Green Options

In the constant push for ever newer and greener technology and energy, we sometimes forget that it is often both simpler and cheaper to revisit old techniques in new ways. And that’s exactly what a group of researchers in California has done.

GE’s hybrid locomotive battery

GE partners with New York state to create a $ 100 million manufacturing facility for a new sodium based battery technology in the Capital region.

Who imagined that ordinary table salt could be the secret to storing energy?

GE is once again bringing the notion of a technology based economy home, this time with ordinary kitchen ingredients like table salt. Today, the company announced a plan to locate a new, sodium battery manufacturing facility in Upstate New York’s Capital Region.

The sodium battery was developed in GE’s Global Research Center. Made of ordinary table salt and nickel, the sophisticated technology already has about 30 patents blocking the intellectual property in its space.

GE has already invested more than $150 million to develop advanced battery technologies, including this high energy density, sodium-based chemistry battery that is designed to store huge densities of energy in a relatively small space. The first application will be GE’s hybrid locomotive, which will be commercialized in 2010.  The investment in sodium battery technology complements GE’s investment in A123, a leading supplier of lithium batteries for plug-in electric passenger cars.

A public-private partnership in New York State

New York Governor David Paterson, is intent on making his state, the capital of the global clean energy economy. He and Dennis Mullen, President of the Upstate Empire State Development Corporation, have shown strong support for GE’s sodium battery project from the outset.

Kelly Blue Book Video Review of the Ford Focus

Earlier this week, Ford announced that they are retooling their manufacturing facility in Michigan, which previously built SUVs, to now produce the small and fuel-efficient Ford Focus in 2010, and the battery-electric Ford Focus by 2011.

With this investment of $550 million worth, Ford continues the track to deliver its promise to bring four new electric vehicles to the U.S. by 2012 and will support approximately 3,200 jobs.

The Inspired Economist interviewed Jennifer Moore, Corporate News Manager at Ford.  Here’s what she had to say.

IE: Why is Ford making over an SUV facility to manufacture the Ford Focus?  Will Ford completely halt….or merely downsize its production of SUVs and Lincoln Navigators?

JM: The retooling of this facility to make small cars and the battery electric vehicle is a part of our overall transformation plan to convert some of our truck plants to small car facilities, leverage our global assets and produce smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles for our customers.

We have not halted production of the Lincoln Navigator and Ford Expedition - production was transferred to our Kentucky Truck plant. We still believe there is a market for large SUVs for customers who desire the size and capability of the vehicles, but we recognize that market will clearly be smaller than it was in the past.  As part of our transformation, we are balancing our product portfolio and that is the reason we are retooling the Michigan Assembly Plant.

TerraCycle has done it again . . . Tom Szaky and his talented wife, Soyeon Lee have managed to make used Frito Lay bags into CD covers for Soyeon’s latest release, Reinvented.  

Soyeon is a classical concert pianist, with an impressive Julliard, Carnegie Hall performance history who may be the first to bring the eco-cause into the world of classical [...]

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 [...]

If Wal-Mart is ever going to achieve the status of a company truly committed to sustainable business practices, there’s one 800-pound gorilla that it must address: China. The company’s sustainability summit on October 21 and 22 in Beijing was an attempt to do that, both from a PR perspective, but also in terms of “laying down the law” with its suppliers in China.

Green to Gold author Andrew Winston attended the summit, and listed the following commitments and statements that came out of it in a blog post at Harvard Business’ “Leading Green” blog:

• Supplier commitments: All suppliers will sign new agreements indicating compliance with environmental laws, starting with Chinese suppliers to the U.S., UK, and Canada in just 3 months. Over the next 3 years, all suppliers globally will sign.
• Audits: Wal-Mart will “strengthen” its surprise and third-party audit program
• Supplier goals: The top 200 suppliers will achieve 20% energy efficiency improvement, and most importantly, “By 2012, all suppliers that we buy from directly should source 95% of product from companies that have the highest ratings in audits.”
• Product goals and quality: Zero defective merchandise returns by 2012. Lee Scott connected quality to sustainability in very funny, specific terms: “Customers want a sock that will not fall down even if washed.”
• Transparency: Suppliers must reveal the name and location of every factory they use to make a product, as early as November for apparel, then home goods, toys, and others by the end of 2009. As [Wal-Mart's Vice Chairman Mike] Duke said, “If you sell us tennis shoes, we expect you to know and tell us where it was made and which sub-contractors were involved…If you don’t pose these questions, our customers will…in this age of YouTube there is no trust without transparency.” (Wal-Mart will have more insight into what’s going on at factories than ever before thanks to the work of Ma Jun who runs an NGO that has compiled compliance data on every factory. See his group’s stunning water pollution map here.)
• Dropping suppliers: Wal-Mart will work with suppliers that fail to comply, but “if after a period of time, the supplier does not improve, we will move our business.”

Carbon Sciences, Inc. has developed an innovative technology to convert carbon dioxide (CO2) - which is implicated in the issue of global warming - into a number of commercially useful, earth-friendly carbon products. The company calls this technology advance: GreenCarbon Technology. The aim is to extract value from carbon emissions by transforming the gas into a product that holds commercial value.

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.

As I review more and more ‘green’ products these days, I’m kind of baffled that there isn’t more of a standardized rating system. I googled ‘green product standards’ and I found the Green Seal of course, which is great for paper products and cleaners.  The EPA even has a database for information on environmental products and services - if you go there and you can figure out what the standards are and actually find product lists, please let me know! It’s a little confusing.

What about standards for all this great stuff we find here on FeelGoodStyle.com? What about clothing manufacturing, which by the way is traditionally a pretty harsh industry on the environment? What about other textile products, great green designed kitchen gadgets, and what about all those awesome accessories - green bags/purses, belts, jewelry, shoes!?!

I found one promising standard system . . .
BuyGreen.com seems to have a rating system that works. It is a flexible system and offers an opportunity to become more educated about certain types of products and their inherent characteristics in terms of their basic product life cycle. It also seems to lend itself well across a very diverse range of products from clothing, to toys and yes, accessories! They even offer office products.