Green Options

For many, this Sunday will bring the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet Dr. Jane Goodall. Participants in the Los Angeles event will join Dr. Goodall and hundreds of others in celebrating peace, while around the world dozens of other groups will host similar events. If you’d like to attend the L.A. event (free admission), visit the event’s website, or simply arrive at the location pinpointed on the maps below.

If you’re not in the Los

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Just to let you all know about the latest, and now almost complete, “Catalyst In…” Blog.Rod Schwartz , Catalyst’s CEO, spent the summer in the Balkans visiting a variety of social busi

The debate about carbon offsets rages on: Are they a true solution to encourage investment in clean, renewable energy and offset dirty fossil fuels? Or are they indulgences of the privileged that allow us to keep on with our polluting ways and a clear conscience?

TerraPass is a popular, for-profit seller of carbon offsets. They’ve leapt into the limelight with strategic partnerships like the one at Expedia.com, which allows customers booking travel

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How guilty to do you feel when you forget to recycle your rubbish from lunch, or accidentally put the wrong material out for the recycling company? If you suffer from Eco-Guilt Syndrome, there just may be a cure. Dom Anthony Sutch, a Benedictine Monk from Suffolk, is offering people the chance to confess their eco-sins.

At the Waveney Greenpeace festival this weekend, Brother Sutch will be on hand to hear

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Pepsi or Coke? Levi’s or Gap? Mac or PC?

Our consumer choices make a difference for the climate. Choosing a Big Mac over a Whopper, or picking a Dell over an Apple may help to slow climate change, suggests a new consumer guide. That’s because McDonald’s and Dell made the “good list” (though not the “great list”) of companies that are taking actions to address climate change. Burger King and Apple received failing scores and

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Photo Source: National Renewable Energy Laboratory

A thought-provoking new study by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) has found that locally-owned renewable energy projects generally hold more local economic benefits than large-scale ones.

The “Economies and Diseconomies of Scale” concludes that bigger is not always better. The Minneapolis-based ILSR analyzed the costs and return of wind power and ethanol, both major renewable energy sources in the Upper Midwest. While they are both less

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So, you want to start an environmentally sustainable business? Aside from figuring out what industry you want to enter and where your base funding will come from, the next important step is to decide the type of location you are looking to occupy. I will never forget the first time I went to speak with a financial advisor/ loan officer about starting a small business. He turned to me and said, “Jessica,

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Microfinancing, the loaning of small amounts of money to the asset-less poor, garnered worldwide attention last year when one of the leaders in this emerging field, Grameen Bank, and its founder Muhammad Yunus were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Microfinancing reaches out to a massive economic underclass that has been shunned by the international banking and lending system by providing necessary seed capital for small ventures.

It may seem intuitive for some to

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The idea of socializing capitalism, an economic system that combines the idea of open market competition with consumer enforced social ends, has been responsible for the steady birth and growth of creative economic institutions that are realizing economic, social and environmental profits. One of the best examples of social-capitalism’s love-children are the social stock exchanges of Brazil, South Africa and one under development in Scotland.

Brazil’s Environmental and Social Investment Exchange

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Editor’s note: We’re always happy to share green and ethical financial opportunities with you. We ask that you remember that we’re not financial advisors, though, so we are sharing… not recommending. Always do your own homework before making an investment.

Whether you just cashed in with a winning lotto number or just have a bit of extra cash lying around, investing can be easily overwhelming and intimidating. If you want to avoid financing

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Two weeks ago, I wrote about a small sustainable plastic company, Metabolix, Inc. that had caught my attention in the previous months…but something happened that made their stock price jump up 5% in the past 24 hours. What exactly? The Target Corporation recently partnered with Metabolix to make their new gift cards out of sugar. As of today, Target uses them at 128 of it’s stores…a number that’s sure to rise in [...]