Earth Profit
News
November 10, 2008
- 100% Organic Caps with Eco-Friendly Screen Printing
This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.
Proforma Green got our samples in today of the new 8650 V Natural™ Organic Cap by Vitronic Promotional Group, one of our manufacturers.
These caps are great. The 8650 V is a casual unstructured cap made from 100% organic cotton with a Velcro closure and a 3.25″ crown.
The bonus is that they come in multiple colors - Green, Natural (as shown), Soft Blue, Soft Pink and Soft Yellow - and Vitronic can use a sustainable process for dyeing and finishing on these 100% organic cotton caps, so you can show your commitment to the environment.
- Tesco Signs Lighting Retrofit Deal with Nualight
Tesco announced that it has signed a deal with Nualight to implement energy saving LED lighting products in its stores in Ireland. The deal’s worth approximately $1.27 million
Nualight will retrofit 111 Tesco’s Ireland stores with its Vantium Proto products in all doors in the frozen display cases. The retrofit is expected to save Tesco about [...]- 10 days
source: (Environmental Leader) - Mass. Plans ‘Emission Performance Label’ For New Cars
The Massachusetts’ Department of Environmental Protection is proposing plans to require all new cars, beginning with the 2010 models, to bear a “Emission Performance Label.” The sticker aims to help consumer identify new vehicles’ smog and GHG emissions.
The label, which is identical to the one developed by California, scores each vehicle’s smog and global warming [...]- 10 days
source: (Environmental Leader) - NY Proposes 6-Cent Surcharge For Plastic Shopping Bags
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is calling for a 6-cent fee for every plastic shopping bag given to shoppers, with 1 cent going to the retailer and 5 cents going to the city, the Christian Science Monitor reports.
Officials estimate that the plastic-bag surcharge could bring in $16 million annually. The surcharge is considered a fee [...]- 10 days
source: (Environmental Leader) - Retailers Putting Green Into Their Blueprints
Retailers are putting green into their blueprints across the country, racing to gain awareness with consumers and to lower operating costs. Most retailers are currently focusing on prototypes, but the trend could eventually change the look and function of thousands of stores, New York Times reports.
One of the latest participants is McDonald’s, which recently opened [...]- 10 days
source: (Environmental Leader) - BP Drops Out Of UK Renewables Plan, Focuses On U.S.
BP announced it will drop out of the UK government’s competition to build a prototype power station that will capture and store its CO2 emissions. Instead the company will focus the majority of its $ 8 billion renewables spending program on its wind power business in the U.S., “where government incentives for clean energy projects [...]- 10 days
source: (Environmental Leader) - RBC Forges Ahead in Canada’s Fledgling Carbon Market
RBC Capital Markets is moving ahead into Canada’s fledgling carbon market despite the absence of formal government legislation, Reuters reports.
Since RBCCM launched an emissions desk last Spring, the investment bank has become active traders in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, and in the U.S. Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, as well as on climate exchanges in [...]- 10 days
source: (Environmental Leader) - Waste Management Fined For Excessive Idling
The EPA has cited Waste Management of Massachusetts Inc. for exceeding the state’s five minute idling limit.
Waste Management was fined $27,200 for excessive idling at its Stoughton, Taunton and West Boylston, Mass. depots.
The EPA has collected a total of $329,500 in penalties for idling violations from Capitol Waste Services, Allied Waste Services, and Waste Management.
Five [...]- 11 days
source: (Environmental Leader) - Executive Recycling - 60 Minutes Came Calling - Tip: You Need A Greenwash Crisis Plan!
Oddly enough, I just write a piece for this blog a few days ago, Building A Greenwash Crisis Plan, looks like Executive Recycling could use one. The 60 minutes report last night, The Electronic Wasteland, uh…certainly gave them cause to need one!
