturers and designers will soon be deciding what commuters drive in other parts of the world.”

Time to ride my bike to work!

[Source: Popsci]

It’s not quite how Jules Verne* imagined it, but teams from three continents have set off from Geneva in a race ‘around the world in 80 days.’ The ‘Zero Race,’ as it’s called, will see electric cars navigate the longest and greenest race of all time, traveling across more than 19,000 miles, from Geneva, through Moscow, to Shanghai, across the ocean by ship to Vancouver, down the west coast of North America to Cancun, board a ship once again to Portugal, returning across western Europe to Geneva.

As Louis Palmer, organizer of the race, explains, “We want to show that we have solutions, like electric cars and renewable energy.” Race officials say any emissions generated from the race will be offset through solar energy being fed back into the grid and other investments in renewables.

After 80 days, the cars will have passed through 16 countries, with 150 city stopovers, returning to Geneva by January, 2011.

See related LTT posts:

Solar Roadway Captures Energy, Heats Roads

Motivated By The Impossible- flying around the world on solar-power

Japanese Solar Car Wins Aussie Desert Race

*Jules Verne was quite a visionary. Known as the “father of science fiction,” he imagined scientific exploration (through space, air and water) before means of such travel had been devised. In 1865, for example, he penned ‘From The Earth To The Moon,’ a half century before the Wright brothers’ first successful flight at Kitty Hawk, and more than 100 years before Apollo 11 touched down on the moon.

In our last post, we described Graham Hill’s ThinBike as one fewer excuse not to ride a bicycle. The sleek design, which allows the handlebars to twist and lock sideways and the pedals to fold down, makes the bike more manageable in tight quarters. The Copenhagen Wheel, featured in the product teaser above, offers functional innovation, with a hubcap that captures energy exerted while pedaling and braking, saving it for when you need an extra boost.

This brilliant invention from MIT’s aptly named SENSEable City Lab hooks on to any regular bicycle and transforms it into a hybrid electric. The design recently scored the top prize for U.S. entries at the 2010 James Dyson Awards. In addition to the motor, batteries and internal gear system encased in the red hubcap, the Copenhagen Wheel also includes sensors that provide data for a cycling-related mobile app. Cyclists can plan better bike routes, achieve exercise goals, connect with other cyclists, share their data across social media platforms and more.

Genius!

[Source: Guy Kawasaki]

Related Posts:

Pedal-powered Christmas Lights in Copenhagen

Copenhagen Cycle Chic

Colorado-based Green Garage specializes in “green-tuning” cars, finding ways to make cars run cleaner, cheaper and greener. Technicians at the full-service garage, nicknamed ‘carhuggers,’ offer a 53-Point Systems inspection that identifies ways to maximize engine efficiency, they use auto parts that help customers save money by improving MPG and recommend more than 60 sustainable car-related products, “chosen for their superior performance at solid waste reduction, CO2 emission, toxicity, water conservation, use of natural resources and social impact.”

Since converting your car to run on bio-diesel or turning it into a completely electric car (see our post on a 14 year old who turned his grandfather’s 1972 VW Beetle into an all-electric car) might be a few degrees of change more than you can afford right now, “green-tuning” might be your best option. In fact, experts tend to agree that anything you can do to make your used car more efficient is actually greener than throwing down for that new Prius. You’d need to drive that Prius more than 100,000 miles before the environmental impact of manufacturing a new (albeit greener) car is offset.

Green Garage, and places like it, are helping customers make those critical one degree changes. And, as they suggest, that should help increase your smiles per gallon.

Website: www.greengarage.com

With everything from mandatory recycling and composting to hybrid ferries to Alcatraz, few cities in America are so aggressively chasing innovation in sustainability as San Francisco. Now the city is testing a parking system that adjusts the meter price based on demand at that moment. Electronic sensors measure the number of available spaces in real time. If there are a lot of empty spaces, the meter could be as low as 25 cents an hour. Park during a busy time, the meter might ask for as much as $6 an hour.

