waste

Friends of the Earth’s second annual report card on cruise lines’ environmental impact made waves with an industry association, which called it “another flawed report.”‘ Four cruise lines, including Royal Carribbean and Carnival Cruises, the world’s largest, received grades in the D range, while one, Crystal Cruises, received an F. Holland America Line received the [...]

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You’ve heard it over the years: Company creates curriculum for schools, with conflicted teachers not wanting to advertise to their students, but at the same time at a deficit in terms or resources. Frequently, this is a justifiable concern, as companies have advertising and product placement throughout. This is a mistake. No matter the short [...]

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Many so called “green” conferences are lacking in their own efforts to be environmentally friendly. When planning your next event consider your environmental impact in the following areas: location, food service, transportation, marketing, and presentations.

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Perhaps this will put to bed once and for all, that classic question that always gets asked in Sustainability 101 classes: which is more sustainable, disposable or reusable cups?

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Composting. There’s lots of reasons to do it. And lots of reasons not to. Unless you live in a spacious rural plot or large lotted suburban home, composting is a smelly, pest prone annoyance that the neighbors may be none to pleased to be living near. Washington D.C. based Compost Cab has devised a way [...]

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The dumping of phone books onto humanity is one of my favorite topics. I’ve lamented the arrival of the yellow pages for three years running (2009, 2008, 2007). Now, a breath of fresh air: The New York Times reports that Verizon wants to pull the plug on white pages for New York City in a [...]

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Berkeley-based Alphabet Energy has been around for just a year now, a seemingly short time. On Tuesday the company announced $1 million in seed money to develop prototype devices of their proprietary thermoelectric technology.

The technology harnesses excess heat and turns it into electricity. The incremental add in electric volume has enormous potential to create additional energy on a large scale. While the science is nothing new — it’s a recognized idea in science that creating electricity produces excess heat — Alphabet Energy claims that their technology has the “possibility of offsetting as much as 500 million metric tons of carbon per year.”

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Distracted and dismayed by oil rig explosions, massive oil spills, and volcanic ash clouds? Speaking of ash, here’s one that perhaps escaped the attention it deserves: The Environmental Protection Agency wants to regulate coal ash with new rules that will ensure the “safe disposal and management” of ash produced from coal-fired power plants. Coal ash [...]

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A plant that converts bits and pieces of onion into clean energy won the 44th Annual Engineering Excellence Awards. HDR Engineering designed the plant, called the Advanced Energy Recovery System, for Gill’s Onions, an onion processor in Oxnard California. Each day, the system converts 200,000 pounds of onion waste  into biogas, which in turn powers [...]

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Take a Coinstar type of kiosk and allow people to trade-in/trade-up plus recycle their old cell phones and consumer electronics. Name the kiosks ecoATMs. In 2009, ecoATM was launched, and currently has 11 machines in the Midwest, San Diego, Boston, Dallas and Seattle. The company hopes to expand to 150 machines by the end of [...]

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Compared to the pollution from the millions of tons of toxic waste and garbage generated each year, that from prescription drugs is small potatoes. The FDA requires drug companies that plan on making more than 40 tons of a drug to file a separate environmental impact statement; in 2008, only 20 did so out of [...]

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Over the past few years, we have heard much talk about carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), which has done little except raise even more questions about the viability of this technology.  Recently, more clean technology companies have emerged on the scene that strive to turn dirty carbon emissions into clean profits. One such firm is [...]

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Sometimes the inspiration for a company comes from what’s right in front of you. In the case of Mike Gudgus, what was right in front of him was the town of Boise, Idaho, a major bicycling community, where it’s hard to find a place to recycled tires and inner tubes. Gudgus, who runs Inner Glow, [...]

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Many people try squeezing every last bit out of products they use. Who hasn’t rolled up a tube of toothpaste in order to get out the last drop? As a woman proclaimed in a Consumer Reports video, “It’s the philosophy of just not being wasteful.” In order to determine how much product does not come [...]

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I found a new favorite start-up today: Earth Baby.  Three Bay Area families with babies were disgusted at the amount of diaper waste they were producing.   Earth Baby was created to solve that problem by providing, collecting and composting compostable diapers for families with newborn babies throughout the Bay Area.  Their singular mission is to [...]

