Green – Page 2 – CleanSpeak

Greenpeace as the tech industry’s green stamp of approval

Greenpeace has done its absolute best to be an epic pain in corporate world’s collective butt since 1971. So when Greenpeace says the corporate world is doing something right, there is an upside for said corporate world. After all, when just about every company in the world wants a good environmental record, who’s a more credible source than your most intractable green enemy?

A few days ago, Greenpeace released its third report on the computer industry’s green quotient. This year’s survey covered almost all of the heavy wood in the tech hardware industry: Acer, Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, HCL, HP, Lenovo, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Panasonic, Blackberry, Samsung, Sharp, Sony Ericsson, Sony, Toshiba and Wipro. (Not Apple, though. The two of them have been like a pair of wet cats in a gunny sack since 2006, when Greenpeace apparently singled Apple out for criticism of its environmental practices because a fight with Apple would draw the most press attention.) The reports ranks 18 of the world’s top desktop, laptop, television and game console manufacturers on three criteria:

removing toxic substances from their products;
end-of-life takeback; and
energy efficiency.

For the first time since it started the report in 2006, Greenpeace says the industry is making substantive progress in all three areas on a large scale. The report’s subtitle isn’t all that glowing – “Getting Greener But Not There” – but the progress made in just two years looks impressive. When Greenpeace did the first report in 2008, none of the products surveyed could claim to be green. Only a few scored even five out of a possible 10 points. By 2010, the picture was a lot brighter. Most companies were scoring well above five out of 10. The gap between the highest and lowest scores was much lower than in the previous two surveys. The industry significantly reduced its toxic chemical use and exceeded energy efficiency goals. High-tech companies still aren’t doing enough in product end-of-life, according to the report, but it also went on to say that:

This is an incredibly competitive, innovative and solutions-based industry, capable of creating the changes necessary to guarantee a sustainable lifecycle for each product manufactured. From our first Guide to Greener Electronics in 2006 to this third Survey in 2011, Greenpeace has seen the industry’s ability to consistently put greener products on the market. We believe the industry has the ability to overcome these existing challenges.

That’s an extraordinarily upbeat assessment from a group that isn’t famous for its good manners. Greenpeace is one of those groups that gives even their sympathizers the shakes now and again. There’s an unmistakable tone of smug superiority in their campaigns and their public statements, and they often come across as insufferably self-congratulatory. Their rhetoric is often over the top, such as calling Dell a “bloody marketing machine” for failing to eliminate hazardous chemicals from their products on a previously announced schedule. Greenpeace’s more colorful stunts routinely make the news media. In 2009, the group painted “Hazardous Products” on the roof of HP’s Palo Alto headquarters to punish the company for reneging on a promise to build more environmentally friendly products. Greenpeace members have chained themselves to public buildings, disrupted missile tests on restricted government property, and played chicken with whaling boats (though the group says it opposes violent tactics like that of former Greenpeace member Paul Watson). Greenpeace members scaled a water tower near George Bush’s Texas ranch to spotlight his administration’s environmental policies. They run embarrassing advertising campaigns against companies that don’t subscribe to their environmental orthodoxy.

They’ve also done things that, whether or not you agree with them, take incredible personal courage. Greenpeace volunteers have wrapped their bodies around baby harp seals in Arctic temperatures to protect them from Canadian hunters. Others blockaded the hunters’ ships to give still more volunteers time to douse the seals with green dye to ruin their fur. Those tactics helped effectively end the trade in harp seal fur in Europe in the 1980s. Greenpeace has often suffered for their boldness. In 1985, a Greenpeace photographer was killed when French government operatives blew up the group’s ship “Rainbow Warrior” as it sat in a New Zealand harbor preparing to protest a French nuclear test. Japan has imprisoned two Greenpeace activists on trumped-up trespassing charges after the pair turned over information that documented illegal whale meat sales.

What this is all leading up to is that no one can dispute Greenpeace’s authenticity. Love them or hate them or indifferent toward them, you can’t deny that their environmental cred is sterling because they’ve put skin in the game for 40 years. And the high-tech industry needs environmental cred.

The tech industry’s high electricity and toxic chemical consumption and its products’ relatively short lifespan have made it a target for environmental groups agitating for a more environmentally sustainable economy. There’s a lot of greenwashing going on these days as tech companies try to prove they’re not molesting the environment as they’re going about their business. Journalists and the public are getting more suspicious of environmental claims. Greenpeace is immune to greenwashing charges. The tech industry apparently understands that as much as they might privately loathe Greenpeace – hello Steve Jobs and the HP headquarters staff – the group’s imprimatur carries weight with a public that cares more and more about environmental issues. When Greenpeace and industry have a symbiotic relationship – even an uneasy one – you know the world is changing.

