Green Options

We tend to think that if a company is big, it is automatically bad and doesn’t care about it’s environmental footprint.  This couldn’t be farther from the truth.  Just take a look at the Top 10 Green Energy Users according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  Surprising, isn’t it?  Now, I’m not saying that all large corporations are doing their part.  Some aren’t.  But we should applaud and recognize the ones who are.

Every year the EPA co-sponsors the Green Power Leadership Awards in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Center for Resource Solutions (CRS).  The Green Power Leadership Awards recognize the leading actions of organizations, programs, and individuals that significantly advance the development of green power sources. While the DOE recognizes green power providers and the CRS recognizes advancements in the green power market, the EPA specifically focuses on outstanding green power purchasers.  So let’s take a closer look at the EPA’s 2009 Green Power Purchaser Award winners.

Three days ago, I blogged about the EPA’s Green Power Partners site, which lists the top green power users in the country. That post got more traffic in a day than my posts normally get in a month. That was very exciting for me. People clearly care about this issue. At least for me, when all things are equal a company’s commitment to environmental sustainability can make the difference between one product choice and another. I hope it does for others, too.

Let me build on that by saying that there is even more good news than this. Did you notice that the Green Power Partners site also has Top 20 lists by category? These include college & university, local government, retail, on-site, and printers.

What’s interesting here is printers. This is a highly unglamorous category. Why would the EPA care about commercial printing and packaging companies? For the same reasons that anyone interested in environmental sustainability should care about them.

1. Printing is the third largest manufacturing industry in the country

2. Printing is a very aggressive with environmental sustainability, including its use of green power.

Put these together and you have the third largest manufacturing industry making a major move to sustainability. When not just individual companies but an entire industry embraces green technologies and processes, it makes a real difference. That’s exciting!

Yet, where’s all the buzz? E-media! With its 24-hour-a day, 7-days-a-week power usage, its ubiquitous energy-using devices from desktop computers to laptops to servers to cellphones, PDAs, and every other mobile device that now blanket the planet and drain the power grid. Meanwhile, because printing uses — dare I say the word — paper, it’s the bad guy?

It is strange to be reading so many stories about premium-priced green power programs and net metering programs for excess power right alongside stories about utilities performing record numbers of shut-offs for non-payment.

Joining the ranks of such green notables as San Francisco and Portland Oregon, the U.S. Air Force has made the top 20 List of On-Site Green Power Purchasers.  The quarterly list is a subset of the U.S. EPA’s Green Power Partnership program.  It includes organizations, businesses or government entities that purchase sustainable power from sources based in the U.S.A., either directly or through the use of Renewable Energy Certificates.

Michigan residents that are customers of Consumers Energy finally have a green energy choice. Green Generation is the new renewable power program available through Consumers Energy.

So, the knee has been bent, the question has been asked, the positive answer given. Now comes the (un)fun part: organizing the wedding. Along with choosing the band, the cake, the colour of your linens, some couples are beginning to ask how they can make their special day more sustainable? After the break, sustainablog will present some of our favourite ways of making a wedding into a green wedding.

Nicknamed, the “Dragon Power Station”, a new apparatus at the port harnesses energy from big rigs. Still in test stage, the new technology is expected to produce 5000-7000 kilowatts per day in this one location.

Photo courtesy: AEST, Inc. http://www.aesti.com

Having implemented several water-saving ideas from the first Living Green Workshop I attended (no beef for two weeks!) I was excited to go back to learn about the next topic: Energy. Developed and taught by Santa Monica-based non-profit Sustainable Works, the class did not let me down.

I would think that by now most of us know that the ways that we currently produce most of our energy cannot continue into

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Did you know you can choose where your power comes from? More than 600 utility companies in 36 states offer their customers the option of green power. That means you can support renewable energy sources such as wind and solar instead of conventional coal fired or nuclear power plants just by paying your monthly electricity bill.

How it works. When you sign up to a green power program, you are supporting your

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What do Starbucks, Staples, IBM, Whole Foods and the U.S. Air Force have in common?

They're among the who's who of green power purchasers in the US.

The amount of electricity these mega-organizations need just to keep the lights on is huge, so it really makes a difference when they choose to purchase green power.

It helps reduce the need for power generated from coal fired power plants and nuclear facilities.

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