HelpSweden.org has drafted a petition to Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt. It urges greater action on the Millennium Development Goals when Sweden holds the European Union presidency in the second half of 2009. The message also holds a reminder of the first world’s forgotten debt to the rest of the world for resources and labor.

Think Africa’s poor?

Not in terms of natural resources. Most diamonds and gold in the world come from Africa. With all the conflict that’s erupted over mining the abundant precious materials in the Congo, there’s a saying, “We’d be so much better off if we weren’t so rich.”

Much of the African continent is also blessed a climate far more lush than, say, Sweden. Yet with a fraction of the natural resources and more snow than you could shake a kräftskivor at, Sweden’s economy is among the top twenty largest in the world, dwarfing any African nation.

So what gives?

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Using sources from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), Green Printer estimates that it helped its customers save 74,645 pounds of greenhouse gases and 38,116 pounds of solid waste since the eco-friendly printing company opened in June 2007.

Green Printer is so serious about its environmental stewardship that it actually offers an “Eco-Calculator” that helps its customers calculate how much greenhouse gas and trees they, too, can save by using its services. These savings are achieved, among other things, by using sustainable printing methods (such as waterless printing) and printing on treeless and recycled paper. (See Green Printer’s story.)

This adds a completely new dimension to the issue of socially responsible printing—a more active sense of participation.

As I wrote last week, one of the benefits of using the document management and marketing models driven by digital printing is that you can see the positive impact you are making on the environment by what is missing—piles of wasted inventory, unread mail, and trash cans filled to the brim. But Green Printer offers another way to quantify your impact on the environment, one that allows you to “see” the invisible.

That’s a very powerful motivator to positive social action—to the tune of 74,645 pounds of greenhouse gases so far.

Did you know that by making some basic changes in your document management and print marketing, you can reduce your carbon footprint, use fewer trees, use less petroleum, and improve your bottom line at the same time? In today’s time of financial crisis, that ought to get any company’s attention. It starts, not with the paper or ink you spec, but with the fundamental way you print at your documents.

By utilizing today’s digital production technologies, you can move to document management models that have a major impact on the environment. By printing shorter runs—even for high-quality, four-color documents—you eliminate warehousing costs and the cost of outdated print, but on the environmental side, you avoid cutting down trees for nothing. Every time a book, a pamphlet, a flyer goes out of date and gets thrown in the trash, you just contributed to needless deforestation.

By making smarter use of your database—say, mailing to only the top 10% of your customer base—you reduce the amount of printed material you use. If you combine it with smart use of print personalization, you could earn even more revenues than on a larger static mailing.

Some great examples can be found in a new report on digital-printing-driven marketing models entitled “Digital Printing: Transforming Business and Marketing Models,” released yesterday.

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Wall Street is in financial crisis. Individual investors are reeling. The world is watching. If ever there were a time to get serious about our world stewardship, it’s now.

While we’re used to thinking along broad, expansive lines such as international policy and national priorities, the fact is, there are changes you and I can make in our daily lives to make things better, including in the world of marketing. We don’t have to change the world. We just have to change our world.

That’s what “Greening Print Marketing” is about.

Along those lines, I got a press release from Xerox today. The company has released a new series of papers and tools to help companies reduce the environmental impact of printing in their organizations. This starts a comprehensive program of papers, resources, and Web tools to help customers identify the right paper, the right supplies, and the right way to print with the environment in mind.

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In another few years - in 2025 to be precise - the number could swell to 3 billion driving back gains in the fight against poverty and under-development, otherwise known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

For many people around the world, safe drinking water is a scarce resource and out of necessity, they resort to what’s available - polluted water.

But contaminated water isn’t just dirty—it’s deadly. Some 1.8 million people die every year of diseases like cholera, caused by poor sanitation. Tens of millions of others are seriously sickened by a host of water-related ailments—many of which are easily preventable.

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Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced the decision on Tuesday. Researchers both on the ground and in the air will be gathering data on Canada’s three northern territories: the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

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And now they want your input on what those sustainable practices and standards should be — they’ve released the first draft of their “Principles and Baseline Practices for Sustainability” (PDF) to the public under a 45-day comment and review period.

So, if you’ve ever questioned the wisdom of growing our own fuel, or you’ve wondered how biofuels can be considered sustainable at all given other seemingly cleaner options like solar, wind and geothermal, now’s your time to speak up.

