sustainability Archives - Green Businesses

A Climate Awakening

This year has been the hottest year on record and this has been a trend for the past 3 consecutive years. Fire season has moved from summer to February in many wildfire hotspot locations. For 3 days last week, I was trained by Al Gore on the current state of the climate and how to become a leader in the topic – a Climate Reality Leader. 972 people being in Denver, CO wanting to learn, network, connect, motivate and take action had me certain that the most successful people would see the possibility of tackling this pertinent issue head on. With 97% of scientists aware that the climate is changing due to human causes, climate change is no longer a liberal or conservative issue. Al Gore calls it the Sustainability Revolution. Like the Industrial Revolution and the Digital Revolution, sustainability is finding its way into every industry and its making business more efficient and cost-effective, and with it comes a better quality of life. Yet deniers still wave their hands …

In Case You Needed Another Reason To Visit Aruba

Aruba, like many countries, is heavily dependent on imported fossil fuels for energy. Currently, nearly 85% of the energy is generated by heavy fuel oil but that is going to change. Aruba pledged to transition to 100% renewable electricity by 2020, particularly variable wind and solar. This 19 mile long island launched it’s Green Gateway Initiative in 2011 at the UN Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development. With the support of Carbon War Room, an international nonprofit, Aruba created its plan of action beginning with wind farm development, a waste-to-energy plant, and a Airport Solar Park. They are taking the Smart Growth Pathway that addresses many different areas of an expanding economy, such as; eco-tourism, incentives for household retrofitting and commercial energy efficiency, the sustainable agriculture practice known as controlled environment agriculture, urban planning that supports this transition, and investments in innovation. This plan focuses on three comp…

TreeHouse Aims to Make Homes Thoughtful, Sustainable and Healthy

Austin-based TreeHouse, a home improvement retailer focused on eco-friendly construction materials, has selected Dallas as its first stop outside its hip hometown. Tuesday, it will announce plans to open a store in early 2017 in a new shopping center in North Dallas. TreeHouse CEO and co-founder Jason Ballard believes he can sell the world on eco-friendly homes in the same way that Tesla is broadening the customer base for electric cars. As the first retailer that Tesla has authorized to sell the Powerwall, its battery for the house, TreeHouse is already a powerhouse of sustainable good. They are also one of the top-selling retailers of Nest smart-home products, Ballard said. “We resist being a niche company,” Ballard said. “We’re not just for customers with dreadlocks and card-carrying members of environmental groups. We’re going to prove with the Dallas store that we’re not a store for special people, we’re a store for everyone.” Single-store sales have increased 3…

New Study: Bioenergy May Be Bad News for Forests, Climate

Resource: Global Forest Reporting Network BioFuels like Ethanol have more than just an image problem (Growing food vs growing fuel). Now a new report from the World Resources Institute finds that dedicating land to the production of biofuels may undermine efforts to achieve a sustainable food future, combat climate change, and protect forests. The problem, of course, is that if you dedicate land to growing crops like sugarcane, corn, soybeans, or wood solely for the production of biofuels, you can’t use that land to grow food--or as a carbon sink. We already use a whopping three-fourths of the world’s vegetated land for crops, livestock grazing, and wood harvests, according to the WRI paper. And the remaining land really should be left as is, since it protects clean water, supports biodiversity, and stores carbon. Watch this video about new biofuels made from cellulose with the help of a bacteria under the development of AE Biofuels, which acquired Zemetis in 2011.

This Bus is Powered by Your Waste. Holy Sh*t!

New York City was first with it’s No-Idling laws, but the UK, it seems, won’t settle for #2. Unless of course it’s the #2 (Human waste) that just happens to be fueling the first-of-its-kind city bus. The 40-seater Bio-Bus runs on fuel generated from treated sewage and food waste and helps improve urban air quality as it produces fewer emissions than traditional diesel engines. The bus can travel up to 200 miles on a full tank of gas generated at Bristol sewage treatment works – a plant run by GENeco, a subsidiary of Wessex Water. Up to 10,000 passengers are expected to travel on the Bio-Bus each month. It’s not petrol, bio-diesel or natural gas. It’s Biomethane, and can even be used to power up to 8,500 homes, and although the bus's graphics seem to imply it’s a moving shitter, the fuel is actually a product of Bristol sewage treatment, which treats around 75 million cubic meters of sewage waste and 35,000 tons of food waste through a process known as anaerobic digestio…

Waterless Wash: Levi Strauss’ Innovative Tactic Yields Much Success

By Amanda Crater Sometimes the best ideas sound the silliest at first, but companies who embrace creative solutions to complex problems often have the greatest success. In this interview with Paul Dillinger, VP of Product Design and Innovation for Levi Strauss & Co. (@LeviStraussCo), Nick Aster of Triple Pundit (@TriplePundit) discusses the innovative approach that Levi's has been known to take when incorporating sustainability into their business practices. Filmed at the SXSW Eco-Conference (SXSWeco.com) in Austin, Texas last month, Aster poses the question, "how can creativity be a part of sustainability?" Citing his experience working with complex problems involving numerous committees, Dillinger reveals that often the solution can be found in the "creative unknown." An example he refers to involves the issue of the wash of the company's jeans. The "water-less" rinse program involved a "counterintuitive inversion of the meaning of wash," which resulted in taking th…