Being green around the holidays can be tricky. Many of our best rituals (Thanksgiving, July 4th, Labor Day, Super Bowl Sunday…) rely heavily on consumption (and, by extension, produce a ton of waste). So, for this July 4th, we thought we’d share some simple tips for green tweaks.

1.) Go Local

You don’t need read Michael Pollan to know food just tastes better when you know where it’s from. Maybe it’s the satisfaction of knowing you’re supporting local farmers. Perhaps it’s because your body knows when you’re eating fresh and when the food is processed. Either way, you’ll be doing the planet some good by buying food that hasn’t been trucked in from across the country.

2.) Go Easy

It’s nice to have leftovers, but how many hamburger patties and hot dogs got tossed last year at your July 4th party? When you’re buying and prepping the goodies, go easy. When you’re stacking your plate with potato salad, beans, ribs, hot dogs, watermelon and whatever else, keep in mind you’ll probably be throwing some of that out. So for all the piggies out there- myself included- there’s no shame in multiple trips to the food table.

3.) Go Gas

If you’re a purist, charcoal might be the only option for you. Try a 100% All Natural Hardwood Lump Charcoal. Fewer chemicals are always a good thing, but they also produce less ash than generic charcoal. Another good option is Wicked Good Charcoal, which is made from industrial scrap wood. Kingsford Charwood is good too. But gas is probably your greenest bet- it produces about half the emissions of charcoal.

4.) Go Silver

Well, maybe not silver, but at least think about using the silverware. Most July 4th meals are finger foods anyway (do we need more than a spoon?), but it might be worth busting out the cutlery instead of using the plastic alternatives. But if you’re hell bent on disposable products- and, I’ll be honest, I don’t blame you- there are some good biodegradable products you could choose. Branch and Eatware both have some good sustainble/compostable picnic accessories.

5.) Go Green

Let’s see, in my July 4th overall roundup… Be safe. Have fun. Recycle. Compost (if you can). Enjoy the fireworks (hopefully these new “eco-friendly” fireworks will catch on). Don’t go on any carnival rides- I’m still not feeling right from my ride on the tilt-a-wheel.  Go see The Hangover (finally saw it and it’s hilarious!). And, oh yeah, go U-S-A!

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]

Aveda just added to its considerable green credentials. The MN-based manufacturer of skin and hair care products has announced a new recycling initiative aimed at reducing the number of plastic bottle caps that end up in landfills, beaches, rivers and oceans.

Most bottle caps are non-recyclable, typically made from a more rigid type of plastic that is different from the bottle itself. But with the help of its network of salons and stores and in partnership with community schools, Aveda is seeking to collect these old caps that would otherwise be thrown away. The company will send the collected caps to its recycler where the material will be recycled into new caps and containers. Not all lids make the grade- “if you can bend or break the lid with your bare hands,” Aveda’s site explains, “then it does not meet the rigid plastic definition.”

Aveda has been a leader in sustainable innovation. Earlier this year, seven Aveda products were given Cradle To Cradle certification. The company also recently received a DuPont Award For Packaging Innovation for a shampoo bottle made from 96% recycled content.

[sources: Aveda}

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]

Has the credit crunch got you cutting up and throwing out your oversized collection of credit cards? Does your tight budget have you staying in at night and playing guitar at home? A company called PickPunch may have the gadget for you! The Indiana-based company has developed a hand held punching device that allows you to make your own guitar picks out of old credit cards.

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.

We love this technology! John La Grou, a long-time electronics inventor, audio designer and entrepreneur, and a team have created a new, smarter type of electrical outlet that will save lives, money and wasted energy. In a recent presentation at TED (see above video), La Grou began with a slide of a smoke detector- “a world changing invention” that has saved countless lives. But, La Grou points out, the smoke detector detects fires, it does not prevent them. Since one of the main causes of fires is electricity- faulty and misused wiring and appliances- La Grou and his team set out to prevent electrical fires before they begin. They created an inexpensive data receptacle that could be embedded in an appliance- in its plug- that could communicate with the power supply so that, if a fault is detected, it could shut off the electrical flow. The Intelligent Electrical Outlet- thanks to the Electrical Fault Circuit Interrupter (EFCI)- prevents overloads before they happen.

The invention also eliminates the need for parents to worry about those pesky “fork in the socket” mishaps. Each year in the U.S., over 2500 children are admitted to emergency rooms due to accidental electrocution. The Intelligent Electrical Outlet would make those accidents a thing of past, since the power is always off unless a smart plug is detected. Genius! And yet such a simple concept. A green, life-saving invention!

[source: TED]

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.

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]

Adam Kalkin’s Push Button House 1 was first displayed in 2005. Since then, Kalkin’s “quik houses,” known for their blend of industrial pragmatism and creative design, have set the standard in the growing field of prefab homes. The Push Button House starts as a shipping container until, quite literally, you push a button and motorized walls, powered by hydraulics, unfold to reveal a fully functional house. It feels like something out of a Luc Besson film, but it could be yours for about $100k.

