Expired food at supermarkets is a huge source of waste. Zero Gachis is an app that would allow merchants to set discounted prices on soon to expire product, that nearby app users would be alerted of, and in the process, accumulate points that will equal cash donations to area food banks.

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By Ryan Matley, Rocky Mountain Institute President Obama’s call in his State of the Union address to capitalize on “the strongest two-year period of manufacturing growth since the 1990s” by encouraging businesses to bring work back to the United States can be accelerated with energy efficiency innovation. While Obama urged Congress to take a series [...]

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The non-profit economy is growing three times faster than the US economy, and if NGOs were an economy, it would be the seventh largest in the world. That’s according to Nancy Lublin, CEO of dosomething.organd founder of Dress for Success. Nancy moderated a panel at the Social Innovation Summit entitled “Where to Start, Where to [...]

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By Matthew Madden Will two technology trends converge to create a more energy efficient future? The long-awaited future is now for electric vehicles. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably been inundated recently with news covering this emerging market. In recent weeks, we’ve heard the following: Nissan confirmed the company will fulfill their commitment to deliver [...]

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Solar thermal technology (ie, solar hot water) provides space heating and/or hot water and is a frequently forgotten member of the solar power family. These highly effective systems are popular in many parts of the globe, from China to Canada to Zimbabwe. The panels are typically 70%-90% efficient, compared to around 20% efficiency for solar photovoltaic (pv) [...]

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Part 2: The Most Efficient Efficiency Measures By Charles Shereda In Part 1 of this two-part interview, Jim Sweeney and I discussed the need for more information for consumers to make better efficiency-related decisions.  In this second part, Jim, who directs Stanford’s Precourt Energy Efficiency Center, talks about where the largest gains for the least [...]

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A few years ago, the water heater at my house gave out.  I had recently installed a 1.8 kW solar PV system on my rooftop, and was really excited about the possibility of breaking my fossil fuel dependency by replacing my water heater with an electric one, which would have been powered by the sun.  [...]

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By Janine Kubert We’ve made great strides with improving the efficiency of refrigerators over the past 30 years, cutting their energy use in half. According to Carl Blumstein, the Director of UC’s Cal Institute of Energy and Environment, we’ve done great with incentivizing energy efficiency in widgets generally. But at the CleanTech Open last month, [...]

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Amid the poster-board displays and smiling, hand-shaking entrepreneurs at the Cleantech Open National Conference in San Jose last week, a trend emerged. A number of the 100 semifinalists vying for the 18 regional finalist spots in the competition have developed technologies that will juice up the miles per gallon that fleets of vehicles (trucks, vans, [...]

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By Karl Griffith, Director of Enterprise Markets at Graybar A debate is a brewing in green-building circles as architects, engineers and designers consider what it means to incorporate intelligent-building elements into sustainable, “green” structures. Since taking off in the early 2000s, the green building movement has made great progress. By 2013, LEED-registered projects are forecastedto [...]

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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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A new report from research and consulting firm Zpryme describes the growing field of smart appliances as a tremendous market opportunity. It estimates that the global household smart appliance market will grow from $3.06 billion to $15.12 billion over the next five years. In 2015, the global market size for smart washers and smart refrigerators [...]

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Call it greening run amok. Or, more likely, poor planning combined with petty penny pinching by a large corporation. FirstEnergy, an Ohio utility, sent two $3.50 energy-saving compact florescent light-bulbs (CFLs) to customers, and then charged them $21 for the bulbs — whether they wanted them or not. According to news reports, the remaining $14 [...]

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Stanford University research group takes biomimicry to whole new heights At this summer’s Airbus “Fly Your Ideas” competition, an international call for sustainability innovation in the airline industry, one Australian team of graduate students walked away with the first place cash prize of 30,000 euros for a green passenger cabin concept. Derived from castor oil, [...]

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A new report from the Electric Power Research Institute noted that in order to meet climate goals, the U.S. power industry must implement a full portfolio of technologies. While we agree that we’ll have to pull out all the stops in the race to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we must not trade one problem for [...]

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Complaining about government waste is almost a cliche. From the excessive use of Police ATVs patrolling our completely safe beaches, to the general inefficiency at all levels, governments seem to be avoiding the environmental crisis in their day to day operations. At very least, sustainability does not seem to be on their checklist of mandatory [...]

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Dell wants to be the “greenest” tech company out there. With commitment to industry standards like EPEAT and ENERGY STAR in addition to their recycling initiatives and WEEE compliance, you might say they are well on their way. This week brings an industry first for the company: an 80PLUS Gold power supply for servers. 80PLUS [...]

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Walking through some trendy shopping district, with seasonal banners/flags above, do you ever wonder where they go after they’ve been switched out? In most cases, they get disposed of, adding to the waste stream. While it could be argued that these districts could find other creative, less resource intensive ways to promote themselves, one area, [...]

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It’s a bit like the dieter who buys a box of low-fat cookies and ends up eating the entire box in one sitting. So much for the diet. A report released on Tuesday by CIBC World Markets Chief Economist Jeff Rubin states that despite the overall gains in energy efficiency since the 1970’s – 50% per [...]

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