Triple Pundit

• Why the EPA’s Endangerment Finding Sets the Stage for Action

  Showing a fine sense of message and timing, the United States entered the first day of the crucial climate change conference in Copenhagen armed with a potentially game-changing decision from the Environmental Protection Agency:  Greenhouse gases threaten public health and the environment and must be regulated. EPA’s announcement Monday sent a [...]
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  Posted: December 08, 2009, 6:03am EST
  by Bill DiBenedetto

• Hewlett Packard: What Does it Take to Be #1?

  I was recently asked to highlight some of Hewlett-Packard’s environmental printing programs, but after reviewing the materials the PR folks sent, I decided the more interesting story was to reflect on how HP got listed #1 in Newsweek’s recent rankings of green companies, as well as ranked highest in the [...]
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  Posted: December 08, 2009, 6:01am EST
  by Deborah Fleischer

• The Dragon in Africa: How Chinese Investment Changes The Game

  By David Abraham Al-Jazeera recently posted a video highlighting an investment surge in the tiny central African nation of Equatorial Guinea.  The country is the third largest exporter of petroleum and gas–a fact that is not immediately obvious when looking at the quality of life for its 500,000 citizens.  But with [...]
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  Posted: December 08, 2009, 5:21am EST
  by Smith School of Business

• Is there an Impetus for Climate Change Legislation in the Senate?

  “We expect more things to be moving forward,” remarked Jeff Sharp, one of Rep. Ed Markey’s (D-MA) staff members, while discussing climate change legislation during the Bard Center for Environmental Policy’s National Climate Seminar on December 2. Passing cap-and-trade legislation in the Senate “will be a very tough fight,” he [...]
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  Posted: December 08, 2009, 5:00am EST
  by Gina-Marie Cheeseman

• Why Renewable Energy Developers Must Win Community Support

  Renewable energy is desperately needed to combat climate change, and communities should support developers of solar and wind energy projects. However, the acronym NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) still expresses well the sentiment of some folks. Take a recent Los Angeles Superior Court case, for example. The Tesoro del Valle [...]
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  Posted: December 08, 2009, 5:00am EST
  by Gina-Marie Cheeseman

• Where Were the Electric Utilities on Cyber Monday?

  Where Were the Electric Utilities on Cyber Monday? I post this question drawing upon the following two data-points: 1. Almost 100 million Americans (certainly all of whom are electric utility customers) shopped via the Internet on Cyber Monday, the online retail event following Black Friday. 2. ALL of the top 15 products [...]
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  Posted: December 08, 2009, 4:43am EST
  by Bill Roth

• Four Game-Changing Technologies You’ve Never Heard Of

  Finland is a country that is very generous with its entrepreneurs. According to the representatives from Tekes, a publicly funded organization for financing research, development and innovation in Finland, it’s pretty easy for most entrepreneurs to get low-interest grants and loans for 1 million euros or less. That’s obviously pretty [...]
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  Posted: December 08, 2009, 4:30am EST
  by Jen Boynton

• Money Talks: Cash Prizes Spur Innovation

  In the glorious Past Before Television, adventurous men and women gained fame and fortune by testing their skills in competitions designed to expand the limits of human knowledge and innovation. Several organizations are bringing back this kind of “innovation prize” in a big way, with competitions designed to solve some [...]
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  Posted: December 08, 2009, 1:06am EST
  by Steve Puma

• McDonald’s Gets Green…In Its Logo

  McDonald’s is doing things a little backwards. Usually, how it works is: companies go green, and then change their logo to reflect these new, sustainable practices. But McDonald’s Europe has decided to go ahead and make that logo switch first. An Associated Press article reports that European McDonald’s is exchanging its [...]
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  Posted: December 07, 2009, 9:35pm EST
  by Audrey

• Electric Vehicles: The News Keeps Coming

  In years to come, we may look back on 2009 as the year that electric vehicles became mainstream–at least as far as the media is concerned. The past few weeks have been no different as a number of organizations from all over the automotive industry made EV-related announcements. One of [...]
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  Posted: December 07, 2009, 6:11pm EST
  by Steve Puma

• New Global Study: Not All Salmon Are Created Equal

  Food production, in aggregate, is considered to be the single largest source of environmental degradation globally. Fisheries around the world are suffering, and while the ecological impacts of this destruction could be catastrophic if not corrected, the environmental, economic and social impacts are also staggering. For concerned consumers, it’s important [...]
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  Posted: December 07, 2009, 7:00am EST
  by Cory Vanderpool

• Kohl’s Plans Carbon Neutral (That’s Zero) Footprint Next Year

  Kohl’s Department Stores is going all-in on carbon neutrality. The Wisconsin company says it’s the first retailer to commit to reaching a net zero greenhouse gas emission as part of a partnership with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Leader program. It’s a bold assertion but Kohl’s appears ready to back up it [...]
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  Posted: December 07, 2009, 5:25am EST
  by Bill DiBenedetto

