Eric is a forthright and engaging speaker. The stories he tells are rooted in experience, "real conversations" as he says. And he grounds his arguments in another reality, the reality that his day job requires him to make money for Google shareholders. Lots and lots of money.
But Google is also known for its corporate enterprise, for thinking big thoughts and pushing really big goals. And as chairman, Schmidt must be in charge of setting the biggest and boldest goals. Here's one:
"Is there a way," Schmidt posited, "is there a way to solve every known problem at once?"
"I'm tired of everyone complaining," he continued. "I've learned something here: do the right thing and you can solve multiple problems."
Let's go through the list: energy prices are too high, energy security, how many wars are being fought over oil now and in the future, what about job creation, especially in the rural areas? What about building businesses that are exportable outside of the United States to create wealth for Americans ... oh and yeah, why don't we solve the climate problem at the same time.
Watch the following video to get Eric's answer. And to hear from Dan Reicher, a former NRDC staffer and former Assistant Secretary of Energy for renewables and efficiency (who is on the lists of possible nominees for Energy Secretary in the Obama Administration). Also joining the conversation is Ralph Cavanagh, Co-Director of NRDC's Energy Program, and NRDC President Frances Beinecke. You can also read Google's thoughts at transforming our economy through clean energy at this Google Knol.
Its tempting to dismiss this audacious goal, as Eric does jokingly, with a big ole "yeah right." But as with so much else that comes from the brains of Google, there's real there there. And that's really good news for Google shareholders, the economy and oh yeah the planet.
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The news release came from Owens Corning, which produces "Pink" insulation and announced that it has boosted to 40 percent (an increase of five percent) the amount of "certified" recycled glass used in its insulation. It also says that the 5 percent increase maintains the company's lead in using the most recycled materials in insulation.
Another "factoid" from the company's release --manufacturing fiberglass with recycled glass requires significantly less energy -- made the release even more interesting. (Also interesting, but completely unrelated to the environment were two additional discoveries from the Owens Corning website: the company became the first to successfully trademark a color -- in this case PINK -- in 1987. Also one of my favorite giggle-worthy cartoon characters -- the Pink Panther -- became the corporate mascot in 1980.)
But what interests me the most about this news is that it points once again to the tremendous opportunity for recycling. Because of the use of recycled glass in its insulation, Owens Corning says that it is one of the largest users of recycled glass in the world and that it is having trouble finding enough to use.
To continue to help the market find additional sources of recycled glass, Owens Corning is leading initiatives with regional recyclers and processors to invest in technologies that will reduce the amount of glass sent to landfills, either because no local recycling programs exist or due to technical limitations in recycling different types and colors of glass. One such program involves Strategic Materials Inc., a Texas-based processor of scrap glass collected from a diverse range of sources including new curbside recycling programs. Once construction is completed, the glass the company will recycle at plants in Texas and Georgia will keep approximately 12,500 tons of glass per month from going to a landfill, and be reused in products including Owens Corning insulation.
That quote reminded me of a Newsweek article from early October -- Saving the World for a Latte -- that describes a program run by RecycleBank that is very much, as the authors wrote, to "a frequent-flier program for recyclers." The article continues:
Perhaps it's a commentary on the woes of Wall Street, but investors are seeing gold in garbage. With rising demand from markets like China and India, prices for scrap material like aluminum and paper have soared, which makes the economics of recycling more compelling than ever. That's why venture capitalists dumped a record $161 million into recycling firms last year, up from just $17 million in 2001, according to Cleantech Group, a green-investing consultant. And RecycleBank is one of the hottest plays, attracting $40 million from backers like Silicon Valley venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, former American Express CEO James Robinson III and Coca-Cola.
Recycling has long been one of my major bugaboos. Every morning I watch as the tens of thousands of commuters at Penn Station toss newspapers into the trash (there's a lack of recycling bins throughout the station). And in the evenings, I watch those same commuters dump newspapers, bottles and cans into the garbage on the station platforms (where no recycling bins exist).
And I wonder: just how stupid can we be? And how long will it be before companies like Owens Corning and RecycleBank can save us from our lazy selves?
]]>According to the San Jose Mercury News, the startup Better Place pledged to build the "re-charging infrastructure that must be in place before most consumers would consider buying or leasing an electric car."
