Browsing environmental news sources so you don't have to. Contact Laura Barnes (lbarnes@istc.illinois.edu) with questions, comments, and suggestions.
Follow ENB on TwitterRead the full story in Consulting & Specifying Engineer.
Retail giant Wal-Mart signed an agreement with the National Governors’ Assn. (NGA) to provide energy audits of government buildings in state capitol complexes nationwide.
Read the full story in Water & Wastewater News.
The University of Colorado’s Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering in Boulder has opened the Center for Environmental Mass Spectrometry (CEMS), a laboratory focusing on the detection of pharmaceuticals, hormones, and other organic contaminants in water and evaluating the effectiveness of methods for removing these compounds.
EPA’s annual People, Prosperity and the Planet (P3) competition plants the seeds for future technologies that are both environmentally-friendly and profitable. The competition winners announced last night show the agency harvested a plentiful crop this year. Students from University of California-Davis will develop technology to produce plastic from wastewater. Loyola University of Chicago students will construct a laboratory to produce biodiesel from their cafeteria’s vegetable oil waste. The University of Iowa team will develop a hand-held water sanitizer useful for disinfecting drinking water in households of poor communities around the world.
This national competition, sponsored by EPA’s Office of Research and Development, encourages college students to create sustainable solutions to environmental problems through technological innovation. These sustainable solutions must be environmentally friendly, efficiently use natural resources and be economically competitive. Each P3 award winner receives funding up to $75,000 to further develop their designs and implement them in the field or move them to the marketplace.
“EPA’s National Sustainable Design Expo and People, Prosperity and the Planet competition provide a window into tomorrow,” said Dr. George Gray, assistant administrator for the Office of Research and Development. “These innovative student teams not only show technologies for a greener future, but demonstrate the passion and innovative thinking that will lead us there.”
Winners of this year’s awards and their projects are:
The P3 Award competition was held at EPA’s 4th Annual National Sustainable Design Expo on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., April 20-22. The Expo showcases innovative, cutting-edge technologies designed by the P3 teams along with sustainable policies and technologies developed and implemented by government and state agencies and nonprofit organizations.
Support for the competition includes more than 40 partners in the federal government, industry and scientific and professional societies. This year’s Expo was co-sponsored by The Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education and The World Environment Center.
Read the full post at HBR Green.
For the twelve weeks from January 23 to April 16, 2008, HBRGreen hosted six discussions on the emerging intersection of business and the environment. Leaders of the business world asked provocative questions and readers from around the globe answered with robust and lively commentaries, bringing an unparalleled level of insight and experience to the conversation. What did we learn? We learned that going green is more than a slogan. It’s a complicated business practice that requires a sustained and unified effort from a diverse set of companies, customers, suppliers, workers, nonprofits, governments, and NGOs. Indeed, no facet of doing business remains untouched.
Join your friends and neighbors during Earth Week by recycling your unwanted electronics at collection events across the U.S. EPA encourages consumers to use EPA’s Plug-In To eCycling partner programs to recycle cell phones, TVs, computers, and other electronics. Recycling an old computer or cell phone can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, save energy, and conserve natural resources.
EPA’s Plug-In To eCycling partnership includes consumer electronic manufacturers and retailers who work to increase safe recycling of electronic products. The partners offer different recycling options to consumers including take-back or trade-in programs in stores or online, support for recycling programs, and new partnerships to facilitate collections. A sample of electronics recycling activities during Earth Week includes:
As a result of their collaborative efforts in 2007, Plug-In partners recycled or reused more than 47 million pounds of consumer electronics, mostly computers, televisions, and cell phones. The environmental benefit of recycling these electronics is equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions from approximately 24,000 passenger cars. Since the Plug-In program’s inception in 2003, partners have recycled, more than 142 million pounds of electronics via collaborative and voluntary efforts.
Plug-In To eCycling partners include AT&T, Best Buy, Dell, eBay’s Rethink initiative, HP, Intel, JVC, Lexmark, LG, Motorola, NEC Display, Office Depot, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Sony Ericsson, Sprint, Staples, T-Mobile, Toshiba, Verizon and Wal-Mart.