• Endgame: Understanding a Global Climate Imperative

  More than 20 years ago, David Wirth, at the time a senior attorney at the NRDC, wrote about the imperative of climate protection in global politics. “The international community cannot afford to delay elevating the greenhouse effect to the top of the foreign-policy agenda,” Wirth wrote in Foreign Policy. The editor’s [...]
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  Posted: December 07, 2009, 5:17am EST
  by Ashwin Seshagiri

• COP15 Begins: Here Are the Solutions We Need Now

  Today marks the start of UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, or COP15 as it’s widely known. A culmination of years of planning, months of lobbying by pressure groups such as those coordinated by TckTckTck. There’s a lot of anticipation and speculation as to what’s going to happen. Not all [...]
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  Posted: December 07, 2009, 5:03am EST
  by Paul S

• Hara and Sustainable Silicon Valley Announce a New Partnership

  Sustainable Silicon Valley (SSV), a cross-sector collaboration of more than 100 leading businesses, governmental agencies and NGOs working to improve Silicon Valley’s environmental quality, and Hara, the providers of a comprehensive carbon and water footprint tool (click here to read an earlier 3P post on Hara), today announced a new [...]
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  Posted: December 07, 2009, 5:00am EST
  by Deborah Fleischer

• Why “ClimateGate” Is Irrelevant to Business

  In case you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve no doubt been aware of a fiasco which emerged in the last few weeks from the University of East Anglia in the UK concerning unprofessional bickering between climate scientists exposed by an apparent email hacker. The FOXNews crowd is calling it [...]
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  Posted: December 06, 2009, 10:44pm EST
  by Nick Aster

• TerraCycle Heads North with Kraft Canada

  The end of this year has been a return to our roots for TerraCycle in many ways. First with the opening of our first retail store a few blocks from where I first had a basement “office,” and now we’re going north to Canada–where I grew up and where we [...]
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  Posted: December 06, 2009, 8:52pm EST
  by Tom Szaky

• Profile of an Emergent Business- Original Restaurants

  Ever take a side road out of town and stop for a bite at a truly charming restaurant and wonder how it stays in business? How it competes with the chains? The answer may lie with a rewards program run by Original Restaurants. Just two years old, it aims, “to [...]
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  Posted: December 05, 2009, 12:31pm EST
  by Tori Okner

• No Water No Beer: Big Issues in Beverage Companies’ Water Footprints

  At the 2nd Corporate Footprinting Conference, which took place this week in San Francisco, big brands in the beverage industry were front and center, presenting sophisticated “bleeding edge” strategies for addressing their water footprints. Water, for obvious reasons, is critical to these players, and they sent executive directors to report [...]
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  Posted: December 04, 2009, 3:36pm EST
  by David Lewbin

• Business Not As Usual: Climate Action Chain Reaction And More

  All manner of dramatic actions and hyperbolic statements are being made regarding the upcoming climate meeting in Copenhagen.  No wonder industry leaders are keeping still. For a quick sampling of the latest, consider: Sen. Byrd to Big Coal: “Let’s Speak a Little More Truth.” and, Sarah Palin Issues Statement Calling [...]
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  Posted: December 04, 2009, 2:00pm EST
  by John Laumer

• Forests as Feedstocks: The Finnish Approach

  I’m on the eve of my return home to San Francisco from a lovely time in Finland. Our wonderful hosts at Finnfacts planned a special last day for us in Nuuksio National Park where we hiked in the woods, smoked our own venison sausages over the fire, and dipped ourselves in [...]
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  Posted: December 04, 2009, 1:06pm EST
  by Jen Boynton

• Study Shows Property Values Not Harmed by Wind Farms

  A full scale wind farm is not a subtle piece of landscaping, and many folks express concern over losing their view, their rural character, or *gasp* their property values. As the number of communities considering wind energy development grows, the need to empirically investigate these concerns does, too. Good news, as [...]
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  Posted: December 04, 2009, 6:25am EST
  by Nick Aster

• Oybike Rolls into the Bike-Sharing Biz

  As we’ve been reporting, some bike-sharing programs (well, okay, mostly the Velib system in Paris) have been navigating rough stretches of road, due to everything from vandalism to poor logistics to class distinctions. But that didn’t keep the curiously-named startup Oybike from introducing a bike rental system in the UK. What [...]
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  Posted: December 04, 2009, 6:20am EST
  by Mary Catherine O'Connor

• Let’s Talk Trash: Atayne Athletic Apparel Made from Trash

  Who knew a red shirt would become a life-changing event for Jeremy Litchfield?   On a hot and humid morning back in 2007, Litchfield went out for a run.  Wearing a brand new performance t-shirt, the runner was gearing up for an upcoming marathon.  By the time he finished his morning  [...]
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  Posted: December 04, 2009, 5:45am EST
  by Jace Shoemaker-Galloway

• See You in Copenhagen: Better Place’s Shai Agassi on Role of Cleantech

  If the Copenhagen climate conference has managed to do anything (even before it begins), it has managed to divide. It has facilitated the formation of two neatly antithetical groups of people: those who think nothing will result, and those who are hopeful as to what could happen. “See You in Copenhagen” [...]
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  Posted: December 04, 2009, 5:23am EST
  by Ashwin Seshagiri