The report continued:
Better Place, headed by former high-tech executive Shai Agassi, plans to install about 250,000 charging ports, 200 battery-exchange stations and a control center to service Bay Area electric car drivers. The goal is to have most of the system in place by 2012.
"We need to put together a new industry, and it needs to scale very fast," Agassi said at a press conference in San Francisco. He was flanked by San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed as well as Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.
Perhaps the timing of the collapse of the talks in auto bailout Washington and the announcement from Better Place was simply a coincidence. Or perhaps the press conference with the three mayors was quickly pulled together as it became clear that the congressional talks were going to fail.
Either way, the message is pretty clear: Bay Area innovators are once again ascendant and what's left of the Big Three and a good portion of the Michigan economy is in the bullseye. Anyone willing to bet that Silicon Valley will miss? Not I.
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But when Barack Obama spoke around midnight, we quietly watched the Democratic candidate transformed into the President-elect of the United States. And when Obama began his "yes we can," I found myself silently chanting along.
I chanted not because NRDC had endorsed the President-elect. As a non-partisan organization, we cannot -- and do not -- endorse candidates for political office. Instead my "yes we can" was aimed primarily at the thought that we now would have the leadership necessary to meet our energy and climate challenges, at building a clean energy economy by manufacturing plug-in hybrid cars, growing dedicated fuel crops and developing clean power sources like wind, solar and geothermal.
I thought yes we can unleash American ingenuity and regain our national competitive edge in this global economy. I thought that yes we can find the solutions to what President-elect Obama called a "planet in peril."
We can do all this through responsible governing and smart planning and by encouraging our new leaders to express an inspiring vision of a better American economy based not on elaborate financial transactions but on the production of cutting edge technology and the delivery of high value services.
And finally, I thought yes we can because I remembered the mailing we received from Rep. Patrick Murphy, our local first-term member of Congress who won wide re-election last night. His mailing featured a huge picture of a wind turbine under construction at a former U.S. Steel site in nearby Fairless Hills in Bucks County, PA. "Quickly," Murphy writes, the abandoned factory "has become a green energy hub, supplying the area with jobs that were lost when U.S. Steel stopped manufacturing at the site."
Over the summer, when chants of "drill baby drill" echoed around the country, many environmentalists were near tears. Being a glass half full kind of guy, I tried to remind my colleagues (or anyone else that would listen) of the often soaring rhetoric we heard from politicians of both political parties about transforming our national infrastructre for the clean energy economy.
Last night, as I closed the laptop and headed off to bed, it felt absolutely wonderful to know that the voters had put into office those who spoke most passionately about seizing the energy and climate opportunities before us. And then I smiled and thought, yes, we can.
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Now it is true -- as noted on the Green Data Center blog -- that the IBM ads are marketing material through and through, but I have to say that it is some of the best marketing material I've ever seen. The ads (see below for an example) make a strong financial argument that we all need to hear.
The concept is simple: a young woman brings an energy efficiency plan involving the firm's data centers to her boss who all but ridicules her as a tree-hugging, granola-eating idiot. When the boss asks why in the world he should sign off on her plan, she calmly responds: "This plan could cut our energy costs by 40 percent and we spent $18 million on energy last year."
Mr. Bluster can't sign the papers fast enough.
Luckily business leadership is listening and turning marketing material like the IBM ads into reality. The Wall Street Journal reported recently that big computer makers are spotting a trend.
"Rising electricity prices, coupled with new computer servers that run hotter and require more power, has corporate technology buyers looking for ways to cut back," the article by William Bulkeley says. "Power use in data centers -- the large, climate-controlled rooms that house a company's computer servers, storage devices and communications switches -- doubled from 2000 to 2006 and now accounts for about 1.5% of U.S. electricity consumption, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. A recent McKinsey & Co. report says that world-wide, the centers' carbon emissions exceed those of Argentina."
And growing quickly. Forbes.com today has a story about Cisco and its plans for worldwide data center domination. "The giants of the Internet--Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Amazon--plus fast-moving Chinese upstarts like Baidu and TenCent, are building more of these giant centers. Microsoft figures it will expand its network of data centers 64-fold over the next few years, just to handle some 200 services, including Xbox online gaming, video and corporate software rented over the Web."
