Green Options

Green business practices are not limited to factories and buildings anymore. According to Yahoo Finance, soem insurance companies are offering clients who drive green cars or live in green homes a break on their premiums. Still others are offering to rebuild a green home that is lost due to fire or other catastrophes “greener” than it was before.

For years, green activists were “anti-technology”, claiming that technological advances were largely responsible for the polluted state of Mother Earth. This was a fair claim, as yesterday’s technologies only looked at the bottom line, and not the resulting mess. In today’s reality, the words “green” and “technology” no longer constitute an oxymoron, as technologists have turned their attention to cleaning up the mess previous generations have made.

Today’s news is ablaze with stories about the recent swine flu outbreak, an outbreak that may have been fully preventable through the use of green farming practices. At the time I write this post, 50 cases of swine

flu have been reported in the US alone, with one death attributable to the mutated virus. Although most cases have been mild, the fear factor alone is leading to school closures and cancelled vacations across the world.

Department store giant Sears is jumping on the green bandwagon by announcing plans to offer “green” clothing in May - suits made from recycled PET bottles with NO petroleum used in the manufacturing process. Made in partnership with the US arm of Japan based Teijin Fibers Limited, each suit will be 54% recycled polyester, 42% wool, and 4% spandex, and will be fully machine washable.

Lawmakers continue to raise a stink about the $1.7M earmark for hog odor research in Obama’s stimulus package, calling it “pork” in its finest form. Rural residents who live near hog farms, or worse, facilities where hogs are butchered, are calling it about time!

Every day, we are faced with the question of whether it is greener to serve meals on reusable dishes and waste water to wash them with, or contribute to the landfill problem by using paper plates and plastic utensils. Biodegradable Food Service Products (abbreviated BDFS) has a solution to this dilemma by using the humble potato to manufacture a whole line of food service products that include clam shell take-out trays, “silver”ware, plates, cups with lids, and deli [...]

Green plants, trees and their leaves remove noxious carbon dioxide from the air during a process known as Photosynthesis. This is why we are all so upset about the ruination of the rain forests, which act as natural air cleaners in volume due to the density of vegetation.

The question for businesses used to be “Can we afford to go green?” Now it is ” Can we afford NOT to go green?” The upcoming Greener by Design 2009 conference, to be held May 19-20 in San Francisco will focus on helping industries learn to cut costs, create efficiency, and move towards sustainability through a series of focused hands-on innovation sessions, small-group consultative sessions, and demonstrations of new materials and tools.

Inspired green progress continues to be made by Terracycle - the company that first made fertilizer from worm poop and tote bags from food wrappers. The next initiative by this innovative company is to place recycling bins outside Petco and Home Depot, OfficeMax, and BestBuy stores to collect items that were normally not even considered as recyclable materials.

Obama has prided himself on removing government waste and not allowing pork to infiltrate his controversial $787B stimulus package, but was he successful? According to many outspoken opponents such as Senator John McCain, the answer is no.