Green Options

You drink coffee. Tea. When it’s at home, it’s organic, and when you’re out, you do your best. In so many ways, you live a green lifestyle. And yet, there’s one sticky point: the cup.

Evening Breeze sustainable bedIt’s summer in the Northern hemisphere, and for many, that means going on holiday to warm, tropical locales. And using air conditioning. Lots of it. In fact, in some tropical places, nearly 80% of energy use in a hotel room is for air conditioning. 1200 to 2000 watts on average.

Evening Breeze is an interesting solution: It’s a canopy bed that has adjustments for both temperature and humidity, and delivers it quietly, overhead, using only 400 watts. As [...]

Here’s an idea that comes from outside the green business world, but has much to offer us and I think should be repeated all over.

In London, KiosKiosk is a simple, powerful, powerfully fun idea: Create an attractive temporary space for upcoming (but ready to sell) businesses to be at, in a high traffic area. At no cost.

Backed by the London Sustainable Development Commission, businesses just need to submit a brief form describing what they’d like to use the kiosk for, [...]

Unless you’ve been laid up in bed all this week, you’ve heard that Apple is releasing a new iPhone 3G-S with an amazing array of features But one you may not have heard of is a brilliant bridging between the iPhone and Zipcar.

These two are as they say peas in a pod, technology enhanced life(style) enhancements, for a demographic that I imagine likes that they get to both have what they want, when they want it, and do good by [...]

In these days of increased risk of identity theft, people are looking for ways to manage their sensitive materials. Get a shredding machine? Maybe. But typically, people would rather things be easier, in the stream of their other activities. So it often doesn’t happen, things piling up, or getting thrown away with some trepidation, or perhaps incinerated.

The Shred Stop seems to have hit on an idea that both integrates with the rest of people’s lives and does a better job then a personal size shredder could do, with a higher degree of environmental sensitivity.

It’s simple: locate them in grocery stores and other places that already have coin counting machines, charge $2/minute for shredding, able to do it much faster than your usual home/small biz shredder, and you’re able to quickly get done what would either not get done, where you’re already going anyway, or would otherwise take much more of your valuable time.

You hear so much about people striving to live a greener, more sustainable life. You may at times wonder, who else is doing it, and is all that happy talk translating into real world results?

Three friends decided to find out. As they put it,

Mandy, Ryan and Brady are ‘bikepacking’ 12,000 miles to the East Coast and back to California, using solar-powered electronics and leg-powered bicycles. The result is a feature-length documentary film that will present [...]

There are tons of green conferences these days, and to be sure lots of great information to be learned at them, people to connect with, ideas to germinate, funding to be sought. And yet, something’s missing.

Don’t get me wrong, magic has been made and minds blown with just Powerpoint and a good presentation. I don’t know about you, but how many times do you find yourself thinking, “I have something to add to what they’re saying,” or “Gah! I wish they’d do a session on *this* topic!”

Green Business Camp, done for the first time a few weeks back in South San Francisco at the Green V Sustainable Center, a creative reinvention of a former car dealership site, may be just the antidote you’re seeking. It’s what they call an “unconference.” As in the opposite of all the trappings of your usual conference.

With so many sources of information on sustainability and green living choices, you’d think it would be easy for you and me to live a greener lifestyle. And yet, how many times have you found yourself out there, doing errands, going out, or traveling, and you have no idea how and where to make greener choices?

3rdWhale is a bridge between talk and action, with an iPhone app that allows you to search for green businesses in proximity to you, plus submit your own finds that aren’t already on there, all listings filtered by 3rd Whale and then rated by users, ala Yelp. An Android version is on its way.

But here’s where it gets interesting: As seen first in Mother Nature Network 3rd Whale are joining forces with Creative Citizen, a hub for crowdsourced, specifically measurable sustainable choices. Each is broken down to how much energy, waste, water, emissions you’ve saved, and in what I think will help it bridge to a broader segment of the population, money. When you have this kind of clearly tangible benefit laid out for you, and it’s on something that you carry with you, action is much for likely.

In today’s rapidly changing sustainable business landscape, it’s becoming increasingly important to be aware of what’s happening, emerging, and yet to be created where you could fill a need. How best to do that?

Some people feel that advertising is garbage. London based Curb advertises with garbage. And sea water. And snow.

Calling themselves “The Natural Media Company,” Curb create advertising based on natural elements, the most recent being for the London Aquarium utilizing “sea tagging,” which is using sea water and a stencil to create temporary ads on the sidewalk. Sea water evaporates more slowly then water, but being a completely natural substance, no permit is needed to do it.

Another water based innovation [...]