[via SwipeLife]

Sony Ericcson bolstered its green credentials earlier today, introducing two new phones made from old CD cases and water bottles. The GreenHeart C901 (top left) and Naite (top right) have all the features you’d expect on a new release (camera, video streaming, bluetooth,…) but are made from at least 50% recycled plastic and colored with “eco-friendly” water-based paints. The company claims that “thanks to these innovations, the overall CO_² footprint over the full life of the C901 GreenHeart™ and Naite is reduced by 15%.”

Both phones come with a low-power charger and an in-phone e-manual which reduces paper usage by 90 per cent and are part of the company’s GreenHeart™ program, aimed at elimating the use of hazardous chemicals from the product design and manufacturing process.

Both new GreenHeart™ phones build on Sony Ericsson’s industry leading ‘green core’, the result of a long standing commitment to eliminate the use of hazardous chemicals from the product design and manufacturing process..

In earlier posts, we’ve profiled efforts by other phone makers to green their products. Earlier this year, Samsung released it Blue Earth phone, and Motorola put out its MOTO W233 Renew. As Sony Ericcson pointed out, given the volume of products moved each year, the industry needs to tackle the issue of waste and efficiency. More than 1 billion phones are sold globally each year, along with boxes and other materials.

DuPont has announced the winners of its awards for Packaging Innovation, which include shampoo bottles, baked goods containers, frozen food trays and more. The “awards show” was held virtually, a nod to cost-saving and emissions-reducing efforts perhaps, and allowed attendees to interact with speakers and each other, watch videos about the winners and learn more about packaging innovation.

Brands recognized included Aveda (Vintage Clove Shampoo bottle made with 96 % recycled content), Whole Foods Markets (Sealed Air’s Renew-A-Pak made with 100 % renewable content, compostable and biodegradable), Healthy Choice (frozen food trays made with 40 % post-consumer recycled PET plastic), Bertolli (pasta sauce pouches, which uses 70 % less materials compared to glass jars. One truckload of unfilled pouches equals 25 truckloads of unfilled jars), and Pangea Organics (holiday gift packs made of 100 % renewable, recyclable, or biodegradable materials with vegetable-based inks, embedded with seeds and can be planted after use).

Ford has avoided the grisly fate of the other two-thirds of the (once) Big Three. From escaping the heavy weight of tax payer anger/high expectations by NOT accepting Federal bailout money to developing cars that actually aren’t bad- the Ford Fusion just made headlines when NASCAR’s Carl Edwards drove one 1445 miles on one tank of gas- the company seems to have its duck in a row.

In his piece for Low Impact Living, Jason Pelletier writes about the latest indication that Ford is chugging along in the right direction. Ford recently highlighted some of its green initiatives inside the car, including soy-based polyurethane foam seat cushions and backs- cutting its use of petrochemicals by over 1,000,000 pounds- post-industrial and post-consumer recycled content in seat fabrics- reducing C02 emissions and energy use in some models by as much as 60%- and plastic underbody shields made from recycled detergent bottles, tires and battery casings- which diverted 25 million pounds of waste landfills in 2008.

As Pelletier explains, “75%+ of the energy used by a car over its lifetime is consumed in the operation of the vehicle, so this focus on efficiency is well-placed. But we shouldn’t forget about the other 25% of energy use or the environmental impacts that come with it - hazardous chemicals that off-gas when our cars sit in the sun, components that are difficult to recycle, and loads of plastics made from petrochemicals among them.”

Ford isn’t the only automaker trying to chip away at that 25%. Lexus uses plant-based eco-plastics, and its manufacturing plants recycle over 98% of its waste. Honda is also working to reduce the volatile organic compounds in its car interiors.

For more, check out Pelletier’s article.

golf in the desert?

Golf courses have long been a target for environmentalists, many of whom view them as the ultimate symbol of wasteful consumption of natural resources (water and land) and unapologetic polluters (pesticides and fertilizers)- one critic insists the 18,000 courses in the U.S. are devastating the environment.

But are they going away? No, of course not. And, it’s worth noting that the Professional Golf Association (PGA) is perhaps the most philanthropic of any major sporting body, with each weekly tour event bringing in roughly $5-7 million to local causes.

That said, since it’s just unreasonable to strive towards a golf course-free America, it’s good to know people like Matt Shaffer are finding ways to lower the environmental impact. As Larry Dorman writes in his piece for the NY Times, Shaffer is a course manager at the celebrated Merion Golf Club, in Ardmore, PA, home to a record 17 U.S.G.A. championships. Seeking a way to drastically reduce water use while maintaining the integrity of the course, Shaffer turned to wireless sensors. In 2005, he installed a product called RZ Wireless, which led to four years of improved water conservation.