ARPA-E’s fate foretells cleantech’s future

Folks across the entire political spectrum concur the new election may blow a chilling wind across the cleantech industry (if you omit nukes). Budget-cutting is job #1 for this upcoming Congress, and the change of guard within key budget appropriation committees does not bode well for future government cleantech investments.

While all eyes are on cap-and-trade legislation and how the House will act to block EPA climate rules, perhaps the better barometer of cleantech’s future is the continuation of ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy) funding.

ARPA-E was created in 2008 with strong bipartisan support to reverse the nation’s falling position in global clean technology markets. What DARPA did for national defense, ARPA-E was to do for energy technologies, bridging the “gap between basic energy research and development/industrial innovation.”

But ARPA-E didn’t really get off the ground until the Obama administration, when Stimulus Bill funding filled its budget coffers. Since then, the agency has funded 37 cutting-edge projects from an initial pool of 3,600 applications. By most accounts, the program has been a strong success, as the New York Times points out:

Last week marked the anniversary of the first round of grants for the Department of Energy program, which is charged with finding game-changing energy research and awarding jolts of funding. Business leaders and other energy experts say ARPA-E not only has found such “breakthrough” projects, but has unleashed interest throughout the innovation chain – DOE, universities, corporations, startups and the financial world.

Beaupre client, SAGE Electrochromics, is one such example. In March it received $72 million in loan guarantees from the program to develop dynamic window glazing technologies that make buildings highly energy efficient. It has since broken ground on a new 300,000 square foot manufacturing facility in Minnesota that is bringing 160 new green jobs and 200 construction jobs.

But SAGE’s immediate impact is the exception within ARPA-E . Most projects probably won’t start yielding big results for at least five years. As the mid-term election showed, Americans are impatient. Congress already punted on funding ARPA-E for the current fiscal year, saying current Stimulus funds should be sufficient for now. Who knows what the lame duck Congress will do.

With a Teaparty-inflamed House itching to slash and burn budget expenditures anywhere they can find them, ARPA-E will be the bellwether by which America regains its advantage or falls farther behind the world in clean technology innovation, along with all the good jobs and good karma that comes with it. DARPA gave us the Internet. A short-sighted vote to chloroform ARPA-E could be an equally monumental loss.

An inconvenient wrapper, or what Al Gore didn’t tell you about SunChips bags and climate change

The tissues next to the sink in the men’s room at work taunt me every time I stand at the slow-working hand dryer waiting for my hands to stop dripping. It only takes about 15-20 seconds under the dryer until I can go back to work, but drying my hands on tissues is even faster – maybe three seconds. Nevertheless, I resist the siren call of processed wood pulp. When I use the hand dryer, I’m not throwing anything out. Since the climate change debate started, I’ve been obsessed with throwing away as little as possible in favor of the “reduce, reuse, recycle” mantra. So I stand there with my hands under the dryer even though the paper product would be more convenient.

Convenience: a perfect segue from hand drying to junk food bags.

Frito Lay, maker of those quasi-healthy crunchy snacks called SunChips, recently embraced the “recycle” part of the 3R mantra by packaging SunChips in a compostable bag. That’s quite a leap up the sustainability index from the plastic bags that most snack food comes in. Most plastic never degrades completely, even in direct sunlight, because there’s nothing in plastic for microorganisms to eat . The compostable bags, by contrast, can be gone in a couple of weeks because they’re made of plant matter that microorganisms like just fine. Considering the amount of snack food Americans eat, Frito Lay’s biodegradable SunChips bag was definitely a step in the right direction.

It was a step right back when Frito Lay announced this week that it’s discontinuing the compostable bag because customers think it’s – waaaaaaaiiiiit for it – too loud. Apparently, the compostable bag’s molecular structure makes it snap, crackle and pop lustily every time a chip junkie sticks his/her paw into a handful of no-trans-fat flavor. Facebook groups like “I wanted SunChips but my roommate was sleeping…” and “Nothing is louder than a SunChips bag” cropped up in protest. Customers complained to Frito Lay, which decided to replace the compostable bags with plastic on all SunChip flavors except the original.

First of all, what kind of wusses have Americans become when the crinkling of a food bag turns us catatonic? How loud can one bag of chips be? Are people bleeding out of their ears because they had to go for that one extra handful of SunChips with lunch? No matter. A vocal slice of the populace don’t want their late-night munchie attacks broadcast over the SunChip BagNet, so 30 million plastic bags are heading back into the waste stream.

This is the wrong message for corporations to send the public. As a society, Americans need to throw away less. What we do throw away should be as biodegradable as possible. Packaging is a major contributor to pollution and landfill clutter. Frito Lay’s initial effort to make a mainstream consumer product more environmentally sustainable was the right message to the general public. Snuffing it wasn’t.