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Entrepreneurial trends are difficult to track and ecopreneurial enterprises even more so. The US Small Business Administration estimates that there are about 4.5 million small businesses with 9 or fewer employees. About three-quarters of all business firms have no employee payroll at all because they’re set up as self-employed persons operating unincorporated businesses. According to the Association for Enterprise Opportunity (microenterpriseworks.org), there are more than 23 million microenterprises (a business with five or fewer employees) in the US, representing 18 percent of all private employment and 87 percent of all businesses. You might be among the 15 million full-time or part-time small office/home office entrepreneurs, or SOHOs, like my wife and I with our diversified small enterprise.

Identified by Dan Pink in Free Agent Nation, there are about 33 million free agents in America. These “job-hopping, tech-savvy, fulfillment seeking, self-reliant, independent” workers represent about 16.5 million soloists, 3.5 million temporary workers (temps) and 13 million microbusinesses that include construction contractors, real estate agents, nannies, direct sales ventures (e.g., Shaklee, shaklee.com), services subcontractors and accountants. Operating as a microbusiness, or what Pink refers to as a “nanocorp” with three employees or less, is both a personal preference and competitive advantage, allowing the owners to downsize to provide incredible adaptability, innovation and creativity. Our sub-chapter S Corporation is a nanocorp committed to ecological restoration and social change while turning a modest profit.

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But first, a digression.

Part 1: When an egg was just an egg

I remember a time when an egg was just an egg. Nobody argued about that. It was a blissful time. Yet, for all its strengths, it was a fragile time held together by unsupported conclusions and limited knowledge.

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Case in point: their Showtime channel program, “Bullshit!” I’ve watched most of the early episodes, and they’re highly entertaining, because that’s what Penn and Teller are: entertainers. But their fact-checking and analyses can leave much to be desired, as when — for example — they “debunk” global warming with the help of libertarian think tanks like the Cato Institute ,.. without turning to real scientific sources like say, oh, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Their 2004 episode slamming recycling has been garnering big Internet traffic and lots of social networking hits … presumably because a lot of people take glee in seeing enviro-minded hippies put in their place. There are a few problems with the episode, though:

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Now, in the context of the U.S. mortgage meltdown, the context of protections for Alaskan wildlife and how they affect Inuit culture, the context of how actions on one side of the globe (i.e., industrial pollution and greenhouse gas emissions) are affecting the lives of people on the other side, I have to wonder if the idea of personally-owned land is destructive to the environment and, ultimately, to all of us.

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And yet, there may be times that nothing’s coming to you. You’re either stuck for a new idea, or having doubts about or missing pieces to what you’re currently working on. In steps Springwise. Springwise is hub for people to share ideas, and is smartly designed for rapid skimming, by category, keyword, and country.

Now, you may say, what’s new about this? There are lots of business and entrepreneurial blogs and publications out there. Fair enough. Amsterdam based Springwise puts it well when they say,

Springwise scans the globe for the most promising business ventures, ideas and concepts that are ready for regional or international adaptation, expansion, partnering, investments or cooperation. We ferociously track more than 400 global offline and online business resources, as well as taking to the streets of world cities, digital cameras at hand.

They also enlist the eyes and minds of an additional 8000 Springspotters in 70 countries to keep an on the ground perspective on what’s going on.

What does this look like?

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Spurred by shrinking freshwater supplies, U.S. states could begin “water wars” in the next years to claim rights to Great Lakes water, warned American and Canadian scientists at a water conference in Toronto last week.

Nations around the world, such as India and Australia, are already experiencing drought and its effects on access to clean water and increases in food prices–and states in the American South and West are bracing themselves for a time in the near future when water resources will be more scarce.

Scientist Milton Clark, a senior health and science adviser for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, was quoted as saying at the conference, “We will in fact get into major water wars. You will see water wars coming in every way, shape or form.”

To prevent states from fighting over–or selling–water, the Great Lakes Compact was created in 2001 among the eight Great Lakes states, Ontario and Quebec.

Ontario and Quebec have signed the agreement, which bans long-distance water diversions to states not bordering the Great Lakes. Minnesota, New York, Indiana and Illinois have also signed the agreement, and Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania have not.

As one of the world’s largest reservoirs of drinking water, the five Great Lakes contain 18 percent of all fresh surface water on the planet. Conservationists continue to lobby to protect the lakes’ waters from mismanagement and environmental degradation.

Photo: NASA

Most of us are at least vaguely familiar with biodiesel, but how much do we really know?