It’s another innovative concept, and it’s another one that might encourage carpooling and/or alternate means of transportation. The first phase of the project begins with 190 new meters in the Hayes Valley neighborhood.

Check out some other reasons we like the San Francisco Bay Area:

Bay Area Becomes ‘Better Place’

SF: mandatory recycling & composting

SF’s Mayor Newsom Eyes Ocean Power

Places: San Francisco’s Green Rental Car Program

Hybrid Ferry To Alcatraz

[Sources: PSFK,SF Park,CognitiveCities]

Subways are so last century! Anyone who has considered the marvel that is New York City’s maze of subway tunnels knows it’s an immense feat of engineering. But the bones of that subway system has seen minimal changes in nearly 40 years. Given how complicated they are to update and expand (just ask New Yorkers on the eastside who have waited decades for the long-planned 2nd Ave Subway line), perhaps the traditional “underground transit system” is yesterday’s solution. A company in China, for example, has revealed plans for an “overground system” it claims is more practical and innovative.

The company, Shenzhen Hashi Future Parking Equipment Co., has developed plans for what it calls the “3D Fast Bus,” that rides aboveground, straddling the traffic. TreeHugger’s Michael Graham Richard provided an English translation of the company’s pitch:

At present, there are mainly 4 types of public transits in China: subway, light-rail train, BRT, and normal bus. They have advantages and disadvantages, for example, subway costs a lot and takes long time to build; BRT takes up road spaces and produces noises as well as pollution to the air. How to develop environmental-friendly public transportation? Straddling bus provides a solution…

The straddling bus combines the advantages of BRT, it is also a substitution for BRT and subway in the future. As you all know, the majority vehicle on the road is car, the shortest vehicle is also car. Normally our overpass is 4.5-5.5 m high. The highlight innovation of straddling bus is that it runs above car and under overpass. Its biggest strength is saving road spaces, efficient and high in capacity. It can reduce up to 25-30% traffic jams on main routes. Running at an average 40 km/h, it can take 1200 people at a time, which means 300 passengers per cart. [...]

The bus can save up to 860 ton of fuel per year, reducing 2,640 ton of carbon emission. Presently we have passed the first stage demonstration and will get through all of the technical invalidation by the end of August. Beijing’s Mentougou District is carrying out a eco-community project, it has already planned out 186 km for our straddling bus. Construction will begin at year end.

While we can’t imagine a New York without its subway, could an “overground system” help update the aging MTA? New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg has done a lot to make his city run more efficiently- his “Smart” ideas include introducing a fleet of hybrid taxis, wind turbines on skyscrapers and bridges, a greener Broadway, making crosstown buses free and more. So, who knows. Who could have imagined Broadway would become the safest place to be in the city AND a pedestrian park?

[Sources; TreeHugger & China Hush]

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.

The Chinese household appliance giant Haier has unveiled a new system at SinoCES that harnesses waste heat from shower water and transfers energy to the hot water tank. The PowerPad, as it’s called, captures 15% of the energy from the tap, which, according to the company, will be improved to up to 30% when it goes on sale 6 weeks from now.

Details of how exactly it works haven’t been provided, but observers say the 30% efficiency rating, though difficult to achieve, doesn’t seem to break any laws of thermodynamics.

Here at LTT, we love examples of harnessing wasted energy (see our posts on the dance that floor that captures the kinetic energy of dancers, the supermarket that captures the energy of cars entering and exiting its parking lot, and more). Solar, wind, geothermal, tidal…and now shower power.

The PowerPad is expected to hit the Chinese market soon at a price of about $600.

[Source: EcoFriend]

In 1967’s The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman’s Benjamin gets cornered by a family friend and told the future is all about one word. “Are you listening?” Mr McGuire asks again. “Yes, I am,” says Benjamin. “Plastics.” An awkward pause before Benjamin asks, puzzled,  ”Just how do you mean that, sir?” It’s one of the great random movie quotes. It’s not just an iconic scene from Mike Nichols’ classic, but it serves as a time capsule before the whole world did, in fact, become dominated by plastics. On LTT, we’ve covered the enormous issue of plastic waste, like the Texas-sized swirling mass of garbage in the Pacific Ocean. But scientists in Germany may have the 21st century answer to plastics. It’s called ‘Arboform.’