This is a bit of a chilling tale for any eco entrepreneur! Executive Recycling, a small Colorado based, e-waste recycling center, was founded by Brandon Richter in 2004 with high hopes to provide a green solution to a growing problem. As he put it:
You think that you are doing good sending your computers to a recycling company.. but that is not exactly the case.. “Your e-waste is recycled properly, right here in the U.S. - not simply dumped on somebody else.”
I’m going to give Richter the benefit of the doubt here. When the dreaded call from 60 minutes came (You all know the joke don’t’ you? “What are the 5 most dreaded words a CEO can hear? “This is 60 Minutes calling.”) Richter gladly agreed to help them and gave them access to his records.
Things obviously didn’t turn out so well, since 60 Minutes found that containers of used monitors left his facility and were shipped overseas, ending up contributing to the virtual destruction of a town in China that dismantles all kinds of e-waste. A snip from the broadcast transcript…
And Brandon Richter, CEO of Executive Recycling, was still warning of the dangers of shipping waste to China. “I just heard actually a child actually died over there breaking this material down, just getting all these toxins,” he said.
Then Pelley told him we’d tracked his container to Hong Kong.
“This is a photograph from your yard, the Executive Recycling yard,” Pelley told Richter, showing him a photo we’d taken of a shipping container in his yard. “We followed this container to Hong Kong.”
“Okay,” Richter replied.
“And I wonder why that would be?” Pelley asked.
“Hmm. I have no clue,” Richter said.
“The Hong Kong customs people opened the container…and found it full of CRT screens which, as you probably know, is illegal to export to Hong Kong,” Pelley said.
“Yeah, yep,” Richter replied. “I don’t know if that container was filled with glass. I doubt it was. We don’t fill glass, CRT glass in those containers.”
“This container was in your yard, filled with CRT screens, and exported to Hong Kong, which probably wouldn’t be legal,” Pelley said.
“No, absolutely not. Yeah,” Richter said.
“Can you explain that?” Pelley asked.
“Yeah, it’s not - it was not filled in our facility,” Richt
- What Cloud Computing Can Do For You
I know that Infoworld declared cloud computing “all the rage” back in April, but it now seems to have reached a tipping point. Just last week I came across Michael Dell and Marc Benioff sounding off in Forbes.com, I received an email from The QuestionPro Blog about cloud connectors, read about “Why Private Cloud Computing Is Beginning to Get Traction” in eWeek and learned about a CloudCamp Computing Conference. And, of course, since it was the election week, the talk about cloud computing even turned to politics with techies asking” “What Does The Obama Revolution Mean to Cloud Computing?”If I am coming across cloud computing on a daily basis, its clearly become mainstream. But, how exactly is cloud computing green? Well, Kevin Jackson mused about this on his blog and asserts that The Economist provides the perfect answer:
- Greening the Supply Chain for the Greater Good
In a podcast about the latest in our series of GreenBiz Reports, Terry Yosie of the World Environment Center analyzes the work his nonprofit has done with big-name multinationals over the years to find the tricks and tips needed for successful green supply chain initiatives.
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source: (GreenBiz.com Green Business News) - Mitsubishi Ramps Up Cleantech Commitment, BP Bows Out of UK Wind Energy Efforts
The Mitsubishi Electric Corporation announced plans to expand its businesses that help battle climate change, while BP said it's focusing future wind power investments on the U.S.
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source: (GreenBiz.com Green Business News) - Obama Must Tie Green Agenda to Economy: Panel
President-Elect Barack Obama stands a better chance of advancing a green agenda in his first 100 days in office if he can mobilize the country around environmental issues and tie green initiatives to economic recovery, according to a panel discussion at the GreenBiz-Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) Leadership Dinner Thursday.
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source: (GreenBiz.com Green Business News) - Shipping: Six Steps to Achieving Retail's Holy Green Grail
Whether it's offering your customers a greener (and cheaper) shipping option or re-routing and re-loading your shipping fleet, there are a handful of high-impact and relatively low-strain ways to make your deliveries as planet- and customer-friendly as possible.