• New Journal Aims to Move from Problems to Solutions

  There are many scientific journals and publications that exist to raise awareness about environmental issues, where scientists can present research and propose recommendations on ways to mitigate the problems we face related to our environment. Though discussion and debate is important, many believe it is time to move from debate [...]
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  Posted: December 04, 2009, 5:00am EST
  by Cory Vanderpool

• West Coast Village Capital is Looking for a Few Good Social Ventures

  West Coast Village Capital (WCVC) is a social venture program that brings together entrepreneurs to learn from and support each other’s social enterprises. Over the course of 12 weeks, beginning in January 2010, up to 30 social entrepreneurs will work together in groups of five to share their knowledge, strengthen [...]
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  Posted: December 04, 2009, 5:00am EST
  by Jim Witkin

• B Corps Win Healthy Tax Break in Landmark Law

  B Lab, the force behind a new business sector designation—called the B Corporation—which recognizes companies that meet a set of social, environmental and institutional benchmarks for sustainability, is facing a Herculean effort. The work won’t be in convincing people that business can be a positive force for social change—there are [...]
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  Posted: December 03, 2009, 7:51pm EST
  by Mary Catherine O'Connor

• The Importance of Being Earnest About Biomass

  Metso Corporation is pretty confident in its green cred. The Finnish company calls itself “a global supplier of sustainable technology and services” and in a press visit today the company’s VP of strategic development, Michael Hoven, and communications manager, Sanna Rahikainen, when asked if they considered Metso a green company, said [...]
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  Posted: December 03, 2009, 1:07pm EST
  by Jen Boynton

• Chevy Volt: Where’s My Test Drive?

  I would like to announce a major scandal surrounding the highly anticipated Chevrolet Volt “extended range” electric car: there is only one car available for test drives. This reporter showed up early for a minor press junket on the sidelines of the LA Auto Show in hopes of getting a spot [...]
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  Posted: December 03, 2009, 6:01am EST
  by BC Upham

• The Importance of Being Earnest at COP 15

  If it’s all about the money, and it usually is, then the future financial landscape for cleantech development hinges on the outcome of the Copenhagen climate change conference as essentially as the meeting’s long-term impacts on environmental policy. There will be impacts whether or not binding and comprehensive agreements on emission [...]
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  Posted: December 03, 2009, 6:00am EST
  by Bill DiBenedetto

• San Diego Convention Center: Committed to Green Events

  The trade show industry is second only to the construction industry in the amount of waste it generates. If you have ever attended or exhibited at a trade show, you have seen the amount of waste and energy consumed first hand…it is everywhere. Very little about the trade show industry [...]
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  Posted: December 03, 2009, 6:00am EST
  by Cory Vanderpool

• L.A. Auto Show Award for Greenest Car: 2010 Ford Fusion

  The 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid was awarded the “Most Environmentally Progressive Car of the Year” by “blogazine” Earth, Wind & Power (EWP) at the Los Angeles Auto Show Wednesday. This award is in addition to its other recent accolades, including Car and Driver’s “10Best” cars for 2010 and the Motor [...]
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  Posted: December 03, 2009, 5:45am EST
  by Shannon Arvizu

• What is an Emerging Market Anyways?

  By David Abraham “Don’t use a cookie cutter approach when evaluating emerging economies,” warned Dr. Jahangir Boroumand, professor at the Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.  His sentiments were echoed by Dr. Paolo Prochno, also of Smith, during the kick-off event for the newly formed Emerging Markets Club [...]
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  Posted: December 03, 2009, 5:20am EST
  by Smith School of Business

• Book Review: The (True) Price of a Bargain

  On the way to visit a friend Thanksgiving weekend my car broke down, and I found myself at a Pep Boys in Rohnert Park, CA, wandering a vast parking lot. Big Box superstores stretched from one end to another: A Home Depot and Wal-Mart. In between, like an isthmus, was [...]
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  Posted: December 03, 2009, 4:19am EST
  by Frank Marquardt

• Careers in Wind Farm Development: Real Estate Manager

  This is the third article in a seven part series on careers in wind farm development. The first, second, third, and fourth parts can be viewed here. Wind turbines are frequently sited on parcels where the wind rights are leased from the landowner. A long-term contract must be created that covers [...]
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  Posted: December 02, 2009, 10:51am EST
  by Sarah Lozanova

• Poor Nations’ Emissions Driven by Exports to Rich Nations

  “It’s not fair.” That, in two words and a contraction, is the developing world’s argument for why it shouldn’t have to make the same reductions in greenhouse gas emissions as rich developed countries. So what if China is now the world’s biggest emitter of GHGs? It’s the developed countries that emitted [...]
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  Posted: December 02, 2009, 5:24am EST
  by BC Upham

• Ford Teams Up with Detroit University to Retrain Engineers for Electric Cars

  Alas, Detroit. With the collapse of the American automotive industry, there’s just too much bad news associated with the Motor City these days. Some good news, then: the Ford Motor Company, the only Big Three automaker to avoid bankruptcy, recently announced a partnership with the University of Detroit Mercy (UDM) School [...]
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  Posted: December 02, 2009, 5:19am EST
  by BC Upham

