Events

Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook (there were 3 of them),  Director of Online Organizing for the Obama Campaign, and founder of brand new non-profit start-up Jumo.com, spoke at Tuesday night’s Full Circle Fund meeting.  Since I was lucky enough to attend, and Hughes had some greatly relevant nuggets of wisdom, I thought I’d share with [...]

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Last night I dropped in at “Swagapalooza“, a live marketing experiment put on by startup firm Launch Hear. The idea: Pack a fun venue with bloggers, and invite entrepreneurs to take 5 minutes each to sell their idea to the room. Free product samples (and quite a lot of free beer) were given out to [...]

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The old adage “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” sure rings true for a North Carolina-based earth friendly natural personal care products company.  In 2008, employees from Burt’s Bees took part in Dumpster Day, an event held to educate employees about waste reduction. Trash destined for the landfill was collected for two weeks and [...]

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Giving Government a Helping Hand  How much of a role should business play in tackling global questions such as climate change, unemployment, restoring trust in the aftermath of the financial crisis and distributing international aid?  What is the nature and extent of the private sector’s responsibility in resolving these issues? At what point should corporations [...]

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 The Wall Street Journal’s third annual ECO:nomics conference: Creating Environmental Capital wrapped up last week and I’m pleased to report that it delivered on the promise of frank, highly strategic, executive-level discussions. The conference will return next year; here’s hoping that we have some new energy and carbon legislation in place by then and [...]

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Millions of people around the world tuned in to last weekend’s Academy Award show, bringing another Hollywood award season to a close. While nabbing an Oscar or Emmy is considered an honor, another lesser known red carpet event took place last weekend where winning an award is not recommended. The Toxies were held at the Egyptian [...]

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U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, fresh from the inaugural ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit, was the final and perhaps most anticipated speaker at last week’s ECO:nomics conference. Throughout the conference, regulatory uncertainty had been the greatest complaint of energy execs and venture capitalists alike. In comparison, the recession had up to this point been addressed rather [...]

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In the CleanTech space, solar may be hot, the future of the smart grid may be bright, but Ron Gonen, CEO of RecycleBank, is proving that recycling can be sexy too. At its ECO:nomics conference, the Wall Street Journal announced its first ranking of the Top 10 venture-backed, clean technology companies. The survey “seeks to [...]

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With kids as one of its core demographics, The Walt Disney Company is obviously quite interested in what kids care about. Speaking at the Wall Street Journal’s ECO:nomics conference, Disney President and CEO Robert Iger discussed how kids as young as five are becoming increasingly concerned about environmental issues. It doesn’t stop with this “generation [...]

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By Ryan Whisnant Last week I attended a panel hosted by the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan: “Green Tech: How the Web and Information Technology are Empowering Sustainability.” The panel featured Nick Aster, founder of TriplePundit.com, Nigel Melville, assistant professor of Business Information Technology at the Ross School of [...]

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It is a testament to how far the sustainable business conversation has come that new partnerships between large corporations and environmental NGOs are meeting with less and less surprise and skepticism from both the business and environmental camps. Certainly, some actions are still capable of raising eyebrows, such as the Environmental Defense Fund opening an [...]

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In early February, the State of the World Forum announced a decision to cancel their Climate Leadership Summit scheduled for this week in Washington because, in the words of Forum President Jim Garrison, “this is simply not the right time to convene a major conference of this kind in the nation’s capitol.” Because, as the [...]

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The Wall Street Journal’s Environmental Capital blog may have closed up shop earlier this year but the name lives on in the Journal’s third annual ECO:nomics conference: Creating Environmental Capital. The event, focusing on the “most urgent issues in business and the environment,” continues to draw a host of prominent executives, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, policymakers, [...]

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Numerous organizations and companies have committed to making the 2010 Vancouver Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games more environmentally friendly. Whether it is the Olympic medals comprised partly of electronic waste or the Olympia electric ice-resurfacing machine, next to gold, green is the color of choice when it comes to the 2010 Winter Games. Coca-Cola is taking [...]

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The Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games have added another color to its coveted gold, silver and bronze medal lineup – green!  For the first time in Olympic history, the 2010 athlete medals contain metals from end-of-life electronic waste, commonly referred to as e-waste. Teck Resources, Ltd., a diversified mining company based in Vancouver, [...]