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source: (GreenBiz.com Green Business News) - Green Products Put Clorox in the Black
Clorox's first quarter profit and sales exceeded expectations, a boost attributed partially to its Green Works and Burt's Bees lines.
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source: (GreenBiz.com Green Business News) - New GreenBiz Report Explores the Tools and Travails of Greener Supply Chains
In the latest GreenBiz Report, Terry Yosie of the World Environment Center shares best practices for successful green supply chain initiatives in developing countries.
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source: (GreenBiz.com Green Business News) - The Psychology Of Hope and Fear
Both hope and fear are great motivators, and they both have the capacity to promote growth in us, but hope creates space in the mind and heart. Fear, more often than not, restricts it.
Just think of how you feel in your own body when you’re afraid - you tense up and go on vigilant alert, like an animal bracing to fight or flee. Let’s say you’re walking down a dark deserted street and you hear someone following you. The instant you become aware of it your body and your mind go into hyper drive and all your energy is devoted to “Am I in danger? What do I do? Do I turn and confront? Do I run? If I confront, then what? If I run, where do I go?” Your entire world constricts to focus on the situation.
When you feel hopeful, your body’s relaxed. You feel generous and open, not only with others, but with yourself too. Your world expands with ideas for how the hope could gather even more momentum. You feel motivated forward.
If fear takes too much hold of a personality, rigidity of thought and paranoia enter. When this happens on a national level the same trend is seen. You end up with things like racism, sexism and hate. When hope is experienced in the extreme in a personality, a sense of being un-tethered to reality allows delusion to enter, and on a national level this puts a culture in danger of complacency and unprepared-ness.
Read the full article
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source: (4 entrepreneur) - Generation O Gets Its Hopes Up
GENERATION O is that college kid at the White House gate early Wednesday morning, lifting his shirt to reveal “Obama” painted in red on his chest.
Or that stylized Obama T-shirt that makes irony look old, the “Obama Girl” on YouTube, or the thousands of notes on Barack Obama’s Facebook page: “U are the best!!!” “yeah, buddy.”
And, of course, Generation O is the president-elect himself.
Only a Fugees-loving, pick-up-basketball-playing, biracial president-elect would send supporters an e-mail message on election night that said: “I’m about to head to Grant Park to talk to everyone gathered there, but I wanted to write to you first.”
He signed it simply “Barack.” After all, they were close. He and his biggest fans, the generation of young adults who voted for him in record numbers, together had slogged through 21 months of campaigning. And in his moment of victory, Barack Obama shared the glow of success.
“All of this happened because of you,” the e-mail message said. “We just made history.”
With that simple “we” in millions of in-boxes, the post-baby-boomer era seems to have begun. The endless “us versus them” battles of the ’60s, over Vietnam, abortion, race and gender, at least for a moment last week, seemed as out-of-touch as a rotary phone. Of course, that was Mr. Obama’s goal. In his book, “The Audacity of Hope,” he was explicit in his desire to move beyond “the psychodrama of the Baby Boom generation — a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago.”
Mr. Obama’s victory was greatly helped by his young allies. More 18- to 29-year-olds went to the polls this year than in any election since 1972 — between 21.6 million and 23.9 million, up from about 19.4 million in 2004, according to preliminary estimates from the Center for Information and Research of Civic Learning and Engagement. And 66 percent voted for Mr. Obama, according to exit polls by Edison/Mitofsky.
These young voters and those slightly older, who together may forever be known as Generation O, were the ground troops of the campaign. They opened hundreds of Obama offices in remote areas, registered voters and persuaded older relatives to take a chance on the man with the middle name Hussein.
They saw in Mr. Obama, 47, who was born at the tail end of the baby boom era, the values that sociologists and cultural critics ascribe to them.
Government under Mr. Obama, they believe, would value personal disclosure and transparency in the mode of social-networking sites. Teamwork would be in fashion, along with a strict meritocracy.