I've said it before and I'll probably say it again: Congress will adopt global warming legislation once enough states and big business interests see the "green" light. Until then, sound energy policy will too often be ridiculed as nothing more than good PR.
]]>Yep, rising gas prices and increasing embarrassment at owning one of the dinosaurs led us to a decision just last week that the Explorer has to go. We're still fighting about what to buy next but given the state of the American car industry, I can pretty much guarantee that it won't be a car from Detroit.
As I've previously written, I'm a big fan of voting with my dollars and I'm way too angry at American car makers to vote for them anytime soon.
That's why I shouted out a big silent "YES" when I saw the editorial in the June 10th issue of Advertising Age titled "A Proactive Detroit Could Have Owned Green Market." (I would have been more verbal but folks tend to look at you a bit oddly when you start shouting on a crowded airplane.)
Now I don't know how long Ad Age has held this position and one can imagine that the magazine has previously supported the actions of some of the biggest advertisers on the planet but the editors now seem firmly in the green camp.
"You'd think Detroit would have learned a lesson back in the 70s," the magazine writes. "It doesn't take an economic historian to remember how Japanese imports got a toehold during the last years of fuel crisis in the states."
In fairness, the editors do point out "that gas-guzzling SUVs weren't driving themselves out of the dealership." And they note that the industry defends itself by saying "they were just giving US consumers what they wanted." (And I will admit that our current SUV isn't the first one we've owned. The first car I actually bought was also an Explorer but that's been gone for years now replaced by the aforementioned Honda Civic Hybrid that I love.)
I also love how the Ad Age editors drive their point home.
"Trucks and SUVs have been one of the few strong areas for General Motors and Ford in the past year," they write. "But it puts us in mind of a group of Neanderthals stumbling across one last herd of wooly mammoths and figuring, 'Hey, we're going to survive after all.'"
Amen. Sorry Detroit, I'll be voting for a more enlightened group of automakers with this upcoming car purchase. But I do believe in evolution so maybe the American car industry will surprise me in a couple of years and I'll reconsider.
But something tells me not to hold my breath.
]]>So step by step, we're tearing the place apart and slowly but surely, we'll end up building a new house where the old one stands. A few weeks ago, for example, we sadly decided to get rid of the greenhouse that stretched the length of the back of the house. Broken seals and a heating system that stopped working a long time ago meant the greenhouse was little more than a heat bomb in the summer and a refrigerator in the winter. Trying to heat it or keep it cool drove our electricity bills ever northward and our plants never really stood a chance.
And now it is time -- finally -- to get rid of the refrigerator, oven and stove. We're not certain, but it seems like they were original to the house which means that they were manufactured long before Energy Star was even on the drawing board. Oh yeah, and there's the central air conditioner that hasn't been doing much of late as the East Coast suffered through an early summer heat wave.
All of this to say that I'm really getting into energy efficiency. I've long found it a fascinating topic but more on a theoretical level. But now as a homeowner of an energy disaster, I'm really diving in. And luckily for me, my day job also requires that I do a lot of thinking about energy efficiency.
My most recent find was an excellent authoritative briefing from the editors of the Economist, one of my favorite magazines that I rarely have a chance to read when it comes out. This weekend, I had a chance to catch up on reading (and recycling) and found a deep dive on Energy Efficiency. Titled "The Elusive Negawatt," the article quotes many energy efficiency experts such as NRDC's own MacArthur Award winning genius David Goldstein and Art Rosenfeld, the subject of a long article in NRDC's OnEarth magazine a while back.
The crux of the article -- as well as NRDC's advocacy on the topic -- is that energy efficiency has long been known as the best method of curbing the world's increasing demand for energy. And that the term "negawatt" is quickly becoming the preferred shorthand term for energy efficiency.
There is so much in this article to reflect on that that I'll be returning to it in future posts. But the bottom line, according to the Economist, is that "big investments in energy efficiency would more than pay for themselves, and fairly fast ... Moreover, with ample profits to be made, financing should be easy to attract." The amount that needs to be invested, the Economist reports, is in the tune of $170 billion a year until 2020, a staggeringly large number but only 1.6 percent of global annual investment in bricks and mortar and other fixed capital.