Here’s a radical solution for all of the people who think the SunChip bag is too loud. If you don’t want anyone to know you’re having a private moment with the SunChips bag – waaaaaaaaaaaaiiiit for it – take it OUTSIDE before you open it. You’ll get some fresh air with your healthy SunChips and maybe burn a few of them off as you walk from the couch to the porch for a fix. Ask Frito Lay to bring back the biodegradable bag. It might not be the convenient solution, but it’s the right one.

Now if you’ll pardon me, I have to hit the men’s room with my new fast but environmentally sustainable hand-drying solution: the backs of my pant legs.

How the Fortune 500 learned to love the EPA

How powerful has environmental cred grown? Powerful enough for an EPA renewable energy program to attract more multinational corporations than Steve Forbes’ New Year’s Eve party. In a country like ours that almost fetishises private enterprise, you know you’ve arrived when the Fortune 500 comes to play.

The EPA’s Green Partnership program publishes annual lists of the top 50 renewable energy consumers in the program. Several are local, state and federal agencies who might be expected to toe the line considering that the current occupant of the White House is a renewable energy fan. There are also a few universities – reliable members of the liberal vanguard on most social issues. But the private corporations on the list outnumber the universities and public agencies 33 to 17. And we’re talking heavy hitters like Intel, Kohl’s, Cisco, Johnson & Johnson, Lockheed Martin, Walmart, Motorola, Lowe’s, Herman Miller, Sprint, ING Bank, Safeway Inc., Dannon, Bloomberg, Staples and Hilton Worldwide.

These aren’t exactly members of the Ben & Jerry’s hippie corporate crowd, so what’s in it for them? I mean bottom-line benefits – dollars and cents. You can talk about corporate responsibility all day, but in the end corporations exist to make a profit. Anything that doesn’t make a profit in the corporate world has the shelf life of a fruit fly. The Green Power Partnership program doesn’t put a dime in their pockets. Actually, it’s probably the exact opposite. Renewable energy is still more expensive than fossil fuels, so from a purely economic standpoint a corporation would be better off burning coal.

Yet not only are these companies part of the Green Power Partnership, they had to bust some tail to get in. Companies that want to be a Green Power Partner have to estimate their annual electricity use; review their power purchasing requirements; find and buy green power; then prove they actually bought it. The EPA strictly defines “green” in this context as wind, solar, biomass, biogas, geothermal, or low-impact hydro. Or, if you want to hear it in the original bureaucratese, “A green power resource produces electricity with zero anthropogenic (i.e., human-caused) emissions, has a superior environmental profile to conventional power generation, and must have been built after the beginning of the voluntary market (1/1/1997).” Applicants have to submit certified information to the EPA, and it’s subject to review.

So it doesn’t help the bottom line and you have to bust a gut to qualify. Again, where’s the upside? I still maintain it’s not on the bottom line. But it is on the top line. In the last few years the corporate attitudinal axis tilted they decided that sustainability isn’t a hippie pipe dream – it’s good business. They want consumers to know they’re walking the green walk because consumers care, and it helps their public image.

Green power’s influence extends beyond consumer markets into business-to-business. Take Intel as the bellwether for this movement. Intel isn’t a consumer business, but it developed a consumer brand through the “Intel Inside” campaign. Now it’s speaking directly to consumers again through its two-year-run atop the Green Power Partnership ranking. Intel buys 1.4 million kilowatt hours of renewable energy per year – or 51 percent of its total consumption. Google “Intel renewable energy” and you land on a page in the Intel press room dedicated to its renewable energy purchase program. The headline? “Intel Tops EPA’s List of Green Power Partners.”

That’s a huge affirmation to the power of public perception. The ultimate expression of corporate power was once “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country.” With companies like Intel leading the charge, hopefully that will change to “What Intel does for the environment is good for the country.”

Toyota + Tesla = hope for the electric car

Bedfellows don’t get much stranger than Toyota and Tesla, who’ve just partnered to create an all-electric RAV4.

If viable, the machine would help Toyota get over the hump of its gasoline dependence while putting a Tesla power train into vehicles that regular people can own. Tesla is the only automaker in the U.S. that builds and sells highway-capable EVs in meaningful volume, claiming over 1,000 Roadsters driving emissions-free in more than 25 countries.

You already know about Toyota’s prim gas/electric hybrid.

Tesla’s racy Roadster, with an MSRP of $109,000, is an all-electric sports car that can go 0 to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds and travel 244 miles on a single charge of its lithium-ion battery pack.

Tesla plans to produce and deliver a fleet of all-electric RAV4 prototypes to Toyota for evaluation within the year.

Can the new RAV4 make people forget the runaway death Prius? Can it teach Toyota about harnessing reliable power from laptop batteries? Can it bring the electric car concept (and price) down to earth?

