Archive for May, 2011

While the world is busy marveling over solar arrays, wind farms and giant geothermal installations, something rather more clever is going on in northern Europe. A power plant opened in late 2009 in the village of Tofte in Hurum, Norway, about 40 miles south of Oslo. The plant, run by the Norwegian state-owned electric company, Statkraft, is the world’s first osmotic power plant. Read the rest of this entry »

Waste Management has joined with Cartridge World Group Holdings Pty Ltd and Cartridge World North America, LLC in launching a new recycling program aimed at increasing the collection of used printer cartridges and the sale of remanufactured cartridges. This program will help Waste Management meet their goal of tripling the amount of recyclables it processes by 2020. The free “Recycle -2-Save™” program will be handled by WM LampTracker, Inc., a subsidiary of Waste Management, that will provide recycling kits for collection of the used ink and toner cartridges. Each kit includes: shipping to your facility, prepaid return shipping via UPS to the Recycling Center, recycling certificate, and promotion code to save on your next purchase of printer cartridges. Read the rest of this entry »

Will newly-installed Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s former hatchet man, be the one to clean up the Chicago River? “Chicago environmentalists expect big things from Rahm Emanuel,” writes Earth911.com. Read the rest of this entry »

Winners of the 2010 UW Environmental Innovation Challenge, Renuka Prabhakar and Grant Marchelli are engineering graduate students at the University of Washington who have devised a method for making bricks out of recycled glass. The two claim that these bricks are stronger, lighter, and better insulators than conventional bricks on the market today. As an early-stage technology, and Prabhakar and Marchelli need to prove they can manufacture the building product consistently and inexpensively enough to break into the masonry industry. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2011, the ENERGY STAR Challenge launched a friendly competition among teams comprised of American Institute of Architects chapters in three U.S. regions. Intended to encourage members to submit projects that achieve ENERGY STAR status, their efforts have proved successful, and a total of 79 commercial building design projects achieved Designed to Earn the ENERGY STAR certification in the past year. Designing commercial building projects to achieve the ENERGY STAR helps architects and their clients save money while saving energy and avoiding carbon emissions. Read the rest of this entry »

Plastic is everywhere in our lives. Almost every item we buy has some sort of plastic component in it. Our cars have plastic and composite material in them already so the idea of a composite vehicle shouldn’t come as a shock at all. So, is this the new green vehicle? Read the rest of this entry »

As the Obama administration promises to speed up oil production in the U.S., I can’t help but make a striking comparison to the carbon capture industry. The price of oil has crept up yet again and speeding up production is another knee-jerk reaction to offer relief to consumers. Similarly, carbon capture is gaining momentum and is basically enabling our addiction to coal. Is this any way to make in-roads with clean energy efforts? Read the rest of this entry »

Two leading professional organizations, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) have recently released publications that are must-haves for those in the business of sustainable building. Both important publications are freely downloadable resources available to architects, designers, builders, and building managers and contain valuable information to help facilitate the processes and practices of sustainable, energy-saving building design and management. Read the rest of this entry »

Bill Gates irked a few people recently.

While that’s not unusual – ask anyone who uses Windows in any form and you’ll find they are often irked into having to press ctrl-alt-del to restart a crashed system in the middle of a project – it wasn’t computing Mr. Gates was addressing during his speech at the Wired Business Conference 2011. It was green technology, and he was making clear that he doesn’t think that small scale, personal efforts (such as putting solar panels or a wind turbine on the roof of your home or business) to generate energy from renewable energy are going to get the planet anywhere. He referred to such small-fry conservation and microgeneration efforts as “cute.” Read the rest of this entry »

With Kraft Foods acquisition of Cadbury and LU businesses since their original sustainability goals were set, an update was in order. The new goals for 2010-2015 add transportation and agricultural commodities to the previous goals of energy, carbon dioxide, water, waste and packaging reductions. Read the rest of this entry »