• Minnesota Startup Uses Moss — Yes, Moss — to Keep Pools Clean

  Moss. We’ve all seen it growing in bogs, on tree trunks, and in-between cracks in the sidewalk. But, did you ever think that this common plant could potentially revolutionize an entire industry? Enter David Knighton, MD, co-founder and CEO of the Minnesota-based startup, Creative Water Solutions. Knighton, a physician, inventor and entrepreneur–who [...]
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  Posted: December 02, 2009, 5:15am EST
  by Kathryn Siranosian

• China’s Carbon Intensity Management Proposal: The Numbers

  China and the U.S. have now announced commitments to manage emissions prior to the Copenhagen Summit. This is hugely significant since these two countries contribute approximately 55% of the entire world’s CO2 emissions. But each country’s respective path for addressing CO2 emissions are significantly divergent. President Obama publicly committed to a [...]
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  Posted: December 02, 2009, 5:06am EST
  by Bill Roth

• Labor and Agricultural Sustainability: Sister Issues

  This is the sixth post in a series on the business of sustainable agriculture by the folks at Bon Appétit Management, a company that provides café and catering services to corporations, colleges and universities. To read past posts, click here. By Carolina Fojo A “City Girl” in Sustainable Ag…? Driving through Illinois [...]
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  Posted: December 02, 2009, 4:05am EST
  by 3p Guest Author

• Diving In: The Corporate Water Footprinting Conference

  The second Corporate Water Footprinting Conference splashes down in San Francisco this December 2-3 and I’ll be there to report on how companies such as Patagonia, Pepsi, BC Hydro, Raisio, and Intel are addressing water risks and opportunities in their operations and to their brands. The other two primary H2O [...]
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  Posted: December 02, 2009, 2:13am EST
  by David Lewbin

• The Credit Con: Credit Card Companies Get Creative in Circumventing New Legislation

  Prior to the crash of the housing bubble and the collapse of financial markets, many different types of companies we involved in creating new and interesting ways to separate Americans (”consumers”) from their hard-earned money, especially those companies involved in consumer finance. From cell phone carriers to banks, high interest [...]
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  Posted: December 01, 2009, 4:39pm EST
  by Steve Puma

• The Story of Cap & Trade

  They’re at it again – the creative team who brought you the wildly popular Story of Stuff are following up with “The Story of Cap and Trade: Why You Can’t Solve a Problem With the Thinking That Created It.” Building on the momentum of The Story of Stuff (over 8 million [...]
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  Posted: December 01, 2009, 6:12am EST
  by Brian Thurston

• Shell’s Gamesmanship: Governments Should Intervene in Carbon Markets

  Expecting a full-blown global carbon trading market to emerge without the influence, intervention – or perhaps interference – of world governments is probably not possible and Shell’s new CEO is acknowledging this. Peter Voser told The Guardian and its Environment Network, BusinessGreen, that regional markets alone cannot set the price of [...]
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  Posted: December 01, 2009, 6:00am EST
  by Bill DiBenedetto

• Studies Measure Climate Change’s Impact on Public Health

  Just in time for the opening of the United National Climate Change conference in Copenhagen next week, the London-based medical journal The Lancet has published the findings of a number of studies that examine the links between climate change and public health. There are six separate reports in the series. They [...]
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  Posted: December 01, 2009, 5:30am EST
  by Mary Catherine O'Connor

• Re-Thinking Environmental Advocacy for the 21st-Century

  By Martin Melaver In my circles, there’s an old Jewish joke that defines the beginning of life as the point in time when the dog dies and the kids go off to school. I’d like to add my own personal twist: when you step down as chairman of the board of [...]
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  Posted: December 01, 2009, 4:23am EST
  by 3p Guest Author

• Business Not As Usual: FTC Proposes Multi-Attribute Label For Light Bulbs, CFL’s First

  After a lengthy hiatus from its early 1980’s guideline on green product declarations and advertising, the US Federal Trade Commission [now] Proposes CFL Labels For Light Output, Color, Mercury, & More.  The FTC’s draft proposed rule, should it become final close to its present form (see above example for one [...]
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  Posted: November 30, 2009, 10:39pm EST
  by John Laumer

• Careers in Wind Farm Development: Wind Energy Analyst

  This is the third article in a seven part series on careers in wind farm development. The first, second, and third parts can be viewed here. Meteorological towers provide a large quantity of raw data, which needs to be analyzed to assess the wind resources of a site. Desired information is [...]
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  Posted: November 30, 2009, 9:07am EST
  by Sarah Lozanova

• Is Bottled Water a Dead Man Walking?