I'm persuaded that my home infrastructure investments will provide a speedy return on my dollar. Luckily for our survival on the planet, it seems like business and government are beginning to see the opportunities too.
]]>Of course, the clamor from all those announcements can seem deafening. The New York Times Style Section made just that point on Sunday in an article titled: “That Buzz in Your Ear May Be Green Noise.” The thesis of the article by Times reporter Alex Williams is boiled down by a quote from Mary Burnham of San Francisco: “Heck, I’ll come out and say it. I’m a little overwhelmed.”
Hey Mary, I’m a professional environmentalist and I’m confused too. When Williams called me last week to discuss his article, I couldn’t have been in more agreement with his thesis. We all need help reducing the signal to noise ratio.
Luckily I was able to tell the Times about one of our tools for helping cut the clutter. It’s an ever-growing NRDC web program called SimpleSteps where we give clear advice in a “minute, a morning or month” format. In other words, if you have a minute and want to make better choices for your family and the environment, we’ve got a tip. If you have a morning, we’ll take you a bit deeper and -- if you have a month -- well dive on in.
Williams was writing for the Times Style Section. Had he been reporter for the business sections of the Times, though, I would have directed him to another newly launched resource which is designed to build on NRDC’s long experience working behind the scenes to help businesses and other large organizations green their operations.
Building on that expertise, we just launched the NRDC Greening Advisor to open the vaults of our business-based expertise.
The Greening Advisor was developed as a free, web-based tool for small and mid-sized businesses interested in finding ways to reduce the environmental impacts of their operations. It’s full of practical tips that can help any company establish and achieve a green goal. It tackles topics such as energy efficiency, water conservation, waste reduction and paper use, and also points out how environmentally friendly business practices can improve the bottom line.
Does the thing really work? Ask Major League Baseball, the NBA and the GRAMMYs -- they’re just a few of the groups that have already made use of the Greening Advisor. And many many more are working with our experts to get started.
So stay tuned. Maybe someday soon we’ll be able to persuade the business pages of the Times to follow up on this weekend’s excellent Style Section story to help corporations and others turn buzz into reality.
]]>Last week, however, something more than the annoyingly endless commercials and teary moments caught my eye. The ubiquitous Fox logo that lives in the bottom right corner of the screen morphed into what the network calls a celebration of the planet and a plea -- perhaps demand would be a better word -- that we "Green It." And "Mean it."
Fox, of course, isn't alone in its effort to urge us all to go green. Wandering through New York last week, I came across so many storefront windows hawking so-called green products that you'd think that Fifth Avenue had transformed from a citadel of commercialism to a blocks-long advertisement for NRDC and our fellow environmental groups.
Now I'm probably a bit more believing than most professional environmentalists when it comes to believing the green claims of corporate America. I truly do believe that something has changed in the corporate ether. Sure, thousands of marketing directors around the country have poured over hundreds of public opinion surveys and found that environment is beginning to matter to Moms and Dads everywhere and that folks are desperate for green advice. (We've been hearing the same requests and in response have launched Simple Steps, a special user-friendly guide to help those interested in improving their health and the health of their families and the planet. I'm particularly proud of Baby Steps. If there's a baby in your life, I highly recommend checking it out.)
Or maybe the business magazines are to be believed and corporate America has finally realized that there's hundreds of billions of dollars to be made in dealing with the climate crisis and other environmental challenges that threaten our future.
I wouldn't, however, fault anyone for being deeply skeptical about the depth of this new commitment. After all, its fairly easy to proclaim a new found greenness. But its another thing completely to mean it.
Only time will tell whether Fox listens to its own propaganda and takes the massive internal steps necessary to green its own operations. Early indications are good -- earlier this year, Rupert Murdoch has announced that his News Corporation and all of its worldwide operations will go carbon neutral by 2010 -- but it will take more than a news segment and a few hybrid cars and diesel generators.
Green it. Sure. Mean it? Only time will tell.
]]>Today's "news," for example, includes the following:
-- Fujitsu Siemens Says Entire Product Line Will Be Energy-Efficient
-- Simon & Schuster Purchases Paper With More Recycled Fiber
-- Kohl’s To Pursue LEED Certification On 80+ Stores
The Simon & Schuster release seems genuine.