Looking to go further, Shaffer recently decided to upgrade, selecting now from a growing and decidedly more sophisticated marketplace than in 2005. “Well, what I thought was dry isn’t even my baseline,” Shaffer tells Dorman in the article, “these sensors are just so much more sensitive, so much better, so much more complete. I am now hooked. I’m a sensor addict.”

For the article, Dorman rates the leading companies in the space. The best so far “is a system called UgMo, a network of wireless sensors that mine subsurface data and link to a software package developed by Advanced Sensor Technology of King of Prussia, Pa., the original manufacturers of the RZ system,” which can cut an average of 10% of a course’s typical water use. That amounts to millions of gallons of water each year, which, for most courses, would mean the system pays for itself within the first year.

Shawn Emerson, the superintendent at Scotsdale, Arizona’s Desert Mountain Golf Club, a complex of six courses that span 500 acres, believes the sensors will save a total of more than 100 million gallons of effluent water and roughly $113,000.

Dorman continues, “competitors include the industry giant Toro, of Bloomington, Minn., and Environmental Sensors, Inc., based in Victoria, British Columbia,” each of whom has introduced wireless systems designed for golf courses within the past four months.

For more, check out the original article here.

from The Economist, illustration by Claudio Munoz

As we began bracing for a long and painful recession, many believed the first casualties of corporate budgets would be green initiatives and corporate social responsibility (CSR) progams. The economic downturn was seen as a stress test of companies’ best intentions; would it be possible to do what’s right for the planet and their shareholders? A recent article in the Economist suggests that “so far the recession has not produced a wholesale retreat from corporate do-gooding. Instead it has led firms to cut things that were at best peripheral to their business interests and, at worst, a waste of time and money.”

The paradox of this ’stress test’ has been that as profit margins shrink, our collective understanding of the climate crisis- and of our role in causing it- increases. But according to Economist, green results have been a by-product of cost-saving measures, rather than the driving force. Later this year, Gap, the San Francisco-based retailer, will hold a strategy meeting for its CSR team. Rather than having employees fly in from over 20 countries, as in previous years, the company will conduct the meetings via online conferencing. The move is a cost-saving one, but there’s a clear emission-saving benefit.

A survey of 329 corporate-travel managers and business travellers published earlier this year by the Association of Corporate Travel Executives found that only 17% of them now ranked environmental sustainability as a high priority, down from 29% a year ago. Like Gap, the consultancy Accenture will save $8m this year by using “telepresence” systems and, as bonus, will avoid generating 2,000 tons of carbon dioxide.

Advocates of ‘corporate greening’ have long touted the cost-saving potential that comes with trimming excess and eliminating waste. “Another reason for optimism,” the article suggests, “is that consumer interest in companies’ sustainability credentials remains strong in spite of the recession,” but “it would also damage a firm’s chances of recruiting future stars,” with college students “far more informed about sustainability than their predecessors.”

Sustainability is no longer a moral imperative, it’s seen as a way to stay in the black.

[original article: The Economist]

What do we make of a company like McDonald’s talking about its green practices? Like Virgin Galactic talking about their “low-impact” trips into Space, McDonald’s has an uphill battle to position itself as a friend to the environment. But the restaurant mega-brand has published its 2009 Global Best of Green report,  detailing more than 80 green initiatives.

The report highlights the range of it’s ‘green’ successes, including energy policies, packaging, anti-littering, recycling, logistics, communications, restaurants, workplace, sustainable food and supplier accountability.

The report gives special focus to five “best of the best” practices, which include restaurants in France which used smart meters to manage and reduce energy usage by 11%, locations in Australia that implemented water conservation measures, 270 restaurants in South America that sent 1 million liters of used cooking oil to local organizations to use as biodiesel, the company’s first LEED Gold certified restaurant in Chicago and, finally, restaurants in Japan that offered customers discounts for registering in the government’s Team Minus 6% initiative to reduce CO2 emissions by 1kg per person/per day (raising the number of participants from 40,000 to 380,000).

For a company with as global a reach as McDonald’s, it’s important to see a burgeoning sense of green thinking, but, from the look of this report, I’d say Ronald, Grimace and the Hamburglar need to step it up!

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?”

Microphone check. One. Two. [Ahem] Allow me to vent for a minute about buttheads and poop. There are possibly only three types of people in this world 1) people who think it’s okay to drop a (still smoldering) cigarette on the ground, where, by the way, my one year old may crawl by and pick it up and, as with everything he touches, put it in his mouth. 2) people who don’t pick up after their dogs. [these people are sometimes the same people]  3) people who would run for office in city hall if only to pass some ordinance that required the first two groups of people to serve 100 hours of cigarette and poop cleanup duty.

