Green Options

Leading the way for the green evolution for the Hilton Garden Inn franchise, the Hilton Garden Inn Gatlinburg, drawing inspiration at the doorstep of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, has embarked on the fast-track to bring this upscale hotel into the green business movement. Opening in May, 2009, this 118-room hotel is nestled across the street from the rumbling Little Pigeon River in downtown Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and offers a spectacular view of Mount LeConte in the distance, often sculpted by clouds and mist.

The Hilton Garden Inn Gatlinburg offers more than window dressing in terms of their green efforts. That’s why, when the final points are tallied, it will likely earn Silver LEED certification.

A few of their eco-innovations include:

• Rainwater retention on site with parking lot pavers, capable of absorbing 100 percent of the rainwater. The pavers were acquired within 500 miles of the site and are non-reflective, reducing the heat island effect.

It’s the time of year when people are making resolutions to lose weight, better manage their finances, better manage their anger, and myriad other things. Is increasing your commitment to environmental sustainability on that list?

As I wrote in my very first post for The Inspired Economist in the fall of 2008, the neat thing about committing to environmental sustainability is that you don’t have to make extreme changes to make a difference. You don’t have to install hemp carpet in the office or replace your roof with solar panels.

If we all make small incremental changes, the difference will be exponential. It’s a lot easier to get a lot of people to make small changes than to rely on a few people to carry the entire load.

What small, incremental changes can you pledge to make this year? Here are a few ideas.

One of the biggest problems with solar cells currently on the market is that they are extremely easy to break. Companies intent on manufacturing any sort of solar powered products have to find solutions, and few have yet been perfect. Hoping to change this trend, Dupont recently announced the launch of two new lines of encapsulants specifically designed to contend with the trials inherent in manufacturing photovoltaic products.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?  In the case of St. Thomas 7-Hot Pepper Sauce, it was definitely the chicken.  Without the chicken, there wouldn’t be the fertilizer to grow the hot peppers to make the hot sauce that the sent kids from the St. Thomas projects in New Orleans Lower Garden District off to college.

And without the chickens, Derek Hoeferlin and his architectural students from Washington University would not have had reason to take interest in this little community garden which has begun to harbor interest for it’s uniquely designed “urban chicken coop”, the story of its recovery post-Katrina and the sustainability recipe it holds for other communities across America.

This new column highlights the top economic stories of the week.

At the outset of this week, it looked like the Swine flu might be the largest influenza epidemic since the virus that wiped out a significant portion of the world’s population at the end of the first World War. Local economies everywhere have been affected given that people have stopped going out for fear of “The SuperFlu.”

Not [...]

If you could design the green home of your dreams, what would it look like? What would it be made of? How would it produce and consume energy?

New York City’s Empire State Building is the latest poster child for green innovation. Earlier this week, Anthony Malkin, president of W&M Properties, the company that owns the building, announced that they would begin a $500 million self-financed program to renovate the world famous landmark – $100 million of which would be used to reduce the building’s energy consumption and carbon emissions.

Legacy electricity grids, the current distribution systems used for a century in the US, are highly inefficient…7%, never makes it to the user, lost at the transmission and distribution levels…..Environmentalists and others have been pushing for smart-grid technology for over a decade because it will enable consumers to use less electricity and benefit the environment.

Starting on Friday, February 27th, 10,000 students and other young people from across the country will converge upon Washington D.C. to demand immediate action on green jobs and climate change.

The Power Shift ’09 (www.powershift09.org) summit kicks off on Friday, February 27 and culminates on Monday, March 2, when the youth and their families will don green hard hats and gather on the steps of the Capitol.

There is plenty enough to know about all the trash we create and the wastefulness of our ways. But when you meet Colorado architect, Doug Eichelberger, you are happy to find a person who is all about solutions, putting trash to use as a building material.

A visit to his Lucky Ranch reveals a very special looking barn, built out of trash. He used scrap plastic for the foundation blocks, then erected walls of baled trash paper. The wall materials were inexpensive and provided excellent insulating quality, says Eichelberger.

President Obama has come under the radar. Publications like the Huffington Post and the Financial Times are questioning whether he has failed already. Why? Because Tim Geithner has proposed a bailout plan for zombie banks that capitalists believe should be allowed to fail.