Arboform is a renewable plastic with wood-like qualities, yet can be formed into any shape. This “liquid wood,” as it’s called, is derived from wood pulp-based lignin and can be mixed with a number of other materials to create a strong, non-toxic alternative to petroleum-based plastics.. When combined with resins and flax, the “bio-plastic mass” looks and feels like wood and can be used to make several products “such as furniture, toys, loudspeakers and even car interiors.”

And, with all that plastic clogging up our oceans, Arboform looks like a compelling alternative. It is totally biodegradable and its raw material lignin is available in abundance, making it an environmentally friendly material that can potentially save significant natural resources.

[Sources: ISDA, PSFK]

A couple of years ago, there was a flurry of stories about how the planet would be better off if we all bought used cars instead of new hybrids. It seems counter-intuitive, but actually, if you were to buy a ‘98 Toyota Tercel that averages 27/35 mpg, for example, that new Prius would have to go 100,000 miles to achieve the same carbon savings. As fully electric vehicles hit the marketplace, that argument will hold less weight. And in Ontario, Oregon, 14 year old Ashton Stark and his father have managed to merge the past and the future. They spent a year transforming Ashton’s grandfather’s 1972 VW Beetle into an operational electric vehicle.

The car runs on nine separate 8 volt golf cart batteries-  “Interstate battery made a deal with us,” Ashton explains, “to test their new line of golf cart batteries and collect data on the batteries”-  and can hit a top speed of 45mph. The range is about 50 miles which will cost about 10 cents in electricity costs. The entire transformation process cost around $4000.

At 14, Ashton will be getting his learner’s permit soon. For now, he has to rely on his Dad to know how the car handles on the open road.

[Source: EcoFriend, from: The Argus Observer]

Last week, we wrote about the Strata SE1, London’s tallest residential building and the world’s first skyscraper to have electricity-generating wind turbines built into its core design. Not to be outdone by our cousins across the pond, a team of American designers have proposed a sustainable skyscraper for Chicago that can be powered by renewable energy including noise.

Noise, it seems, is an untapped form of energy that is usually absorbed as heat by the surroundings. And, in an urban setting, there’s a virtually unending supply. The team of designers, Ryan Brown, Nathanael Dunn, Daniel Nelson and Benjamin Scholten, has presented designs for the building, dubbed the Urban Transducer, the mixed-use skyscraper that would feature facades laden with acoustic reverberation transducers that can convert noise into electricity for use within the building. The panels are adjusted to react to specific wavelengths of present frequencies. The panels would ‘remember’ the most commonly occurring frequencies and their locations, allowing it to preemptively adjust in order to produce maximum efficiency. If that’s not enough, micro wind turbines integrated into the building would assist in producing added power.

Acoustic reverberation transducers? Could this be the next frontier in urban sustainability? Will we soon be able to hang our ‘A.R.T.’ out the window, next to our hanging garden and our window-box micro-pharmacy?

[Sources: Ecofriend, Evolo]

We’d like to see more creative interface with our surroundings- a hanging wall in a midtown apartment, “peel and stick” photovoltaics on the roof of a car, exercise bikes in gyms that help to power its TV screens, and so on. The recent unveiling of Strata SE1, the tallest residential building in London, is an example on a large scale.

The “Razor,” as it’s nicknamed, is the first skyscraper in the world to have electricity-generating wind turbines built into its core design. The building stands 42 stories high, and, at that height, 40 mph winds are a near constant. The building’s design also makes use of the change in airflow caused by nearby buildings, referred to as the ‘Venturi effect.’ The Razor’s 19 KW wind turbines use 5 blades instead of 3 to reduce noise pollution. The building is expected to generate roughly 8% of the buildings overall electricity demands.

The energy costs per flat are expected to be up to 40% less than Britain’s typical housing average. Smart living- made possible when sustainability is built into the fabric of the design aesthetic- is a trend we can get behind.