While biodiesel is easily the most popular alternative fuel available, it’s commonly misunderstood or misrepresented by inaccurate information. Since the most frequent question I get is, “So what exactly is biodiesel, anyway?“, I decided to write a tome covering all the basics—a one stop shop for all your biodiesel- related questions.

It’s been exactly one year since I published the first Biodiesel Mythbuster on GreenOptions.com, and its popularity made a sequel inevitable. By way of a short introduction, here’s what I wrote last year:

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Besides getting back into the swing of things after some down-time in February, we were lucky to add Benjamin F.T. Jones to our writing team. Ben’s covered some of the most popular stories here this month, including the Subaru’s STI diesel, the all-electric Lightning GT, and a Japanese man’s attempt to sail across the Pacific in a wave-powered boat. See all of Ben’s posts here.

If you don’t want to miss the news next month, you can subscribe to Gas 2.0’s RSS feed here.

To recap, these are some of the top stories from March 2008:

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]]> http://gas2.org/2008/03/31/gas-20-monthly-recap-march-2008/feed/ http://gas2.org/2008/03/26/top-15-unexpected-uses-for-biodiesel/ http://gas2.org/2008/03/26/top-15-unexpected-uses-for-biodiesel/#comments Wed, 26 Mar 2008 23:57:54 +0000 Clayton B. Cornell http://gas2.org/2008/03/26/top-15-unexpected-uses-for-biodiesel/

While virtually everyone is familiar with the use of biodiesel as a substitute for diesel fuel, there are a few novel uses that may not have crossed your radar. Biodiesel can produce hydrogen, clean up oil spills, degrease your tools, heat your home, and more.

Here’s My Top 15 Unexpected Uses for Biodiesel:

1. Producing Hydrogen for Fuel-Cell Vehicles

This was the big story of the month: Researchers at InnovaTek have developed hand-sized microreactors that can turn biodiesel (or any other liquid fuel) into a hydrogen stream for use in an adjoining fuel-cell. Chevron has already invested $500,000 to develop hydrogen refueling stations for fuel-cell powered cars. InnovaTek hopes to eventually install the microreactors in vehicles, which would allow cars to fill up on biodiesel but be powered by a much more efficient and even cleaner-burning electric drivetrain. See the full story here.

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]]> http://gas2.org/2008/03/26/top-15-unexpected-uses-for-biodiesel/feed/ http://ecoworldly.com/2008/03/06/the-animals-are-innocent-blame-the-local-ecology/ http://ecoworldly.com/2008/03/06/the-animals-are-innocent-blame-the-local-ecology/#comments Thu, 06 Mar 2008 16:31:53 +0000 Sam Aola Ooko http://ecoworldly.com/2008/03/06/the-animals-are-innocent-blame-the-local-ecology/

There is no recent conflict in Africa that has elicited so much debate around the world and in the United States, in particular, as Darfur. Not even the post election political skirmishes in Kenya drew so much attention. Kenya, once the darling of the continent, the erstwhile adversaries are today sharing a cup of tea as well as power, something unthinkable only two months ago.

In a 2007 newspaper article, UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said: “Almost invariably, we discuss Darfur in a convenient military and political shorthand - an ethnic conflict pitting Arab militias against black rebels and farmers. Look to its roots, though, and you discover a more complex dynamic. Amid the diverse social and political causes, the Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change.”

What does this mean? The Darfur conflict inflicts even more damage on Sudan’s environmental degradation with nearly two million internally displaced people putting pressure on the fragile environment as they clear land and source ground water to survive.

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]]> http://ecoworldly.com/2008/03/06/the-animals-are-innocent-blame-the-local-ecology/feed/ http://ecopreneurist.com/2007/12/17/enter-the-greensmith/ http://ecopreneurist.com/2007/12/17/enter-the-greensmith/#comments Mon, 17 Dec 2007 20:53:02 +0000 Paul Smith http://ecopreneurist.com/2007/12/17/enter-the-greensmith/

Greetings out there in the webosphere from chilly Grass Valley, California, and thanks for reading Ecopreneurist. My name is Paul Smith, and I wanted to take time to introduce myself, and tell you where I see this site going, and what I’d like it to do for you.

A little about me: I’ve been deeply immersed in the realm of sustainable business since being a part of the 3rd cohort at Presidio’s MBA in Sustainable Management program in San Francisco. It was one of the first to have such a deeply green program, and arguably, is one of the best. Those who teach there are not there to be professors for a living. They are there to create more colleagues to enable the conversion of business as usual to business as a force for good in the world. They are people like Hunter Lovins, who, along with being a powerful force in her own right, has collaborated with people such as Paul Hawken and Amory Lovins, creating what she is most known for, the book Natural Capitalism.