Information on Plug-In partners’ eCycling events: http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/osw/conserve/plugin/events08.htm
More information on where to recycle: epa.gov/e-cycling/donate.htm
EPA’s Plug-In To eCycling site: epa.gov/plug-in
A full-color, graphic version of this newsletter is available online at:
http://www.greenerbuildings.com/enewsletter.
Jones Lang LaSalle to Create Green Training Center for Real Estate Services Industry
http://greenerbuildings.com/news_detail.cfm?NewsID=55921
Jones Lang LaSalle plans to establish a Sustainability University to provide green training for the real estate services sector, as well as increase its LEED and BREEAM-accredited professionals to 500 by the end of next year.
LED University Gives Lessons on Efficient Lighting
http://greenerbuildings.com/news_detail.cfm?NewsID=55934
Cree, a maker of LED lighting supplies, has gathered universities that are working on LED installations to show the savings they can provide and encourage their use.
Hilton’s European Hotels Cut Energy Use by 10 Percent in 2007
http://greenerbuildings.com/news_detail.cfm?NewsID=55910
More than eighty Hilton hotels across Europe collectively cut their energy use by 10 percent and water consumption by 5 percent last year.
Hearst Tower Aims for Zero Waste with Recycling, Composting Programs
http://greenerbuildings.com/news_detail.cfm?NewsID=55904
The Hearst Corporation’s headquarters has started a composting program aimed at keeping 95 percent of its food waste out of landfills.
Lifecycle Building Challenge Seeks Ideas for Building Reuse
http://greenerbuildings.com/news_detail.cfm?NewsID=55895
The second annual Lifecycle Building Challenge is looking for projects and ideas for designing buildings so their materials can be more easily reused.
Energy Efficiency Interest Grows But Investment Remains Flat: Report
http://greenerbuildings.com/news_detail.cfm?NewsID=55888
Facility managers are more aware of the benefits of energy efficiency improvements than ever but investment levels have not enjoyed a similar increase, according to a new survey from Johnson Controls and the International Facility Management Association.
Agilewaves Software Measures Green Roof Performance
http://greenerbuildings.com/news_detail.cfm?NewsID=55886
Agilewaves Inc. has deployed a building monitoring system on an elementary school to measure the structure’s resource consumption and green building features while teaching students about design and conservation.
Former S.F. Federal Reserve Building Takes an Encore
http://greenerbuildings.com/news_detail.cfm?NewsID=55879
After spending the last few years restoring the former Federal Reserve building to her former glory, Bently Holdings Inc. unveiled its conference center this week to combine digital technology with green sensibility.
Unisource Greenfinder
http://greenerbuildings.com/tool_detail.cfm?LinkAdvID=97612
The UnisourceGreen website which provides details on some of its greener supplies, explains the various environmental certifications and labels available for paper and lets customers search for paper based on certain qualities.
Read the full story at News.com.
High price and a strange color. No, we’re not talking about a hairdo. Those are the two factors that have kept light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, from becoming a mainstream light source.
But that might change soon, said Zach Gibler, chief business development officer of Lighting Science Group, which plans to announce distribution deals with major retailers for its LED bulbs that screw into a regular socket.
At its third annual Green Enterprise Computing Symposium, April 27-30, Orlando, Fla., the Uptime Institute will announce winners of the first Green Enterprise IT Awards, honoring organizations that are pioneering energy-efficiency improvements in their data center operations.
Read the full story at Stateline.org.
State legislators are used to political turf wars. Now, debates in a handful of states really are about turf, pitting those who back the artificial variety against supporters of natural grass for playgrounds and athletic fields.
Bills in Minnesota, New Jersey and New York would bar the installation of additional artificial turf until those states complete health and environmental studies on the ground-up tires used for the increasingly popular surfaces. Bills in California and Connecticut call for studies to determine the health and environmental effects of synthetic turf. A proposal in New York City would rip out all the existing artificial fields as well as ban new ones.
