Green Options

Sam’s Club, a division of Wal-Mart, annouced that they have converted their "private label Member’s Mark premium ground coffee" to Fair Trade Certified. The process from bean begins with 3678 small scale, independent farmers who then sell their beans to "democratically-run cooperatives for a set, guaranteed minimum price." This pool of beans from thousands of independent farmers is what composes the Member’s Mark brand. In conjunction with this announcement, Sam’s Club is offering a

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There’s big news for solar power coming out of Florida. Florida Power & Light (FPL) – one of the nation’s largest utilities and the largest producer of wind power – announced at the Clinton Global Initiative conference that it will spend $1.5 billion to build solar thermal energy in Florida, California, and other states. In addition, the utility plans on investing nearly another billion dollars nationwide to cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, a

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Thanks to Erin over at RE-AMP for the heads-up on this great piece of news: Eight major utilities have agreed to implement energy efficiency measures in order to meet the growing demand for electricity. By emphasizing efficiency over coal, they will cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 30 million tons — the equivalent of taking almost 6 million cars off the road — and avoid the need to build 50 500-megawatt peaking power

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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

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Businesses seem to be flocking to appear green, lessen their carbon footprint, and talk about global warming. But scant mention of it was made in most of the reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this year. Should investors be concerned?

A group of state officials, state pension fund managers, investors, and other organizations think so. They are asking the SEC to make all public companies formally address the

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I didn’t say it…Robin Williams did. But it makes sense. Clean compared to what? Compared to the black lung producing crap that we used to burn?

I live in Michigan and our Governor has been paying a lot of lip service to environmentally-friendly practices and energy-conservation and so has our regional utility, Consumers Energy. However, that’s about it. The same thing is also going on in Seattle.

The city of the future is not going to be a Jetson-esque collection of bubbles in the air, or towers connected by monorails, or any other radical vision. The city of the future will be more like that in Blade Runner, mostly recognizably familiar older buildings. Most of the city of the future has already been built and is standing. Certainly new buildings will

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For those of you who do not live in Michigan, or keep up on its politics, it may come as a surprise to find out that our economy is pretty much in the gutter. Our unemployment rate is the highest it has been in nearly six months, and it seems the bad news keeps rolling in. With large cuts in the automotive industry, coupled with the dissapearence of jobs from such powerhouses

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Over the past few years fair trade products have expanded into many new markets. With this trend we inevitably have to reevaluate the micro and macro systems involved in producing and providing fair trade products.

There is a rather large difference between fair trade products and fair trade companies, says Mary Morison, executive director of the Fair Trade Resource Network. Large corporations that sell or promote individual

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While voters, businesses, and politicians are calling for carbon regulation, exactly what that regulation would look like is far from decided.

Carbon taxes and cap-and-trade systems are the two most-cited proposals for cutting carbon dioxide (CO2), a major contributor to global warming. Supporters argue over which plan would be the most efficient method of cutting emissions while allowing for flexibility in the economy.

A carbon tax is a tax levied on CO2 emissions. Those

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Two large U.S. corporations have announced commitments to solar power.

Costco – the giant discount retailer – is installing its first solar array on the Kailua-Kona store in Hawaii. A 680-kilowatt solar electric system – big enough to power about 111 Hawaiian homes – will be installed by REC Solar of San Luis Obispo, CA. It’s expected to be completed in the next five or six weeks.

The Kailua-Kona store may save up

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