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At last week’s State of Green Business Forum put on by Greener World Media, I reported live on some of the interesting developments in the world of green business presented at the conference.  As a small business specialist, this kind of conference is, admittedly, somewhat foreign to me.  The conferences I usually attend, such as [...]

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What began as a dream years ago is now becoming reality for two very talented Swiss pilots. Dr. Bertrand Piccard, a 51-year-old psychiatrist and aeronaut, along with former fighter pilot and project CEO Andre Borschberg, are getting ready to fly around the world in a solar-powered aircraft.  Imagine flying from here-to-there without the need for [...]

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GreenBiz.com’s State of Green Business Forum next week (February 4th) in San Francisco comes at a time when modest leadership at the federal level and mixed reviews from Copenhagen have raised the stakes for the success of the green economy as the ultimate go-between of business, advocacy, policy, and progress.  Among the many reasons I [...]

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I recently had the pleasure of attending the 9th edition of the Wild & Scenic film festival, America’s largest environmental film festival, organized and hosted by SYRCL, in the tiny but vibrant town of Nevada City, California. Through these events, SYRCL has made people across the nation aware of its fight to preserve the Yuba–a [...]

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A feminist at heart (I ran women’s health workshops as an undergrad at Brown), I am looking forward to the Catalyst Conference held by Girls in Tech on Jan 26th at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco.  A recent Harvard Business Review article laments how only 1.5% of the world’s top 2000 performing companies are [...]

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In 1986, I bought my very first car. It was a red 1980 Chevy Chevette. And I loved that thing. I drove it everywhere — from to Boston to DC to Atlanta, that little red Chevette gave me a sense of freedom that I had never before experienced. And I treasured that freedom. Sure, I had [...]

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When: February 4, 2010 in San Francisco February 9, 2010 in Chicago Organized by: GreenBiz.com Despite a sickly economy, green business is alive and well. That is the sentiment behind the State of Green Business Forum that will convene in San Francisco and Chicago to bring together industry experts to explore dynamic topics, such as [...]

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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on Grist, and is re-posted with permission. By Amanda Little, Grist’s former Muckraker columnist Hours before the outcome of the Copenhagen conference was revealed, I sat down with New York Times Columnist Thomas Friedman to discuss the implications of the historic summit. No matter what happens in Copenhagen, [...]

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By Lee Barken, IT practice leader at Haskell & White, LLP It’s a balmy 67 degrees in San Diego and I’m back home at my local coffee shop, sipping Chai Tea Latte.  A short 24 hours ago, I was in the snow and bitter cold of Copenhagen, Denmark, attending the 15th meeting of the Conference [...]

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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on Grist, and is re-posted with permission. By Amanda Little, Grist’s former Muckraker columnist When you think of renewable energy, the image that comes to mind is often a solar array in California, a windmill in Texas, or a cornfield in Iowa. Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle (D) wants [...]

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Deloitte, the firm originally known for its accounting and audit services, has begun to integrate sustainability into its core business functions, including strategy, consulting and tax services. It also recently launched the Center for Sustainability Performance (CSP) to provide on-site client training, research and development, with a focus on corporate sustainability measurement and reporting. The [...]

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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on Grist, and is re-posted with permission. By Jonathan Hiskes, Grist Staff Writer COPENHAGEN—The most popular American CEO here these two weeks, at least among other business leaders, has been Duke Energy chief Jim Rogers. Which doesn’t make much sense, as Duke generates most of its electricity from [...]

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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on Grist, and is re-posted with permission. By Jonathan Hiskes, Grist Staff Writer COPENHAGEN—At the “To Be or Not To Be” business summit at Hamlet’s Castle over the weekend, one French executive joked about not trusting a business that was less than 150 years old (ah, those witty [...]

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By Lee Barken, IT practice leader at Haskell & White, LLP Wish you were here? Allow me to draw a picture. We’re now well into week two of the COP-15 Climate Summit in Copenhagen and the diplomats, activists and media representatives are fully engulfed in a whirlwind of activity.  Beyond the maze of the Bella [...]

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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on Grist, and is re-posted with permission. COPENHAGEN—Two Cola-Cola* employees urged people in Copenhagen to never drink the soft drink again, denouncing their company’s environmental and human rights record in a highly unusual press conference* in the Hopenhagen LIVE area in City Hall Square. The public relations* workers [...]

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