Let’s hope. This has been done before, sort of. Toyota made 1,500 electric RAV4s between 1997 and 2003. Actor Ed Begley Jr. still has one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt6-9QNiQvI

Nominating an unlikely new Earth Day saint

It’s Earth Day, and you can practically hear tributes to Rachel Carson and Senator Gaylord Nelson and other patron saints of the environmental movement ringing from hybrid to shining hybrid. As well they should. Without Nelson there would be no Earth Day, and without Carson and her ilk the Earth would be in rougher shape than it already is. I would, however, like to commemorate a different figure on this Earth Day: Col. Edwin Drake, the man who pioneered commercial oil drilling.

That’s right, oil drilling. On Earth Day. Bear with me, I’m going somewhere with this.

Drake is credited with inventing economically viable oil extraction in 1858, when Seneca Oil hired the semi-retired railroad worker to explore oil deposits on its land near Titusville, Penn. Most homes and businesses of Drake’s era were lit by lamps burning whale oil, which grew scarce and expensive as the whale population plummeted from overhunting. Seneca Oil founder Samuel Martin Kier had invented a method for refining crude oil into kerosene to replace whale oil in lamps several years before the company sent Drake to Titusville. The problem was there was no reliable supply of oil to refine, which meant kerosene couldn’t replace whale oil on a large scale. Before Drake, people skimmed oil off creeks from the water that seeped into salt mines. Those sources were too erratic to provide the masses with kerosene for lamps.

It was Drake’s idea to dig for oil instead of skimming it. The good people of Titusville thought Drake was off his rocker. They called his operation “Drake’s Folly” and crowded around the drilling site to jeer. When his first mine shaft collapsed, it looked like they might be right. But Drake thought of sinking a pipe into the ground and drilling inside it to prevent the bore hole from collapsing. Just days after Drake’s bore hole started belching up oil, there were imitators up and down the creek using his methods to get oil out of the ground. The oil era, for good or ill, was launched.

I bring up Drake on Earth Day because of the parallels between his story and what’s going on in renewable energy right now. Listen to some of the skepticism that persists around renewable energy: Wind and solar are too sporadic to replace fossil fuels. Renewables cost too much and don’t deliver a big enough return on investment. They have lower energy content than fossil fuels. Now rewind 152 years to Edwin Drake’s era. Do any of today’s criticisms sound familiar?

Regardless of what you think about his legacy, Edwin Drake was not an environmental criminal. He was a resourceful man who solved his era’s energy problem by ignoring conventional wisdom and trying new things. He had a vision, and he persevered until he found a way to get it done. Yes, he left us a mixed legacy. Nevertheless, our generation needs its own version of Edwin Drake, to do for renewable energy what Drake did for oil. It happened once, and it can happen again.

On a side note: Check out the last page of this week’s Newsweek magazine for a scorecard of how well we’ve done at cleaning up the environment since the first Earth Day. There are reasons to be glad, and reasons why we still have a lot of work to do. Happy Earth Day!

Baby boomers’ reprise: building the green economy

There’s an abundance of guilt being a Baby Boomer these days. Our anticipated disproportionate drain on healthcare, Medicare, social security, etc. as we ebb into retirement has made us a pariah generation … a socio-economic time bomb of sorts.

So it was some comfort to read a new report from the Council for Adults and Experiential Learning (courtesy of BusinessGreen.com) on how Baby Boomers may provide the critical link to attaining a green economy.

How Boomers Can Help the Nation Go Green contends that green jobs are a natural fit for boomers seeking “encore careers.” Our professional skills, life experience and business savvy match up perfectly with the unmet needs of growing the green economy. And our generation is too restless and purpose-driven to adopt the more sedate retirement lifestyles of our parents, according to the report:

The 20th century vision of retirement filled with endless leisure is giving way to what think tank Civic Ventures calls a “new form of practical idealism: real jobs tackling real problems and making a real impact.”

It was even more surprising to learn – given our current unemployment woes – that experts expect skilled labor shortages across all segments of green industries, and that skilled boomers are best suited to plug the labor gap. In other words, boomers can be a catalyst for both green job creation and fulfillment. The report says the three big areas of encore career opportunities will be in energy efficiency (e.g. energy auditing and weatherization), clean energy generation (e.g. solar contractors), and conservation (e.g. sustainability consultants). Though I personally believe there’s a lot of IT and engineering brain power the boomer generation could bring to emerging fields like the smart grid as well. But who am I to argue? The report should also be an eye-opener to green technology marketers, who have largely ignored boomers in favor targeting their messaging towards genXers and millennials. If you want to attract the best people, you’ve got to talk to the best people. They forget that it was boomers who gave the world Earth Day, green buildings and granola.

Tag: Green