For a full-color, graphic version of this newsletter, go to
http://www.greenercomputing.com/enewsletter.
Green IT Can Be Virtually Free
By Matthew Wheeland
http://www.greenercomputing.com/reviews_third.cfm?NewsID=55903
Ken Brill, the executive director of the Uptime Institute, talks to GreenBiz Radio about some of the surprisingly easy ways to boost performance and drop IT costs at the same time.
Swapping PCs for Thin Client Terminals Slashes Enterprise’s Energy Use, Emissions
http://www.greenercomputing.com/news_third.cfm?NewsID=55923
Enterprise Rent-a-Car will finish switching out PCs for thin client terminals in its rental locations to streamline car rental transactions and slash energy consumption and emissions.
Hitachi Planning Most Power-Efficient Data Center
http://www.greenercomputing.com/news_third.cfm?NewsID=55936
Hitachi Data Systems has unveiled plans for what it says will be the most power-efficient enterprise-class data center in the world.
Green IT Seen as Priority, But Little Action Taken: Survey
http://www.greenercomputing.com/news_third.cfm?NewsID=55917
Green computing is recognized as a priority for cutting costs and energy use, but many companies are still slow to make plans or take action, according to a new report.
Dell Applies Energy-Efficiency Measures to Rhode Island Town
http://www.greenercomputing.com/news_third.cfm?NewsID=55906
North Kingstown, R.I. will start a wholesale conversion of its government computers to more energy efficient systems in an effort to save money and reduce its environmental impact.
Sun Debuts New Eco Services
http://www.greenercomputing.com/news_third.cfm?NewsID=55900
Sun Microsystems launched its Eco Advantage Program to help its partners green their IT practices. The program offers assistance with training, assessment, scenario modeling and implementation.
The latest issue of Renewable Energy Weekly is now available. Highlights include:
Read the full post at Technohumanism.
With a simple flick of the wrist and click of a button, I ordered my custom-printed cards from Apple. Not very many, really–only 50 total. A few days later, they arrived in two cardboard boxes. I opened one of the boxes, and inside there was another box. I opened that box, and found yet another box. Finally, after opening the last box, I found a bundle of cards. I felt as though I was playing with a Matryoshka doll. The sad part of it, however, was that all the layers of packaging were going to end up in the recycling bin. Did there have to be so many?
Read the full post at the Technology Review Editors blog.
Carbon markets set up under climate-change agreements are supposed to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide. Credits are issued that correspond in some way to the desired carbon emissions (details vary). Companies that produce a lot of greenhouse emissions can then purchase credits from companies that produce fewer. Supposedly, this will fund new clean companies and projects that lead to a decrease in carbon emissions.
Here’s the problem. Some of those new companies and projects would have been undertaken anyway, without the credits. In that case, the credits won’t actually lead to less emission. An article in today’s Wall Street Journal describes one such case.
Read the full story in Environmental Protection.
Copiers, printers, computers, monitors, scanners, and fax machines can emit indoor pollutants that may result in poor indoor air quality. As manufacturers of electronic products design their products to meet green requirements for today’s marketplace, verifying good indoor air quality performance is a must.
Meeting Green: The Office Equipment Industry’s Guide to Managing Product Emissions serves as a manufacturer’s user guide for understanding the types of indoor contaminants emitted from electronic office equipment and the health impacts associated with chemical and particulate emissions. It reviews the available third-party certification programs and their respective eco-criteria. In addition, the report discusses the technology and testing protocols for measuring chemical and particulate emissions and for establishing the health risks associated with these emissions. This Air Quality Sciences Inc., (AQS) report is available under Premium Content at www.aerias.org.
Read the full story in Environmental Protection.
Newly released sales figures from R.L. Polk reveal a record number of Alternative Fuel Automobiles (AFAs) rolled off dealer lots in 2007. In total, close to 1.8 million AFAs were sold last year, roughly 250,000 more than were sold in 2006. Sales of E-85 capable/flexible fuel vehicles and hybrid electric vehicles were up significantly while clean diesel vehicle sales fell slightly.
