Green Options

The World Trade Organization will meet in Brussels Monday (Feb. 9, 2009) to head-off the rising wave of protectionism.

In the January 5, 2009 issue of Chemical & Engineering News, the official trade journal of the American Chemical Society, the ACS announced the formation of the Formulated Products Roundtable. This organization, which will begin operating later this month, is an industry-financed partnership between the ACS’s Green Chemistry Institute (GCI), a not-for-profit group devoted to promoting green chemistry, and sixteen prominent companies that manufacture cosmetics, perfumes, soaps, detergents, and other household and industrial cleaning products. Its aim is to share [...]

Eaton Corporation (NYSE:ETN) has been an icon of the American markets for many years - a definite example of traditional US industry that provides power management, hydraulics, and automotive drivetrain systems among its many offerings. Cutler-Hammer is one of its most recognizable brands. Sales in 2007 were $13B.

The 21 economies of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), which represent more than half of the world’s productive power, assured the world yesterday (Sunday) at the end of a 2-day summit in Lima, that the global financial crisis can be quelled in 18 months. But how they expect this to happen - or how their governments can help remains to be seen.

When I look at my email inbox, it seems that double-digit percentages of incoming emails now have something to do with green. Manufacturers, retailers, service providers — they are all finding green angles to their company announcements. Even opening a Twitter account is an excuse to say marketing is going green by reducing the amount spent on print.

As I was participating in an online discussion as part of an industry discussion group, I was pleased to see that a regional lettershop, St. John Associates, was also promoting its sustainability efforts. At the bottom of its posts, as part of its company signature, it included the following:

We are an EPA Certified Green Power Partner!

We buy enough monthly Wind Power RECs to offset 50% of our electricity usage and enough monthly Carbon Offset credits to cover 100% of our direct emissions!

Want to know more about our environmental efforts? Visit our website at . . .

Beer and alligators?  Sounds like a dangerous mix, or, at the very least, the beginning of a bad Cajun joke. For Anheuser-Busch’s (whoops… Anheuser-Busch InBev’s) Jacksonville, FL brewery and turf farm, this mix of wildlife and business has been standard for eleven years.  The Jacksonville facility is one of ten A-B operations certified as Wildlife at Work (SM) sites by the Wildlife Habitat Council.

The WHC is a twenty-year-old partnership between corporations (A-B was a founding member) and environmental organizations (the American Farmland Trust, Izaak Walton League of America, National Wildlife Federation and World Wildlife Fund). The organization was founded in order to “…[help] large landowners, particularly corporations, manage their unused lands in an ecologically sensitive manner for the benefit of wildlife.” The Wildlife at Work program not only certifies wildlife restoration programs, but also provides step-by-step training for companies interested in making unused lands more friendly to animal and plant life.

After nearly destroying a forest and obliterating a species, one corporation does a 180 and becomes an EcoHero.

The story begins in the 1830’s, when the South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company (SCCRC) bought a 100,000 acre plot of longleaf pine forest near Dorchester, South Carolina. Timber from the forest was an essential element in SCCRC’s expansion, development and continued operation. Not only did timber provide material for cross-ties, trestles and bridges, but most of the then steam powered locomotives burned wood to heat their boilers. This meant a nonstop and insatiable demand for timber which the forest was unable to support.

Following the destruction and carnage of the civil war, more timber was needed to repair the railroads of the South. Reconstruction was successful; too successful in fact, and SCCRC developed new lines, became overextended and ran into financial trouble. In 1893, the railroad was reorganized as Southern Railway. Most of the mature timber was gone by this time, and nearly all but 14,000 acres of the original 100,000 acre forest had been parceled out and sold off. Red-cockaded woodpeckers, who depend on longleaf pine forests for their survival, were also close to extinction.

Southern Railway’s 180

In 1920, the railway began replanting longleaf and loblolly pines for pulpwood production. Soon afterward, it began to construct a demonstration area for local landowners who were interested in reforesting their land. Southern Railway also opened up its land to forestry students from Universities all across the South.

An open question to our readers: do you read annual sustainability reports?

Well, it turns out that the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) were curious as well. So, they went ahead and hired a few consulting companies (SustainAbility and KPMG) to go ahead and survey sustainability report readers.

While some of the responses were not all that surprising, the survey’s results did speak to the trends within the reporting industry.

SustainAbility Chairperson Sophia Tickell discussed the strategic use of sustainability reports.

Reporting was once a way to get sustainability issues onto the corporate agenda. Today the situation is reversing as a growing number of companies make ambitious commitments to sustainability. There is much business as usual but these targets matter because what gets measured gets done and — hopefully — reported against. This shift in where the agenda is set holds real potential to influence products and services — and eventually to shape business models of the future.

Reporting will be important but will need, explicitly, to make clearer links between sustainability issues and core business strategy — something that all stakeholders (including the mainstream investment community) seem to agree upon.

The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which provides chain-of-custody certifications for forestry-based products (including office and printing papers, as well as the suppliers that print on, distribute, and dispose of those products), has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Government, the first-ever legal action in its 10-year history.

The letter from Corey Brinkema, president of the FSC-US, to FSC certification holders is reprinted below. The letter is reprinted from the Print Buyers Online Green Content section.

Dear FSC Certificate Holders,

I have important news to share with you. On September 10th, the Forest Stewardship Council – United States (FSC-US) filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Government, the first-ever legal action in our 10-year history. I’d like to take a moment to share why we undertook this action and why I believe it matters to all those who value responsible forestry.

Our lawsuit against the U.S. Trade Representative stems from the Canadian Softwood Lumber Agreement (SLA) between the U.S. and Canada. In September 2006, the SLA settled trade litigation between the two countries related to the 30% duties the U.S. imposed on imported Canadian lumber in 2002. The SLA settlement awarded the U.S. $1 billion. One of the settlement provisions required Canada to “donate” $350 million of this $1 billion to two U.S.-based forestry foundations — the newly created U.S. Endowment for Forests and Communities and the American Forest Foundation. According to the SLA, monies were to go to “meritorious initiatives” in the name of sustainable forestry and forest communities.

FSC-US believes that this enormous disbursement of funds was both illegal and a violation of the American public trust. The law required that these funds be first deposited in the U.S. Treasury and then left to Congress to decide how to spend any funds.

It’s official, according to the New York Times, the bailout proposition has been rejected by the House of Representatives. The Dow Jones just plunged more than 400 points and America is standing up for itself as the bastion of free market economics!

According to the New York Times, “supporters of the bailout proposal had argued that it was necessary to avoid a collapse of the economic system, a calamity that would drag down not just Wall Street investment houses but possibly [...]

Ideas may be a dime a dozen, but turning an idea into action generally costs money–sometimes a lot of money. And that’s where Google can be of service.

It’s Google’s Tenth Anniversary, and they are celebrating by giving away up to $10 million for good ideas to change the world.  Project 10^100 is open to any idea that will “better the world,” but here at The Inspired Economist, we’re hoping you’ll have an idea to sustainably grow a local or major economy, to lower energy demand or to develop clean energy, to reduce exposure to toxins and/or to clean up the environment.

‘no pressure, but you have only until October 20, 2008 to formulate a really, really good idea. You’ll submit it online. When you check out the brief submission form, you’ll see that you can also submit a video, and you can also ask to be connected with foundations that might support your idea if you are not selected for Google’s award… And how do you get selected?

A truly brilliant idea: The Hippo Water Roller