  At the 2009 Net Impact Conference, Adam Werbach called Fiji Water a “Dead Man Walking,” stating that the company has greenwashed its brand and that it was only a matter of time before its actions caught up with the company (read a NY times article on Fiji here). While Werbach [...]
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  Posted: November 30, 2009, 6:15am EST
  by Matthew Savage

• Travelocity Offers Free Carbon Offsets for the Holidays

  Planning on travelling this holiday season?  Travelocity, the online travel agency, is serious about sustainable travel that will benefit both traveler and Mother Earth, one mile at a time. In an effort to “embrace travel as an agent of positive change,” the online travel company offers several ways for travelers to [...]
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  Posted: November 30, 2009, 6:00am EST
  by Jace Shoemaker-Galloway

• The Secret Solar $auce

  “The idea of building a business selling sustainability without having a clearly articulated price competitiveness strategy is a recipe for failure.” That sentence from The Secret Green Sauce is “best practices #1” being used by companies that are making money going green. And it is issue number one for the [...]
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  Posted: November 30, 2009, 5:01am EST
  by Bill Roth

• End of the Beginning: Cleantech Group Offers Ten Predictions for 2010

  The Cleantech Group, the guys who literally invented the word “cleantech” (and own the trademark — so watch out) today released “Ten Predictions for 2010: Trends to Watch For in Global Cleantech in the Year Ahead,” the investment information hub’s annual list of predictions for the future of clean technology. It’s [...]
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  Posted: November 30, 2009, 5:01am EST
  by BC Upham

• 3p Bound for Helsinki: Five Fast Facts About Finland

  Quick quiz: name five things about Finland. I’ll go first: reindeer, vodka, snow, Nokia,  and … saunas. Pretty sad, right? For a bunch of world travelers we should know better. Luckily there is a group who is setting out to change all that. Finnfacts, the country’s PR agency, has invited Triple Pundit and friends from: Sustainablog, Clean [...]
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  Posted: November 29, 2009, 1:08pm EST
  by Jen Boynton

• Copenhagen: Why Bother?

  With little more than a week to go before the start of the COP15 climate change conference in Copenhagen, the “Road to Copenhagen” starts to sound a little tired, even as participants prepare for actually heading to Copenhagen. With the roller-coaster-like ride of pre-COP15 news, reeling from despair to faint glimmers [...]
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  Posted: November 27, 2009, 11:05am EST
  by Tom Schueneman

• SolarClover: Simple and Affordable DIY Residential Rooftop Solar Energy System

  One of the greatest barriers of entry for residential solar power systems has been the high cost of installation. And for some, another turn-off is the aesthetic of conventional rooftop panels.  The SolarClover residential rooftop solar energy system, from Armageddon Energy, has been designed to address both issues.  SolarClover is a uniquely-shaped [...]
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  Posted: November 27, 2009, 7:00am EST
  by Jace Shoemaker-Galloway

• Buy Nothing Day: The High Cost of a Bargain

  This excerpt from The Price of a Bargain by Canadian journalist Gordon Laird is presented in honor of Buy Nothing Day. Happy anti shopping! For better and for worse, ours is the age of the bargaineers – the engineers of bargains – whose factories extend from rice paddies to suburban basements [...]
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  Posted: November 27, 2009, 5:01am EST
  by 3p Guest Author

• The Monopoly Named Monsanto

  Monsanto is the largest seed company in the world. It controls 95 percent of the market for insect and herbicide resistant cotton traits. In 2008, Monsanto had shares of up to 65 percent for traited corn and soybeans and about 45 percent for traited corn. During the late 1990s and [...]
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  Posted: November 27, 2009, 5:00am EST
  by Gina-Marie Cheeseman

• Whole Foods Invests in Mobile Slaughterhouses

  This Thanksgiving, much attention has been paid to how your bird was raised, but how about the manner in which it was killed? The head meat buyer at Whole Foods, Theo Weening, made public the company’s effort to collaborate with both USDA and state regulatory agencies to develop certifiable mobile [...]
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  Posted: November 26, 2009, 11:02am EST
  by Tori Okner

• Putting Deforestation into Focus at COP 15

  Rainforest degradation is the third largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and robs one billion of the poorest people on Earth from their source of livelihood. These are just two of myriad reasons that the world leaders meeting next month at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen [...]
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  Posted: November 26, 2009, 6:00am EST
  by Mary Catherine O'Connor

• German PV Solar Industry Is Thriving

  Germany will add up to three gigawatts (GW) of solar power capacity this year due to a strong demand in the last part of this year, the head of Germany’s Bundesverband Solarwirtschaft (BSW-Solar) solar industry association announced. Germany is the world leader in photovoltaic (PV) solar panel power, with 5.3 [...]
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  Posted: November 26, 2009, 5:00am EST
  by Gina-Marie Cheeseman

• Black Friday? Buy Nothing Day? How About Buy Something Responsible Day?