[Source: CleanTechnica, Wikipedia]

Just like everyone, LTT enjoys reading about ‘high concept’ innovations- you know, the breakthrough in a lab somewhere that will make it possible to (fill in the blank) someday, the kind we can look forward to a generation from now. For instance, I’m holding out for that all-in-one solar-powered wrist watch cell phone personal computer GPS hair dryer. But what really excites us isn’t the reinventing of tomorrow’s wheel, it’s making today’s wheel better. And when it comes to that, the low-hanging fruit is very often improvements in the supply chain, including the packaging, which is usually the first thing to end up in the trash.

Yesterday, LTT met with Don Droppo Jr, President & CEO of family-owned Curtis Packaging, based in Sandy Hook, CT, to learn more about the ways they are blazing a trail in green packaging. “We’re a true testament to the idea that green business makes economic sense,” Droppo has said. At a time when the U.S. packaging industry has been steadily losing business to overseas competitors, Curtis has seen its annual sales double, thanks in large part to its focus on sustainability.

When cosmetics maker Estée Lauder asked Curtis to package its Origins natural-products line in “the most environmentally friendly paper out there,” Droppo’s research led him to shift the company’s entire business model. “I started to learn about sustainability and asked what my company could do so that we could be as environmentally conscious as possible,” he recently told Fortune magazine.

Curtis began by working with the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) to certify the paper in its packages was only purchased from FSC endorsed paper mills. Next, Droppo says, “we converted all of our energy needs to clean, renewable energy.” Curtis will be buying a total of 4,524,800 kWhs of renewable energy per year for the next 3 years, with the majority sourced through wind power and approximately 30% of the purchase will be a blend of renewable sources including locally generated wind and hydroelectric.

Initially, as you’d expect, Curtis saw its costs rise. But Droppo viewed that extra 10% to 15% in costs as a marketing expense. “Not only are we doing the right thing for the environment, but we’re getting a tremendous amount of exposure because of this.”

The innovations from Curtis now go well beyond “green paper.” The company’s R&D has led to innovations in materials and processing that have lowered cost and reduced environmental impact. “We have signed up new customers because of our ‘green’ commitment,” Droppo explains. “Hopefully after hearing the positive impact this has had on our business, other business owners or corporations may follow suit to do their part to help sustain the environment.”

Companies like Curtis Packaging are, in many ways, the unsung heroes of the sustainability movement. An innovation in screen-printing on compostable foil isn’t quite as sexy as a breakthrough in photovoltaic technology, but its measurable impact on our lives is considerably larger, at least today. We’ll continue to keep our eye on Curtis and other leaders in this space.

Some other recent posts on eco-friendly packaging:

Eco-Friendly Packaging Replaces PVC With Cardboard

Aveda’s New Bottle Cap Recycling Plan

Pulp Lamp: when packaging becomes the product

Brands: Frito-Lay’s Compostable Bag

“Honey, don’t forget to turn off the wallpaper when you come upstairs!” Sounds like a drunken non sequitur, but, thanks to a team of Swedish and American scientists, those words might actually be reasonably uttered someday soon. The promise of “glowing wallpaper” appears to be one possible application of a breakthrough in what’s called LEC technology. Researchers are hopeful it can become both commercially viable and present a more sustainable alternative to more OLEDs.

Today’s OLEDs, aka organic light diodes, which are found in mobile phones and televisions displays, are fairly energy efficient but are expensive to produce and consist of materials which are difficult to recycle.

These concerns are part of what led Swedish researchers from Linköping and Umeå universities, in coalition with American colleagues, to develop a new alternative to the flat screen. Based on organic light-emitting electrochemical cells (or LECs), the transparent electrode is made of the carbon material graphene.

“By using graphene instead of conventional metal electrodes, components of the future will be much easier to recycle and thereby environmentally attractive,” said one of the scientists, Nathaniel Robinson from Linköping University.

