Green Options

Last month, Hewlett Packard offered to let us (and many other bloggers) try out their new wireless all-in-one, the OfficeJet Pro 8500.

One caveat: I don’t do many reviews of technology products with lots of features, so if that’s what you’re looking for, there are many in-depth reviews out there for this new model, as well as previous posts by Ecopreneurist Editor Reenita Malhorita, here and here.

Ecopreneurist was chosen to [...]

We get a lot of email here at Green Options Media. A good portion of it is pretty wacky/funny/uninformed. Until now, I’ve just written off the seconds I spend reading them as time wasted.
No more. Today, I begin publishing some of the more interesting emails we get. Today’s winner (sic):

I am sick of environmentalist who claim global

[...]

In his new book to be released next week, Van Jones lays out a sensible roadmap to solve our long term economic problems. How? By making sustainability the centerpiece of a national renewal. And, if we justify spending hundreds of billions on an economic solution no one completely understands, why can’t we make it an even greater priority to create a sustainable economy that will last us the next thousand years?

In his own words, on the environment.

He will be missed.

I don’t post much for GO (some publisher I am), but I was just doing a little morning news browsing over coffee today, when I came across this gem in one of the infinite useless articles about oil prices:

Concern about high oil prices led Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest producer, to call a weekend summit between oil producers and oil consumers to address the issue before

[...]

At the GO office here in downtown SF, we see a lot of interesting stuff. After coming back from lunch to see a protest going on right outside our building, I went down to investigate. Turns out, Chevron’s only SF office (ironically, their “green solutions” office) is in the building next to ours. Who woulda thunk.

The gathered crowd, led by local members of the nonprofit watchdog AmazonWatch, was primarily protesting Chevron’s escapades in Ecuador. When the company [...]

So, I have a confession. Jeff had to publish my mostly-finished post for our anniversary this week, because I was asleep on a plane. I was invited to Chicago for nine hours (no thanks to the weather) on behalf of GM, to tour the laboratory of Coskata, the auto manufacturer’s newest–and perhaps smartest– investment. The few bloggers and journalists who braved the cold met with the company’s executives for Q&A and a lengthy PowerPoint. (Obviously, GM paid my way for the trip. I’d never pay to go on a trip where air time > ground time.)

I won’t go into the details of the tour, the PowerPoint, the partnership, the process that Coskata uses, the partnership that Coskata announced on the 6th with one of the largest ethanol refinery builders, (under embargo–we can expect details of partnerships like this to literally leak out consistently over the next year, similar to the strategy that GM is using to re-release all of its SUV lines as hybrids) or anything else, because they’ve all been covered so well here:

GroovyGreen’s coverage of the tour and PowerPoint

GM Announces Biofuel Partnership: Cheap, Green Ethanol?

Economic Conditions Shifting in Favor of Ethanol

Coskata partnerhship with ICM Announcement

Update: EcoGeek has a post up too, but they don’t link to any of ours.

A year ago today, Greenoptions.com went live to the public for the first time. Jeff remembers those first exciting hours of our launch, but I trace the most important moments back to the start of a parallel timeline.

In the early days of our little startup, it was sometimes hard to tell exactly where we were going. We knew that Treehugger had built a successful content model by catering to the significant number of people who self-identify with that term. We wondered if it was possible to do the same, but with a brand and content focus that would help draw ordinary people towards a more conscious mindset, by meeting them where they are.

With that in mind and no funding secured, I attended the 2006 SF Green Festival as just another festival-goer, passing out user surveys to help nail down our demographics. Without a booth, I was quickly asked to stop or leave, but I vowed to be back next year, with both a booth and a greater sense of purpose.

Just a quick update from the front lines here in the oil-soaked Bay Area…

While cleanup continues, thousands of consumers and anti-consumers will get back mingling and browsing around the hundreds of socially conscious businesses exhibiting at the ‘fest. It stuck me as a particular irony that such a tragedy should befall the only area of the US where the environment is a big enough deal that the idea of a plastic bag monster doesn’t seem all [...]

Each year in recent memory, General Motors (GM) has invited the press and other key influencers out to the famous Milford Proving Grounds to spend a day testing out its upcoming model year line of vehicles on a closed course. The company has learned a lot from their last (hilarious) attempt to leverage social media, and for the first time ever, they decided to bestow the same access upon writers from around the [...]