  The idea of waking up at the crack of dawn the day after Thanksgiving to go shopping for trinkets among hordes of what seem like crazed zombies strikes me as a horrible kind of torture. Nonetheless, millions of Americans consider “Black Friday” a kind of celebratory tradition, with this year [...]
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  Posted: November 25, 2009, 1:20pm EST
  by Nick Aster

• Obama Announces He Will Attend COP15 Climate Conference

  The White House officially announced today that President Barack Obama will go to Copenhagen to attend the COP15 climate conference, a commitment Obama has thus far been reticent to make, saying that he would attend only if his presence would help secure a successful outcome in the climate negotiations. It now [...]
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  Posted: November 25, 2009, 12:37pm EST
  by Tom Schueneman

• KLM Flies into Sustainable Air Transport

  Is that the smell of bio-kerosene in the air? If you were one of the passengers on KLM Royal Dutch Airline’s first passenger flight powered by bio-kerosene this week, then you were also one of the first to get a whiff of this new sustainable fuel, if indeed it is [...]
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  Posted: November 25, 2009, 6:00am EST
  by Bill DiBenedetto

• Tickling the Ivory . . . And Playing to a Deaf Audience: How Traditional MBA Programs Still Don’t Get It

  By Martin Melaver Recently, I was invited to meet with the Dean of a prestigious MBA program. I didn’t haven’t the foggiest notion what he wanted from me. Still don’t for that matter. As I waited outside his office, I felt all of ten years old being called in to see [...]
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  Posted: November 25, 2009, 5:40am EST
  by 3p Guest Author

• How to Change Careers: “Job’s Aren’t Hot, People Are.”

  An increasing number of job seekers have been attending green jobs conferences and networking events and reading a burgeoning list of green career guides as part of an effort to transition into a job where they feel good about their work. Too often they run into one of several common challenges [...]
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  Posted: November 25, 2009, 5:38am EST
  by Frank Marquardt

• Carbon Emissions Increased Despite Recession

  Despite an economic crisis dubbed the “great recession,” carbon emissions grew last year by two percent, to a total of 8.7 billions of carbon. Last year, every person in the world produced an average of 1.3 tons of carbon, according to a report by the Global Carbon Project. During 2000 [...]
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  Posted: November 25, 2009, 5:00am EST
  by Gina-Marie Cheeseman

• How a Subaru Plant Achieved a Zero Landfill Status

  The Subaru of Indiana Automotive (SIA) manufacturing plant in Lafayette, Indiana, became the first auto manufacturing plant to achieve a zero landfill status. None of the plant’s manufacturing waste goes into a landfill, because all of it is recycled and reused. SIA recycles 99.3 percent of its of excess steel, plastic, [...]
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  Posted: November 25, 2009, 5:00am EST
  by Gina-Marie Cheeseman

• Rethinking Landfills as Wildlife Refuges

  By Wes Muir, Director of Communications, Waste Management Increasing urbanization has led to an increased desire for environmental conservation. Across the country, areas of land are being cleared and filled with blooming landscapes to attract various birds and wildlife. Some house butterfly gardens and walking trails, while others host bird and [...]
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  Posted: November 25, 2009, 4:31am EST
  by Wes Muir

• Careers in Wind Farm Development: Meteorological Tower Services

  This is the third article in a seven part series on careers in wind farm development. The first and second parts can be viewed here. Wind energy data is collected and analyzed to determine the wind resources of a given site. This involves erecting a meteorological tower with anemometers, wind vanes, [...]
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  Posted: November 24, 2009, 8:14am EST
  by Sarah Lozanova

• Green Car Rally: The Rookie Chevy Volt Versus the Veteran Toyota Prius

  General Motors has been inundated in recent years with nothing but bad news. After filing for bankruptcy and receiving a controversial government bailout, the ailing car maker is trying to revolutionize the auto industry and breathe life back into its deflated sails with the introduction of the Chevy Volt. Considered [...]
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  Posted: November 24, 2009, 7:00am EST
  by Cory Vanderpool

• The Eight Biggest Myths About Sustainability in Business

  Vijay Kanal of Kanal Consulting just posted a piece on GreenBiz.com titled The Eight Biggest Myths about Sustainability in Business.  He kicks the piece off by saying, “Sustainability should be considered not just because it is the right thing to do, but also because it makes business sense. If an [...]
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  Posted: November 24, 2009, 6:00am EST
  by Deborah Fleischer

• Postal Service Releases First Sustainability Report

  The US Postal Service is in financial dire straits. It lost $3.8 billion in its most recent fiscal year, ending September 30th, and its available coffers are dangerously low. And then there’s the agency’s business model, which many argue is antiquated and unsustainable. But, according to its recently-released (and debut) [...]
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  Posted: November 24, 2009, 5:39am EST
  by Mary Catherine O'Connor

• Goldman Sachs $500 Million PR Campaign

  As you probably know by now, last week Goldman Sachs announced its program to help small businesses. The bank said it will spend $500 million to help small businesses. The timing is very interesting. A little over a week before, Goldman’s CEO, Lloyd C. Blankfein said the bank was “doing [...]
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  Posted: November 24, 2009, 5:00am EST
  by Gina-Marie Cheeseman

• Carbon Offsets: Angels Or Devils?