Admittedly, the issue of “not scooping the poop” is not necessarily an environmental one- someone prone to doing it might argue that ultimately it’s good for the soil, or it’ll be gone in a week so what’s the big deal, or “hey, I’m not using a plastic bag to pick that up because it’ll just end up in a landfill.” That person would be an idiot, but the argument could at least be made. But the larger point is, of course, it flies in the face of the type of self-responsibility we all expect from one another. The plastic bag argument, I suppose, raises an interesting dilemma for people who have, otherwise, successfully avoided using disposable plastic bags in their daily lives. For those people I recommend something like FlushEze, the flushable, biodegradable poop bag. And cigarettes… - smoke, don’t smoke, I don’t care, but would a person who recycles at home, is conscious of not being wasteful, etc…drop a cigarette butt into the gutter? And if he/she did, why that disconnect? Incidentally, a cigarette butt takes up to five years to biodegrade. On a walk recently, I saw a woman who, no joke, was wearing a shirt that said “Hug Your Mother Earth,” who in the span of two minutes, tossed her cigarette butt into the bushes and watched idly as her bulldog had a morning constitutional on the side of the bike path. It was the perfect trifecta of douchebaggery. I knew it was time for a post about buttheads and poop. Now…, back to our normal fare.

Engineers at England’s Warwick University have built a Formula 3 racecar made entirely from sustainable and recycled materials, in an effort to prove that racing doesn’t have to be a “gas-guzzling disaster.” As this video from Reuters shows, the team incorporated carrots into the steering wheel, potatoes into the wing mirrors, soybean oil into the seat and flax and hemp into the body of the car. They also used recycled carbon fiber and recycled bottles that make up the resin in the composites.

It’s not just a gimmick, though. The car, which runs on bio-waste from chocolate factories, will soon be able reach to speeds of up to 160 miles-per-hour. Ahhhh, what’s up doc!

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.

We’re always interested in innovation that enables us to harness wasted energy. Whether it’s converting the motion of the ocean into usable energy, or building dance floors that capture the energy of dancing feet, machines at the gym storing power used to lift weights, or, as we recently saw in a cafe in the Netherlands, turning a revolving door into a generator, we’re convinced these ideas will help set the stage for our sustainable future. The latest innovation may come courtesy of a team of MIT undergraduate students that has invented a shock absorber that harnesses energy from small bumps in the road.

Their tests showed “a significant amount of energy” was being wasted in conventional suspension systems, “especially for heavy vehicles.” The team says it can produce up to a 10 percent improvement in overall vehicle fuel efficiency by using the regenerative shock absorbers. The prototype shock absorbers use a hydraulic system that forces fluid through a turbine attached to a generator. The system is controlled by an active electronic system that optimizes the damping, providing a smoother ride than conventional shocks while generating electricity to recharge the batteries or operate electrical equipment.

More efficient AND a smoother ride? Win-win! So, who will be the first big customers? The students hope to initially find customers among companies that operate large fleets of heavy vehicles. They have already drawn interest from the U.S. military and several truck manufacturers. The team calculated that a company such as Wal-Mart, for example, could save $13 million a year in fuel costs by converting its fleet of trucks.

For more info, check out MIT’s site.

Talk about a clean conscience! The folks at NewSoap.org “buy name brand liquid soap by the barrel and package it in old bottles here in America.” As they explain on their site, “big companies aren’t going to do this on their own.  So, we’ll do it for them.” Order name-brand cleaners or the eco-friendly alternatives, and they’ll put the liquid soap in a cleaned, sanitized and processed old bottle of Coke, or Sprite, or Heineken…you get the idea. Click here to read more.

With a name like ‘Green Science Firming Creme,’ you’d be excused for thinking beauty product maker Aveda had jumped on the greenwashing bandwagon. Really? Green Science? Turns out, uh, no, it really is pretty green. And, apparently, backed by science. Aveda actually has a long record of green thinking, and that record was just bolstered by the news that seven of its products have earned Cradle-to-Cradle (C2C) certification and also earned Aveda an endorsement as a C2C Company.

The seven products that earned C2C gold certification, the third highest of the four C2C levels, are Smooth Infusion shampoo, Smooth Infusion conditioner, Dry Remedy moisturizing shampoo, Dry Remedy moisturizing conditioner, Aveda Men Pure-Formance shampoo, Aveda Men Pure-Formance conditioner and, of course, Green Science Firming face creme. Aveda’s packaging also earned C2C silver certification, the second C2C level.

As Jonathan Bardelline, of GreenerDesign, explains, “Aveda developed those products and many more with C2C principles in mind from the start. The company has worked…for five years to advance its product design criteria and guidelines.” Aveda was recognized for the breadth of its efforts, from products, processes, renewable energy, biodiversity, buildings and sites, supply chains, purchasing, social fairness, training and more.

For more info, here’s Bardelline’s piece, and the company’s C2C announcement.