The pinnacle and promise of that approach can be seen in Tuesday’s stunning victory. But as January’s presidential realities inevitably chip away at November’s idealism, a few valleys may be around the corner. With two wars and a financial crisis to face, this generation may soon discover the limits of their consensus-oriented focus and unyielding faith in networks and communication.
In many ways 2008 looks a lot like 1960, said Robert Dallek, the presidential historian. In both cases, a young Democrat won on a promise of youthful change. Voters, Mr. Dallek said, “want something fresh.”
President Kennedy responded not just with soaring rhetoric and new programs like the Peace Corps. He also transformed communication between the president and the people. At the White House, he projected an image of openness and transparency. He let photographers take pictures of the Kennedy children. He held televised news conferences for the first time.
Theodore Sorensen, the Kennedy speechwriter, said the youthfulness of Camelot brought a new casualness and intimacy to Washington. He recalled a softball game with reporters in the early ’60s, in which the younger staff members invited the Council of Economic Advisers to play. Three older economists showed up and tried to fit in.
“They took off their jackets and ties,” Mr. Sorensen said. “They didn’t go home to change into blue jeans, but they were swinging bats.”
Mr. Obama has created his own jacketless atmosphere, but on a grander scale, with a steady stream of e-mail messages and Facebook postings. Obama supporters know, of course, that the text messages from “Barack” are the work of a campaign aide, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not effective.
Ellen Steiner, 23, a graduate student at the University of Colorado, Denver, said the direct style “makes me feel like I really was part of something great.”
Reid Johnson, 31, a volunteer at the Obama office in Wilson, N.C., agreed. “You get the feeling that you’re becoming friends with him in that casual way,” he said. “I think everyone takes ownership of it because you feel like you know who he is.”
It would be hard to overestimate how much communication and an informal tone means to this generation. They have poured out their foibles and triumphs on blogs, MySpace, Facebook or Twitter. Older Americans see this as dangerous exhibitionism, but young adults believe the conversation leads to open-mindedness and consensus.
“This generation has been knocked for putting all of their personal stuff on full display,” said Mik Moore, 34, a founder of the Great Schlep, which used a Sarah Silverman online video to help young Jews win their grandparents’ support for Senator Obama. “But there is an upside, too, which is a willingness to communicate with large numbers of people in your network about what’s important to you.”
Ideology doesn’t matter. Young evangelicals can be just as creative in their use of the Web as liberal bloggers. The point is that communication technology is the tool that makes all things possible, from hook-ups and pop songs to protests or the president of their choice, said Neil Howe, a sociologist who studies young adults.
Read more
Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite
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source: (4 entrepreneur)
November 09, 2008
- Al Gore’s Words Bring Hope For Ecopreneurs
An op-ed piece in the New York Times, The Climate For Change, by über environmentalist, Al Gore, outlines for President-Elect Obama changes we need to make to both improve the economy and decrease climate change. Much of what he recommends is good news for ecopreneurs.
1…. incentives for the construction of concentrated solar thermal plants, wind and advanced plants in geothermal hot spots .
2… planning and construction of a unified national smart grid for the transport of renewable electricity from the rural places to cities
3…. help America’s automobile industry (not only the Big Three but the innovative new startup companies as well) to convert quickly to plug-in hybrids
- Eco Friendly Beer. I Mean Bar - Part Two
This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.I like beer. I like pubs.
I guess that is why I am still talking about eco-friendly coasters. As I mentioned before we are doing some research on eco-friendly coasters for Intrepid Travel and now that research has lead me to cork coasters.
And this is the thing, cork has been around forever. According to the dictionary the origin of the word itself dates from between 1275–1325 AD.
This is an old material, but how many of us think of it as a green material? Hemp and Jute have also been around for a long, long time and they are considered green. Why not cork?
The thing that got me thinking about this are these core coaster from Americanna. When I asked Americanna if they had an eco-friendly coaster they immediately came back with cork.