And since LEC parts can be produced from liquid solutions, they can be produced as large, flexible sheets from a printing press. Such a manufacturing process would be cost-effective, and it would pave the way for inventive methods of using the materials, as with developing glowing wallpaper.

Innovation at its most satisfying is often about presenting a new idea in the simplest of contexts. We spotted this product, from miniwiz, that does just that. The Solarbulb screws into any plastic bottle, and, voila!, you have yourself an upcycled lamp. The Solarbulb allows you to repurpose that plastic bottle (remember, 45 billion plastic bottles end up in U.S. landfills each year). All you’ll need is three or four hours of sun, and the solar bottle lamp thingy will provide up to five hours of uninterrupted LED illumination.

More info: secure.ultracart.com

It’s no coincidence that when billionaire Richard Branson launched the US edition of his Virgin Airlines over here he chose the San Francisco Bay Area as its headquarters. The brand’s philosophy and attitude make Virgin America more like its Bay Area cohorts (Apple, Google, Facebook) than the big carriers (United, American, USAir…) with which it competes.

Virgin America, the three-year old innovative airline “startup,” was recently named the most eco-friendly airline in the industry. And yesterday, standing alongside the Governator (aka Arnold Schwarzenegger) and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome, Branson kicked off Virgin America’s inaugural international flight- from San Francisco to Toronto, with additional routes being added later this year. It’s growing- with style and brand innovation- at a time when the industry struggles.

The airline’s Burlingame-based headquarters was recently retrofitted to qualify for LEED Silver certification. In addition, it will become one of two “anchor tenants” in the airport’s new Terminal 2, the $383 million redesign and retrofit that will also meet LEED Silver standards. When completed in 2011, Terminal 2 will serve as California’s only airline hub. The new terminal will boast improved indoor air quality, reduced energy consumption, preferred parking for hybrids, a farmer’s market and will offer the first airport dining program in the country using Slow Food vendors.

The terminal will be “the greenest expansion of any airport in the United States of America,” San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom said. “We’re going to have a slow-food pavilion, a farmers’ market. All these values that everyone loves to mock us about are being put together in this unique, extraordinary environment.”

Newsom said that Virgin shares the Bay Area’s “values of sustainability, long-term business strategy, long-term branding strategy…(and have) an innovative spirit in their approach to the governance of an airline in an industry that needs a new spirit and an entrepreneurial approach.”

Offset your footprint in-flight

But it’s not just that the brand is moving a decidedly ungreen industry closer to green, it’s how it’s doing it. It’s throwing a party!

As Caroline McCarthy suggests,  Virgin America’s success has always been defined by “both tech-savviness and sex appeal.” Last year, it became the first U.S. airline to offer fleet-wide Wi-Fi access. At the launch yesterday, over cupcakes and champagne, guests were reminded that since its launch Virgin America has operated a brand new fleet that is up to 25% more fuel and carbon efficient than the average fleet flying domestically. The airline employs practices such as single engine taxiing, maximizing use of efficient ground power, utilizing advanced avionics to fly more efficiently, and cost index flying – the practice of regulating cruising speeds to reduce fuel burn.

Virgin America was also the first to offer guests the ability to offset the carbon footprint of their flight – in-flight via the touch-screen Red seatback entertainment through partner Carbonfund.org. Virgin America also voluntarily offsets its headquarters footprint on an annual basis. In addition, Virgin America has initiated recycling pilot initiatives and currently recycles in-flight waste from approximately 47 percent of its flight.

We’ll see how the rest of the struggling airline industry responds to Virgin America’s scrappy innovation.

As solar technology advances, we’re seeing more ways to harness the sun’s rays to recharge everyday appliances. From the practical, such as iPhone covers that have photovoltaic panels- although, I’d like to talk to someone who’s successfully done that without overheating their phone- to the experimental, like the solar car that won the Aussie desert race, product designers are integrating panels into virtually everything and anything. The latest to catch our eye, by industrial designer Weng Jie, is the Solar Camera Strap.