  In George Monbiot’s book, Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning, he compares buying and selling carbon offsets to “pushing the food around on your plate to create the impression that you have eaten.” Responsible Travel might agree with Monbiot’s statement. Last month the company canceled its carbon offset [...]
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  Posted: November 24, 2009, 5:00am EST
  by Gina-Marie Cheeseman

• A Quick Interview With Nick Corcodilos of Ask The Headhunter

  I had a chance to do a quick email interview with Nick Corcodilos, author of the Ask a Headhunter Blog and a frequent contributor to Fast Company. My questions for Nick concern the rise of so-called “green” recruiting firms and other folks capitalizing on the rise of green jobs – [...]
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  Posted: November 24, 2009, 4:53am EST
  by Jen Boynton

• EPA and GHGs: Ready, Set, Report

  In the grand scheme of things, if neither next month’s Copenhagen summit on climate change or pending U.S. legislation on the same topic fails to establish firm, enforceable consensus on carbon reductions, accounting and reporting, it may not matter very much. That’s because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has already done [...]
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  Posted: November 23, 2009, 5:14am EST
  by Bill DiBenedetto

• A Marketing Challenge for the Electric Utility Industry

  “95.6% of households are willing to change their energy consumption behavior to save money on their energy costs.” This finding comes from the 2009 Nielsen Energy Audit. “This survey strongly suggests the timing is right for utilities to engage their customers with green marketing initiatives,” explains Jonathan Drost, Nielsen Account [...]
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  Posted: November 23, 2009, 5:09am EST
  by Bill Roth

• Household Products Need Ingredients Listed On Labels

  Lurking under our bathroom and kitchen sinks are harmful chemicals. “Many chemicals contained in household products have been shown to produce harmful health effects,” Senator Al Franken said in his introduction of the Household Products Labeling Act. The current law requires that product labels only list “immediately hazardous ingredients,” but do [...]
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  Posted: November 23, 2009, 5:00am EST
  by Gina-Marie Cheeseman

• Why Rich Countries Must Lead On Climate Change

  “A much better use should have been made of the economic stimulus packages,” said Mohan Munasinghe, vice chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Speaking at the National Climate Seminar hosted by the Bard Center for Environmental Policy, Munasinghe mentioned that South Korea devoted 80 percent of its [...]
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  Posted: November 23, 2009, 5:00am EST
  by Gina-Marie Cheeseman

• Open Hands Farm: Another Farm Visit, Another Labor Lesson

  This is the fifth post in a series on the business of sustainable agriculture by the folks at Bon Appétit Management, a company that provides café and catering services to corporations, colleges and universities. To read past posts, click here. By Dayna Burtness Farms never cease to amaze me. Besides my grandparents’ [...]
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  Posted: November 23, 2009, 4:59am EST
  by 3p Guest Author

• Smart Grid: Revolution or Revolt?

  In the mid-1990’s, while serving as the General Marketing Manager for Georgia Power, I had the honor of managing the team of exceptionally bright people that designed an industry-pioneering meter-linked, integrated real time pricing/demand side management program. Today, I understand this legacy system now bills $2 billion annually on the [...]
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  Posted: November 23, 2009, 4:49am EST
  by Bill Roth

• D-Day for Climate: Engage Students with Senators Now

  By Eban Goodstein, Director of The Bard Center for Environmental Policy Harry Reid made it clear last week. Sometime next spring, a decade of sweeping grassroots education and national activism will culminate in strong federal clean energy legislation, laying a policy foundation that will be vital for stabilizing the climate. Or it [...]
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  Posted: November 23, 2009, 4:45am EST
  by 3p Guest Author

• Al Gore Receives Global Humanitarian Award in Silicon Valley

  Nobel Laureate and former Vice President Al Gore received the 2009 James C. Morgan Global Humanitarian Award this evening for his successful efforts to raise awareness about climate change. The award was inspired by Applied Materials Chairman Emeritus James Morgan’s belief that technology can be a tool to turn ideas [...]
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  Posted: November 22, 2009, 5:01am EST
  by Dev Crews

• What to Report on? How Two CSR Leaders Decide

  We’ve all seen them.  Corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports weighing it at nearly 100 pages, crammed with charts and graphs, and gray with type.  There’s valuable information in there, but unearthing commentary on issues of strategic importance can be daunting.   That’s why I was especially curious to hear CSR managers from [...]
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  Posted: November 21, 2009, 2:56pm EST
  by Cindy Mehallow

• EcoFactor and the Truly Smart Grid

  Technology works best when it’s least intrusive and does the heavy lifting for you. Apple understands this. And so, it seems, does EcoFactor, the winner of the recent Clean Tech Open. What it does behind the scenes is fairly complex, but for the user, easy and out of the way: It [...]
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  Posted: November 21, 2009, 6:55am EST
  by Paul S

• Sustainability and Employee Engagement: Anything Goes

  Engaging employees through sustainability is not a one size fits all approach.  From Walmart’s Personal Sustainability Project to  Sodexo’s Corporate Citizenship Program to Intel’s intranet to FMYI’s online collaboration, the variety is endless.  Each of the four members of the Net Impact Conference 2009 panel on Sustainable Innovation Through Employee [...]
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  Posted: November 21, 2009, 4:21am EST
  by Jennifer Elder

• Doing a World of Good for Fair Trade Artisans

  The term “fair trade handicrafts” summons images of wicker baskets and hand-dyed sarongs. But the business side of the fair trade marketplace is getting a little less old-world, thanks to World of Good, an organization that connects artisans in developing countries with mainstream retailers (including eBay and Whole Foods). The organization—comprised [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 6:38pm EST
  by Mary Catherine O'Connor

