Archive for October, 2010

It’s not easy to see the forest for the trees but the USDA Forest Service wants you to know the importance of forests in fighting global warming. Data released on 10/15 estimates that 41.4 billion metric tons of carbon is currently stored in the nation’s forests, and due to both increases in the total area of forest land and increases in the carbon stored per acre, an additional 192 million tons of carbon are sequestered each year.  The additional carbon sequestered annually offsets roughly 11% of the country’s industrial greenhouse gas emissions, the equivalent of removing almost 135 million passenger vehicles from the nation’s highways. Read the rest of this entry »

Eight winners were selected from more than 300 nominations for a White House Council on Environmental Quality GreenGov Presidential Award.  The winning entries represent seven Federal agencies that are leading by example in their innovative use of environmentally responsible products and technologies in response to President Obama’s Executive Order on Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy and Economic Performance (Executive Order 13514).  Read the rest of this entry »

Autodesk® is as familiar to engineers as MS Word is to writers: both are tools that are an integral part of the modern-day job. Primarily geared toward engineering students and teachers, the Autodesk Sustainability Workshop can benefit all engineers and designers find new sustainability ideas and the tools that can bring them to life. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s one of those topics that keeps you up at night. You fret, you toss and turn, you flip the pillow over, but you still can’t shut your brain off.

Cow flatulence. You just can’t get away from it (particularly if you are a cow). Read the rest of this entry »

BMW Manufacturing Co. announced that it is using hydrogen fuel cells to power material handling equipment in their South Carolina assembly plant. Hydrogen fuel cell-powered forklifts, tuggers and stackers will be used in the assembly hall that produces the BMW X3 Sports Activity Vehicle®. The only byproducts of hydrogen fuel cells are heat and water, making this energy choice more efficient than other, more conventional energy sources. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not hard, particularly during election season, to hear people touting the creation of “green American jobs.” The phrase uses all the buzzwords and invokes all the concepts everyone likes: namely, “green,” “job creation” and “American manufacturing.” What’s not to feel good about? Read the rest of this entry »

The Northeast Waste Management Official’s Association (NEWMOA) received a $25,000 EPA Resource Conservation grant in 2008 to increase wallboard recycling in the Northeast.  Over the past 2 years, NEWMOA has collaborated with eight state environmental agencies in the region to examine options to promote greater recovery of an important construction and demolition (C&D) material – gypsum wallboard waste – for use outside of landfills. The final product of this collaboration is the report “Policy Options White Paper Promoting Greater Recycling of Gypsum Wallboard from Construction and Demolition (C&D) Projects in the Northeast”, which presents viable policy options for promoting greater gypsum recovery. Read the rest of this entry »

PlastiPure, a technology company focused on developing safe plastics materials and products has received three grants for formulation of a replacement for polycarbonate that is free of estrogenic activity (EA-Free).  Compounds with estrogenic activity may be harmful to humans. Read the rest of this entry »

Developed at the University of Guelph, the Enviropig™ is engineered to have the same meat quality as a Yorkshire pig, with all the ideal protein and fat content, but with one major twist – it is also engineered to produce less toxic manure that releases fewer pollutants into the atmosphere, purportedly making it a more environmentally sustainable option for large scale pig farmers. The Enviropig is currently under the scrutiny of the FDA. Read the rest of this entry »

Held each year in October in conjunction with Energy Awareness Month, the Federal Energy and Water Management Awards recognize innovative efforts to implement sustainable strategies that improve energy, water, and vehicle fleet efficiency for federal agencies. The 31 initiatives receiving an award saved taxpayers almost $42 million in energy and water costs in fiscal year 2009, and kept the equivalent of about 190,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere. Read the rest of this entry »