Simon & Schuster purchases approximately 70,000 tons of paper annually. At current production levels, the shift to 25 percent recycled fiber will result in saving approximately 483,000 trees annually and reducing greenhouse gases by nearly 85 million pounds, the company reports.
Simon & Schuster says it “will endeavor” to eliminate the use of paper that may contain fiber from endangered and old-growth forest areas. It has set a goal that by 2012 at least 10 percent of its purchased paper will derive from forests certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.
The company says it will also purchase shipping cartons made from 100% recycled post-consumer paper (the company expects that it will purchase 1.2 million cartons in 2007), the recycling of all inventory destruction as mixed-use paper, and the use of recycled office materials.
And that's just one release from among the dozens that I've seen over the last few weeks. Even with the "will endeavor" caveat, that sounds like progress. Real progress in fact.
Or am I just being naive?
]]>Thankfully, I'm also addicted to recycling so I can justify all of those empty soldiers lined up on my desk awaiting the trip to the recycling bin. (My husband never knows what he'll find when he opens my suitcase after a long business trip. Often there are more empty bottles than I'd like to admit stuffed into every nook and cranny.)
All of this is why I was delighted to hear the other morning that the Coca-Cola Co. is building a new recycling facility in Spartanburg, SC. The company's long-term goal is to see each and every one of its bottles shredded -- yes 100 percent -- and returned to the PET supply stream. An admirable goal even if the timeline for achieving the 100 percent nirvana was somewhat squishy. You can read more about it here in an appropriately skeptical story from Cox News Service.
One great factoid from the Cox story: "Currently, all of the PET that can be recovered through bottle reclamation efforts is gobbled up by an avid recycling industry that uses the material for a variety of products, including apparel and carpeting."
One not so great fact that nearly sent me off the side of the road (warning: listening to NPR while driving to work can be dangerous!) was the kicker to the story. Only about less than 20 percent of PET containers are currently being recycled around the country. Twenty percent? I thought recycling by now was an American as American pie.
But later that day, while on the phone with some folks in Knoxville, Tennessee, I learned that their communities do not yet offer curbside recycling. Not of bottles, not of newspapers, not of anything. Those who care enough about the environment to want to recycle have to lug stuff to a neighborhood recycling center. And we can just imagine how often that happens.
I often hear the question about what people who care about global warming can do once they've changed their light bulbs to compact fluorescents.The answer is typically a somewhat less-than-satisfying "urge Congress to get serious about global warming legislation."
Hearing that NPR report and from those folks in Knoxville has planted another thought in my mind. If we are serious about protecting the environment, maybe we need to return to our roots and adopt an aggressive campaign to force 100 percent of American communities to adopt curbside recycling. Anybody want to sign up for that campaign with me?
]]>Here's the list of scientist who gave me hope that we can innovate our way out of the global warming mess. I can't say that I always understood what they were trying to do, but I trust those smart folks at MIT ...
Dave Berry -- Renewable Petroleum from microbes. If Vinod Khosla thinks it is worth investing money in, I'd bet on it too.
"Since receiving his bachelor's degree from MIT in 2000, Berry has helped develop a way to treat stroke, thought up a new approach to cancer therapy, and, most recently, created a system to genetically engineer microbes to produce biofuels. He has 21 patent applications pending, and his intellectual curiosity touches on therapeutic medicine, diagnostic devices, and now, most notably, alternative energy technologies. His innovations in energy form the conceptual basis of LS9, a California-based renewable-petroleum company that has received $5 million in venture funding from Flagship and Khosla Ventures in California (see "Better Biofuels," July/August 2007)."
Javier García-Martínez -- New zeolites for cracking petroleum. This one really stretches my brain cells, but I think the editors are suggesting that García-Martínez's work will make refining petroleum more efficient. And efficiency when it comes to fuel can only be a good thing, nu?
"Increasing the pore size of the zeolites would allow a larger fraction of crude oil to be converted into useful products. Companies have spent three decades and millions of dollars trying to increase pore size, without much success."
Rachel Segalman -- Cheap electricity from heat. Wasted energy is bad no matter how you look at it. And if Segalman can get my laptop and I across the country on one battery charge, well, I'd love her forever!