The Solar Camera Strap is just like the one you already have, except with the addition of PV cells, this camera strap can recharge your camera as you sightsee. Don’t you hate it when you’re on safari and your camera runs out of juice just as the cheetah takes down a gazelle? Or when your daughter is about to score the winning goal and your battery dies? No? But isn’t it nice to know there’s a preventative measure? And a sustainable one, at that.

[Source: EcoFriend]

Going green? There’s an app for that. Actually, as we’ve noted, there are a lot of apps out there that help us lead more considered lives- apps that will help save time, energy and money in just about every area of life: Gas, Driving and Car Maintenance, Traveling, Carpooling and Mass Transit, Home Energy Use, and finally, Greener Shopping.

The GoodGuide iPhone app is one such app, acting as the angel on your shoulder when you’re out and about. With a database of over 50,000 products, the GoodGuide provides detailed ratings for a product’s health, environmental and social credentials. If you’re standing in the supermarket aisle, wondering how your choices of toothpaste, for example, match up in those categories, just scan the barcodes to make an informed decision. Colgate scores 10 out of 10 for “health,” for instance, but just 6.5 on its environmental record. Not surprisingly, Tom’s of Maine fairs better, scoring an 8.8 overall.

For consumers that care about making a “better” purchasing decision, this app puts the power right in your hand. Happy downloading!

[Sources: GoodGuide, The Guardian]

What to do with all our trash! It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it. But Waste Management CEO David Steiner thinks it can actually be a lot cleaner. Under his leadership, WM has invested in a variety of techniques and technologies that go beyond landfills and garbage incineration. He hopes his company will begin turning garbage in renewables, like ethanol, bio-diesel and natural gas. ”We don’t want to play just in the picking up and delivering,” says Steiner in a recent interview with Forbes. “We want to own conversion, too. We want to own the technology.”

We’ve covered a number of WM’s projects, from their BigBelly Solar Trash Compactors to their quest for “black gold”- sewage to biofuel. As Jonathan Fahey writes in his piece for Forbes, Steiner has “made four investments in startups and joint ventures that are experimenting with techniques like incinerating trash with a plasma, speed-composting organic waste and using heat and chemicals to turn trash into ethanol. Waste Management is even dabbling in the front end of waste production: In May it invested in a company that is developing a technology that aims to reduce the amount of plastic needed to make packaging, appliances and electronics.”

Like Wal-Mart, which has surprised many with its heavy investment in green technology and protocols, Waste Management sees the value in “going green.” Customers increasingly “want to be able to say they produce no waste, a scary proposition for a company named Waste Management. Municipalities are requiring that garbage be separated into a larger number of different piles (plastic here, glass there). Competition for the job of processing the sorted waste is coming not just from other waste companies but also from technology companies that think they can transform this trash into higher-value materials.”

As Fahey explains, Waste Management recently invested in a company near Boston called Harvest Power, which aims to cut composting time to six to eight weeks, from twice that, by creating optimized temperature and moisture environment for the bugs that break down organic matter. With cities like San Francisco forcing residents to separate compostables from other trash, this could be a big market for WM. “Now 98% of the nation’s food waste goes into landfills, according to Harvest Chief Executive Paul Sellew.”

All these efforts, Fahey suggests, provide a way “to position Waste Management as a green company and entice investors with its prospects for higher growth.” And WM has some money to experiment. “In 2009 the company earned $994 million on $11.8 billion in revenue and produced $1.2 billion in free cash.” It may be companies like Wal-Mart and Waste Management that can afford to test out new methods and have the clout to make them industry standards.

[Source: Forbes]

If you’ve ever ridden Amtrak, the idea of a ‘train that never stops’ might seem like science fiction fantasy, but in Taiwan people are working to make it a reality. According to the concept, originated by Taiwanese inventor Peng Yu-lun, the train enters the station and locks into a “boarding” car filled with passengers, which is put into motion ahead of time. Passengers embark and disembark via the ‘boarding’ shuttle, allowing the train to never actually stop at the station, thus saving time and money.