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]]> http://ecopreneurist.com/2007/12/17/enter-the-greensmith/feed/ http://planetsave.com/blog/2007/12/04/if-you-love-the-earth-stay-married/ http://planetsave.com/blog/2007/12/04/if-you-love-the-earth-stay-married/#comments Tue, 04 Dec 2007 20:34:14 +0000 Shirley Siluk Gregory http://planetsave.com/blog/2007/12/04/if-you-love-the-earth-stay-married/ Just when you think you’ve heard it all, along comes a new study that finds yet one more way in which we humans can screw up the environment: get divorced.

Actually, as weird as it might sound at first, the discovery — published in this week’s online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – makes perfect sense once you consider the typical result of divorce: two people and, possibly, children who once all shared one home now live in two separate 2,000- to 3,000-square-foot households with two sets of refrigerators, two water-heaters, two heating-and-air-conditioning units, etc.

“People’s first reaction to this research is surprise, and then it seems simple,” said Jianguo “Jack” Liu, who conducted the study with Eunice Yu, his research assistant at Michigan State University. “But a lot of things become simple after research is done. Our challenges were to connect the dots and quantify their relationships. People have been talking about how to protect the environment and combat climate change, but divorce is an overlooked factor that needs to be considered.”

Liu and Yu started out with a simple question: how do the world’s rising divorce rates affect humanity’s consumption of resources? They then examined housing space per capita and utility costs to show that divorce eliminates the economies of scale enjoyed by married families.

“Not only the United States, but also other countries, including developing countries such as China and places with strict religious policies regarding divorce, are having more divorced households,” Liu said. “The consequent increases in consumption of water and energy and using more space are being seen everywhere.”

In the U.S. alone, they found that divorce in 2005 led to the consumption of 73 billion more kilowatt-hours of electricity and 627 billion more gallons of water than would have been used had all those couples stayed married. Divorced people also raised the demand for housing by 38 million extra rooms, they found.

In only 12 countries (including the U.S., Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Greece, Mexico and South Africa) around the globe, divorce increased the number of households by 7.4 million between 1998 and 2002, the study reported.

Liu and Yu found that two other trends of modern life — fewer multigenerational households and more people staying single longer — also have a negative impact on the environment. On the plus side, though, they discovered that, when divorced people remarried, their environmental footprint returned to about the same size as in their previous marriage. So, good for you, Liz Taylor!

Liu said the study shows that creating positive environmental policies is even more complex than many governments might realize.

“Solutions are beyond a single idea,” he said. “Consider the production of biofuel. Biofuel is made from plants, which also require water and space. We’re showing divorce has significant competition for that water and space. On the other hand, more divorce demands more energy. This creates a challenging dilemma and requires more creative solutions.”

Are these social factors — couples getting divorced, kids living on their own longer, Grandma and Grandpa staying in their own homes on the other side of the country — really things to consider in tackling problems like climate change, rising energy demands and environmental protection? If so, how?

]]> http://planetsave.com/blog/2007/12/04/if-you-love-the-earth-stay-married/feed/ http://inspiredeconomist.com/2007/10/04/livepathscom/ http://inspiredeconomist.com/2007/10/04/livepathscom/#comments Thu, 04 Oct 2007 11:22:00 +0000 John-Paul Maxfield http://inspiredeconomist.com/2007/10/04/livepathscom/

If the economics don’t work, recycling efforts won’t either.
As their little contribution to make this economics of recycling more appealing, LivePaths blogs about people and companies that make money selling recycled or reused items, provide green services or help us reduce our dependency on non renewable resources. This isn’t “10 Easy Ways To Make Money On The Internet”.

In their Shop Green section, they comb the Internet to find the best in products made out of recycled or sustainable materials for the green consumer. These products are grouped in several categories (Home, Construction, etc.). You can find out more or buy them from the original websites to help save our planet. In their Resources section, you’ll find helpful tips on starting your own green business as well as links to useful sites to assist jumpstarting your venture or learn about pollution economics and recycling in general.

In their Downloads section you’ll find White Papers, printed articles, official documents and related materials we think can be useful for your green endeavor or to educate you about pollution control.

In their FAQs section, you will find answers to questions about recycling, starting a Green business and more. ]]> http://inspiredeconomist.com/2007/10/04/livepathscom/feed/