"Most of the energy in fuels is wasted as heat. But much of that heat could be converted to electricity by "thermoelectric" materials--if they were cheaper and more efficient. Now Rachel Segalman, an assistant professor of chemical engineering, has discovered that cheap organic molecules can be used to generate electricity from heat. So far, the voltage produced is small, but Segalman and colleagues are modifying the molecules and inventing new devices to harness them. Such devices could harvest heat in, say, computers, to extend laptop battery life."
Xudong Wang -- Powering the nanoworld. This is another brain stretcher, but it seems like a brilliant idea (once you get past concerns regarding nanotechnology.)
When Xudong Wang finished his PhD in materials science at Georgia Tech at the end of 2005, he knew he had a good thing going. He opted to stay put in the lab of Zhong Lin Wang (no relation), sure that he and his lab mates were close to creating a new nanotech-based generator--an invention they felt could change the future of nanotechnology. His risk paid off earlier this year when Science published a paper he coauthored, describing a novel device that converts ultrasonic waves--high-frequency mechanical vibrations--into electricity. The tiny device turns out a steady 0.5 nanoamperes of current that engineers may one day be able use to power implantable biosensors, remote environmental monitors, and more. "It's a very cool concept," says Peidong Yang, a nanowire researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. "Vibrational energy is everywhere." If Wang's devices can harness it cheaply, "the impact could be big," Yang says."
Neil Renninger -- Hacking microbes for energy. The Gates Foundation thinks this guy is onto something. Another voice I'm willing to trust when it comes to innovation.
He began by identifying molecules that would work well as fuels and were compatible with existing engines and delivery infrastructures; then he found a way to combine biological and chemical processes to manufacture them. So far, Amyris has created microbes that can produce candidate replacements for biodiesel, jet fuel, and gasoline. "Now we need to tinker with the bug to squeeze out the last bit of metabolic flux that turns something from interesting to cheap enough to burn," he says.
That's a lot of hope to garner from one magazine. And multiply these individuals by the tens of thousands (or more) scientists working on these problems and you do begin to think we can smart our way out of our messes.
]]>The article cites the work of a campaign called No Dirty Gold, a co-production of Earthworks and Oxfam America. As a professional environmentalist, I probably should have known this, but I was genuinely surprised to learn from the article and the No Dirty Gold website that the production of one gold ring generates 20 tons of waste. Gwen Kinkead, the author of the Men's Journal article, is even more specific: "20 tens of crushed rock that's been soaked in toxic chemicals such as cyanide to fashion a single simple wedding band."
That is not a pretty picture. And the Men's Journal article paints even a nastier picture of what it calls "toxic billionaire" Robert Friedland and his plans to open a massive copper and gold mine in Mongolia. It is a scary but important article.
A visit to the No Dirty Gold website, however, does provide a dose of good news: Right before Valentine's Day this year, 11 major jewelry retailers pledged their support for more socially and environmentally responsible gold. Doing so means that they have agreed to, among other things, stop the dumping of mine waste into oceans, rivers, streams and lakes. It means that they will ensure that their projects are not located in environmentally sensitive areas. And it means that they will allow independent verification of their agreements.
It is definitely great to see so many jewelry sellers on the list. But I wonder how verifiable all the pledges truly are. Is this a ploy to get some good PR or are the companies on the good gold list really changing their practices?
We recently stopped by a Home Depot near my house in southeastern Pennsylvania. Anyone who has been to a Home Depot store recently knows that the company is making an impressive push to be more environmentally conscientious. The company has launched an Eco Options program and signs throughout the stores promote more environmentally friendly products.
On this particular trip, we were looking for flooring. Our late mid-century house in Solebury, PA, came with wall-to-wall beige carpeting and anyone who has a pack of dogs knows that beige carpeting is probably not the right choice. In fact, there aren't many carpeting options that really are feasible with that many dog paws running around so we've decided to put in wood flooring.
And believe me, we've done the research. My husband and I have spent hours on the web looking for sustainable wood flooring. We've found oodles of reclaimed wood, but it is about three or four times the cost of traditional wood flooring. And, yes, there is bamboo, but we just don't like the way it looks and I've even read recently that it may not be the most environmentally friendly product in the world.