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Full disclosure:  I have never been a fan of Earth Day.  My aversion started with my college campus being plastered by fliers this time of year, then going to Earth Day fairs at which plastic trinkets were handed out freely, and finally, the messages many companies broadcasted about how “green” they were, only to indulge [...]

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Beijing has a major garbage problem. The city of 17 million people generates 18,000 tons of waste a day, 7,000 tons more than the capacity of disposal plants. The Guardian reports that the city is installing 100 high pressure deodorant guns at the Asuwei landfill. Yes, you read that sentence correctly. Beijing is going to [...]

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Look out, it’s nearly the 40th anniversary of Earth Day (now a month-long affair) and companies everywhere will be grasping at tenuous links to the occasion, vying for the green in your pocketbook. And what are we doing? A green pop up shop , of course, at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, in the heart [...]

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John O’Hurley, the actor best known for his portrayal of catalog magnate J. Peterman on Seinfeld, talked with Triple Pundit recently about a new cleantech company he’s backing, Energy Inc., which sells power plants that can convert bio-waste into electricity and heat. The company, which O’Hurley started two years ago with business partner Kim Kirkendall, [...]

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It all started when stay-at-home mom Anna Chan and young daughter Ava were taking a spin in the family’s SUV.  Like many parents, Chan often took short road trips around the California neighborhood to help calm her colicky daughter. In February 2009, Chan noticed many of her neighbors’ fruit trees were loaded with delicious fruit.  [...]

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Blog, blog, action. It all started with a blog that Beth Terry of Oakland, Calif., read on rodale.com about the monstrous plastic garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean. She was particularly struck by a photo of an albatross that had essentially been shrink-wrapped. It inspired her to start cleaning up her act, when it came [...]

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A boat made out of more than 12,000 used plastic water bottles is on its way to Sydney, Australia, proving several points along way: That it can be done; that trash can be useful; and that the huge swath of plastic trash and other debris known as the Eastern Garbage Patch should never happen again. [...]

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What better way to ensure eternal peace than knowing you went out with a minimal carbon footprint? Matthews Cremation, a subsidiary of The Matthews Corporation, now offers a combustion-free form of cremation to die-hard environmentalists. “Bio-Cremation” emits one tenth the carbon dioxide of traditional cremation, according to the company. Saving the planet, one dead body [...]

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Sometimes being neck-deep in the green business realm, you forget that the connections that make sense to you are foreign to others. Such was the case at the interactive (read: Geek Mecca) component of the South By Southwest interactive media conference, or as it’s known, SXSW. But if Triple Pundit can help it, that will [...]

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All across the United States, local governments, who carry the burden of waste disposal for their communities, have been overwhelmed by literal mountains of hazardous waste that are the byproducts—the unintended consequences—of our voracious consumer society. Because local governments are rarely if ever equipped to deal with a disposal problem of this magnitude, the result [...]

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Fast food chain, Burgerville, recently announced it is switching to commercially compostable cups and lids as part of its goal to divert 85 percent of the company’s waste stream from landfills. Burgerville is the first fast food chain to use compostable paper cups company-wide. The compostable “ecotainer” soda cups and lids, developed by International Paper [...]

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Fact: Electric utilities contribute 42% of greenhouse gases in the US. Fact: Heat and power contribute 69% of all greenhouse gases in the US. Fact: The efficiency of US electric power plants has not improved since the 1950s. (Barriers: Breaking through energy recycling obstacles from Recycled Energy Development on Vimeo) The average efficiency of power [...]

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We have all experienced it–you buy a gadget at your favorite store, and you have to pry your new toy out of obnoxious plastic packaging that is about the size of your car’s windshield.  It seems as if the smaller an electronic gadget becomes, the laws of physics become more defied:  that new tiny smartphone [...]

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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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Health care is the second largest contributor to waste production in the United States.  (The food industry holds the dubious distinction of being the first largest contributor.) So, it’s significant that more than 25 percent of U.S. hospitals now reprocess medical devices as a way to decrease waste –and cut costs. But, does the phrase [...]

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