• SABA Motors Vision: an Exotic Electric Sports Car for the Masses

  Ever since I was a kid, when my father used give me Matchbox cars he bought on his way home from work, I’ve been crazy about cars. So I was extremely excited to have the opportunity to speak with Simon Saba of Saba Motors, whose EV vision is something any [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 5:22pm EST
  by Steve Puma

• Innovators Honored for Applying Technology To Brighten People’s Lives

  Boats outfitted with solar panels have become “floating classrooms” for children in the low-lying regions of Bangladesh, where floods have destroyed crops, schools, roads and infrastructure. They are among the more than 20 million people who became displaced last year due to climate change. In the past decade, Bangladesh has [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 3:49pm EST
  by Dev Crews

• Chrysler Pulling Plug on EV Development? Maybe Not

  It wasn’t all that long ago that Chrysler Corp. pocketed more than $12.5 billion in government bailout funds to avoid a bankruptcy filing, promising on the way to the bank to build more fuel efficient cars and produce electric vehicles by 2011. About three years later the U.S. carmaker has launched [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 12:00pm EST
  by Bill DiBenedetto

• Paul Hawken on the State of the Markets

  Sustainable Industries continues to impress me.  Yesterday’s SI Economic Forum featured Paul Hawken, well-known author (Ecology of Commerce, Natural Capitalism, Blessed Unrest) and sustainability guru (the mind behind Wiser Earth and a variety of other startups).  And while Mr. Hawken is a big draw, the discussion panel that followed also [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 11:48am EST
  by Scott Cooney

• Live Near a Waterway? HydroVolts Can Power Your Home

  At Tuesday’s Academy Awards of Cleantech (The Cleantech Open), attendees were all abuzz about Seattle-based HydroVolts, winner of the $20,000 Cleantech Open sustainability prize. HydroVolts has created a floating in-stream hydrokinetic turbine that generates distributed renewable energy anywhere around the world.   Hydrovolts’ vision is to provide renewable energy to millions [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 11:10am EST
  by Amie Vaccaro

• h.u.m.a.n. Reinvents Vending with Eco-friendly Machines and Healthy Snacks

  h.u.m.a.n. Healthy Vending is on a mission to change the world–one snack at a time. The Los Angeles -based company is turning the $30 billion/year vending industry on its ear by using state-of-the-art, energy efficient machines filled only with healthy foods and drinks. In addition, h.u.m.a.n. (short for “helping unite man and [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 7:05am EST
  by Kathryn Siranosian

• It’s a Wrap: Amazon Launches Frustration-Free Packaging Certification Program

  Nothing is more frustrating than trying to remove a newly purchased item from its super-strong packaging.  You pull and you tug, you rip and you cut, but no matter how hard you try, the packaging just won’t budge!  Whether it’s a brand new DVD, a new electronic gadget, a child’s [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 6:03am EST
  by Jace Shoemaker-Galloway

• Self Reporting Doesn’t Cut it: Why We Need a National GHG Measurement System

  Say you’re the Mayor of San Francisco. You’re spending million of dollars every year to increase energy efficiency, install solar panels and encourage the use of electric cars — all in an effort to lower your city’s greenhouse gas emissions, in line with (hypothetical) newly-enacted Federal greenhouse gas reduction guidelines. Meanwhile, [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 5:54am EST
  by BC Upham

• Ecofactor Smart Thermostat System Wins Cleantech Open

  A maker of thermostat data systems that claims to be able to reduce heating and cooling costs for buildings by 20-30 percent won Grand Prize at this year’s Cleantech Open, one of the leading environmental technology competitions in the country. Ecofactor makes integrated systems that calibrate a residential or commercial thermostat [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 5:49am EST
  by BC Upham

• The Ultimate in “Clean” Tech: Sludge?

  Pop quiz:  what does our municipal sewage waste that gets processed at wastewater treatment plants, and the great Pacific garbage patch, have in common? Well, not much…yet. A clean tech startup by the name of Micromidas may change all that, and in the process, change the game for plastic packaging. Micromidas won the [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 5:16am EST
  by Scott Cooney

• Can A Company That Makes Roundup Be Sustainable?

  While waiting for the PBS show, the NewsHour, to begin, I saw a Monsanto advertisement which said, “Monsanto…producing more, conversing more…that’s sustainable agriculture.” On Monsanto’s website the company states its commitment to “help farmers produce more and conserve more” by 2030. One of the ways Monsanto will achieve its goal [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 5:00am EST
  by Gina-Marie Cheeseman

• Why Genea Energy Made Forbes List Of Most Promising Companies

  Southern California-based Genea Energy is ranked number 13 on Forbes’ America’s Most Promising Companies list. Doug Schneider, Genea Energy’s CEO, said, “Forbes saw in Genea a special potential for growth, and that just echoes what our management team has been saying all along. We have a very special business — [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 5:00am EST
  by Gina-Marie Cheeseman