So back to Home Depot. We found a wood we liked and could afford and we scoured the box to see if it had any mention of how it was forested or if it was certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. Not a word on the box. So we asked a Home Depot associate in the flooring department if the wood flooring in question was FSC certified. The look on her face was priceless. It was as if we asked her for the genetic code of a baboon.
Yeah, we bought the wood. I don't necessarily feel good about the choice, but we have since signed up for wind power through our electric utility and set up a composting bin and we took bags with us on the dog walk this afternoon and picked up about 20 bottles and cans littering the sides of our very quiet street.
Bottom line: No one's perfect. It is good that the jewelry companies are pledging to do better, Home Depot should be applauded for its efforts and please don't criticize us for buying a wood floor that we love. We're all trying and that's something, right?
]]>The controversy involves a plan by the energy giant to increase the amount of toxic discharges from a refinery into Lake Michigan and how its plans have angered Chicago officials and flamed talks of a consumer boycott of the company.
Ann Alexander, an attorney in NRDC's new Midwest office, joined the fray in a recent op-ed in the Chicago Sun Times.
"Like a pious preacher caught with the secretary in a cheap motel, the oil company that spent years promising to take us 'beyond petroleum' has suddenly found itself at the center of a growing storm brought on by a severe case of hypocrisy," Alexander wrote. "Instead of a public atonement, BP is digging in its heels. Odds are that this is a losing game, one that will leave both corporate and political reputations battered and broken."
Alexander notes that BP has spent millions promoting itself as the greenest oil giant. But BP has applied and won permission to start dumping 1600 pounds of ammonia and nearly two and a half tons of contaminated sludge each and every day into Lake Michigan from a refinery in Indiana that is a mile away from where 11 cities get their drinking water.
That's the point of the AdAge story, which notes that the controversy has drawn "attention to the cardinal sin of touting an environmentally conscious image in marketing —the central focus of BP's advertising for the past several years —and failing to live up to the message."
NRDC more than welcomes corporate efforts to go green. We're actively involved in helping giants like Wal-Mart transform their operations and working with many other companies.
But Ann's op-ed about the controversy over BP in the Midwest should serve as a reminder that NRDC will not shy from using the age old carrot and stick approach (Or, as one of my colleagues called it, the "carrot stick."
When rhetoric does not live up to actions, we're not going to be shy about letting the world know. You can bank on that.
]]>Until that is I finally got to the train and started plowing through the magazines I've become addicted to reading. And there, lo and behold, in Fast Company's July/August 2006 issue, I found an article titled "There's Gold in Them Thar Smelly Hills." The subtitle was equally intriguing: "A single ton of junked PCs has more gold than 17 tons of ore. That's why landfills might – just might – pay for their own cleanup."
In his article, Fast Company senior writer Alan Deutschman said that insatiable demand for raw materials in China and India was driving up the price of metals such as aluminum, copper, iron and steel. But Deutschman wrote that the increasing demand had a silver lining in that "private enterprise has a chance to create a market-driven solution." And he reported that at a recent IBM Global Innovation Outlook conference, a speaker kept the audience captivated by "suggesting we could treat landfills as though they were mines – and dig up the valuable metals buried in them."
"And there's plenty to dig for, says Patrick Atkins, the director of energy innovation at Alcoa. North American landfills contain more aluminum than we can produce by mining ores. He thinks the same is probably true of gold and copper, which are used in the circuit boards of computers and electronic gadgets. One ton of scrap from discarded PCs contains more gold than can be produced from 17 tons of gold ore – and humans throw away 20 million tons of electronic waste a year. Americans dispose of 50 million computers annually; by the end of this decade, the Japanese alone will have trashed 610 million cell phones."
The numbers are staggering. The amount of money that could be made by turning our garbage into raw materials is also incomprehensible to someone like me who is unable to balance a checkbook. But I'm confident that smart business minds are even now exploring the money that can be made by mining our landfills and otherwise capitalizing on our trash.
The alternative is too pathetic to consider.
PS -- I know this all happened a year ago, but I was reminded of the story this morning when my husband and I dropped off a computer and old television at our county's electronic recycling day. More on that soon ...
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