Peng Yu-lun says that a train like the domestic Kaohsiung MRT has a maximum speed of 85 km/h, but due to stops, it achieves an average speed of just 35 km/h. If the train followed his concept, it would be able to maintain an average speed of 85 km/h throuout the entire trip.

[Sources: EcoFriend, SingularityHub]

It’s hardly a surprise to note that televisions have really changed in the past 60 years. From black and white, to the introduction of the first color sets, cable television, satellite, high-definition, TiVo and DVR, now 3-D, the changes have been remarkable. But for all the advances that have changed the way we view television, perhaps the most significant is our perception of the TV itself, from a luxury to a disposable appliance.

This slow devolution began in 1947, when Motorola introduced the VT-71 television for $189.95, the first television set to be sold for under $200, finally making television affordable for millions of Americans. The previous year, only 0.5% of U.S. households had a television set. By 1954, that number had climbed to 55.7%, and by 1962, 90% of U.S. households had a TV. Despite this growth, televisions were still a luxury. $200 in 1950, for example, was the equivalent of nearly $2,000 in today’s money. The point is, affordable though they were becoming, they were still expensive and, if it broke, you could fix it. Has anyone ever successfully fixed a flatscreen TV by themselves?

You would fix a television in 1950 for two reasons- 1) few families could afford the cost of a(nother) new one, 2) the technology made it possible. On the back panel of television sets, owners would find schematics for removing and replacing parts. You’d find alignment instructions, voltage charts, tips for cleaning and caring for your set. You could unscrew and replace. Today, the technology in televisions include microchips soldered together. Ok, in truth, I don’t know what makes a modern TV work, but that illustrates my point. Today’s gadgets and appliances are no longer made to be fixed by the consumer.

Do we want to see a return to cathode ray tubes in televisions? Of course not. I, for one, love my flat screen TV. But it is worth noting that cultural shift, from being motivated (by cost) and allowed (by technology) to fix appliances to…well, the opposite. Is it possible to have both? New, innovative technologies that we, as consumers, can fix ourselves?

According to a recent study, 32% of Americans now turn to the Internet as their most common source of entertainment, second only to 58% who said they turn to TV. The report, by Edelman, which examines the broadening definition of entertainment in an Internet age, also shows that 83% of those surveyed care about “being able to purchase the entertainment easily,” and 80% care about “being able to access the entertainment immediately.” The findings support what you probably already knew- with iPhones, iPads, Kindles, Netflix streaming on your laptop and the like, more people are spending more time getting more from their gadgets. What does this trend really mean?

For starters, it puts another nail in the coffin of print media. But is that good? The aging debate about whether digital entertainment is greener than print media rages on, but have we as consumers already made up our minds?

Don Carli suggests in his piece for MediaShift, consumers are constantly confronted with, what he calls, a false dilemma: that “digital media is the environmentally preferable choice and that print media is the environmentally destructive choice. But is it possible that digital media could be more destructive to the environment and a greater threat to trees, bees, rivers and forests in the United States than paper-making or printing?” Carli suggests “there is growing recognition that digital media technology uses significant amounts of energy from coal fired power plants which are making a significant contribution to global warming. Greenpeace estimates that by 2020 data centers will demand more electricity than is currently demanded by France, Brazil, Canada, and Germany combined.”

The paper industry, for its part, is also out there making its case. The Print Council reminds people that “paper is made from wood – a resource that is being renewed on a daily basis by the paper and forest products industry, which plants millions of trees every year. Electronic devices are made of plastics and other non-renewable resources and often contain toxic chemicals and metals. Only 18% of the U.S. electronic devices are currently recycled, and many of those are not being reused for other products. In the U.S., nearly 60% of all paper is recycled, recovered and reused to make new paper products.” As Carli suggests in his piece for MediaShift, “if your goal is to save trees or do something good for the environment, the choice to go paperless may not be as green or simple as some would like you to think.”

But the Edelman study shows that consumers have spoken. The 21st century will be shaped by new forms of digital entertainment, information and distraction. So, in some ways, this debate about which is greener is irrelevant. The answer is clear, we need to make digital more green.