It will take more than promises and glossy marketing campaigns to convince consumers that Wal-Mart is green, a recent study has found.
The largest retailer on earth finds itself the subject of Environmental Leader’s latest study on green marketing. Despite Wal-Mart’s massive green marketing campaign over the last year, consumers still don’t consider the retailer a sustainable company, explaining:
Brands that have spent significant marketing dollars communicating green initiatives such as Wal-Mart and GE are
[...]
Like this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and stay up to date.
In January, USDA researchers completed a five-year evaluation of another biofuel feedstock with the potential to make a serious dent in US petroleum usage. In the largest study to date, switchgrass has been shown to produce 540% more energy than was used to grow, harvest, and process it into cellulosic ethanol, while reducing greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions by 94% when compared to gasoline.
USDA geneticist Ken Vogel commented that the study demonstrates switchgrass’s potential to be a major renewable biofuel that reduces GHGs and could “potentially displace 30 percent of current U.S. petroleum consumption.”
A University of Minnesota study found that using higher blends of ethanol (20%) blended into gasoline did not cause damage or cause performance problems when used in standard gasoline engines.
Over half the gasoline sold in the US is already blended with 10% ethanol (E10), but higher blends were thought to run the risk of causing engine damage. Higher blends of ethanol, up to 85% (E85), will only work properly in engines converted to accept the fuel.
Using 40 pairs of vehicles commonly found on American roads, a year-long research effort found that increasing ethanol blends from 10 percent (E10) to 20 percent (E20) in a gallon of gasoline provided an effective fuel across a range of tests focusing on driveability and materials compatibility.
If you ever buy retail biodiesel for your diesel vehicle, it turns out you might not be getting exactly what you paid for—or you may be getting quite a bit more.
In a new study, researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution used highly accurate radiocarbon testing on samples from 20 different biodiesel blenders to determine the biodiesel content of their fuel (so-called “splash blenders” mix pure biodiesel and diesel together before selling it at the pump).
The study found that blends sold as B20 biodiesel (20% biodiesel, 80% diesel) varied from 10% to 74% in actual biodiesel content.
“It’s a huge problem for the industry,” says Teresa Alleman of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, who recently completed a study showing that biodiesel manufacturers have improved the overall quality of pure biodiesel over the past year. If consumers pay a premium for biodiesel that they aren’t getting, she says, public confidence could be shaken. Also, blenders receive a tax credit based on the amount of biodiesel used, which could mean some sellers have received larger credits than they merit.
