Read the full story at Energy Daily.

Business owners should think twice before tweaking workplace temperature settings this fall. According to a new survey of office workers, sixty-nine percent said they would be willing to sacrifice their preferred ideal temperature in the office to help their company conserve energy.

However the survey also found that nearly four in five participants (78 percent) say they are less productive at work when they are too hot or too cold.

Read the full story at GreenerBuildings.

In recent weeks, five states and one city have launched green lodging certification programs. I know there are those out there who are not happy about the addition of more green lodging certification programs to our industry, but I am excited for New York, Oklahoma, Indiana, South Carolina, Maryland, and Buffalo, N.Y. Congratulations to those who have worked so hard to put together these programs.

Read the full story at GreenBiz.

A major overhaul to the Energy Star program, which currently certifies and labels products that are energy efficient, is imminent. How this overhaul occurs remains to be seen.

Read the full story at GreenBiz.

While the push is on to green buildings, the RSC Equipment Rental firm has devised a new service to help reduce the environmental impact of a key component of construction: It tracks the emissions of every diesel unit that rolls out of its lots around the country.

Read the full story at GreenBiz.

Green purchasing by companies is up in a down economy. Our recent October 2009 survey of more than 450 companies found that over the past 12 months there was a 63 percent increase in green purchasing, from computers to chemicals to cleaning supplies. Perhaps even more encouraging, none of the respondents from large companies (those with revenues over $1 billion) identified any decrease in buying green.

Read the full story at GreenBiz.

The new SocialCycling program from DMD Green is an attempt to find uses for products and materials that aren’t handled by typical recycling systems.

DMD Green, an environmental and green business management consultant, says the program will find new uses for non-recyclable items like vinyl-coated fabrication materials.

The SocialCycling program, announced this month, will take post-consumer products and reclaimed material, collect them at a SocialCycling site, sort and separate materials, and then distribute them to converters and artisans that can use them to make new products.

Read the full story at Green Inc.

As I wrote in a New York Times article on Thursday, the $7.2 billion surf business has become the latest industry to ride the green wave. Call it sustainable surfing.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is announcing new requirements for audio/video (AV) products to earn the Energy Star label. AV products meeting EPA’s new, more stringent specification will help protect the environment and reduce energy costs because they will be up to 60 percent more efficient than conventional models.

If all AV products sold in the United States met the new Energy Star requirements, Americans would save more than $1 billion in energy costs annually while reducing greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those of more than 1 million vehicles every year.

EPA revised the earlier Energy Star requirements for AV to address the rapid turnover of products and technologies, as well as changes in usage patterns within the category. The more inclusive and flexible specification will promote greater energy efficiency in today’s diverse market for audio/video products.

The new requirements for audio/video equipment cover a wider range of products including home-theater-in-a-box, audio amplifiers, AV receivers, shelf systems, DVD players, Blu Ray players, and docking stations that offer audio amplification or optical disc drive functions. Commercial AV products are also covered.

To earn the Energy Star label, AV products must consume less power when they are on and must power down automatically after a period of inactivity, using only small amounts of power to maintain settings and other features.

The new requirements for audio/video products previously eligible for the Energy Star will be effective July 30, 2010. For products previously excluded from Energy Star, such as commercial AV products and docking stations, the new requirements are effective immediately.

More information on Energy Star qualified audio/video products: http://www.energystar.gov/av

Read the full story at GreenBiz.

A growing number of American consumers would like to tell President Obama to focus on the economy first before tackling environmental issues, according to research published today.

Read the full story at GreenBiz.

Motivational experts have for years argued about whether incentives (”carrots”) or threats (”sticks”) are more effective, and we’re seeing an array of both being applied to mulish Congressional opponents of major climate legislation.

Read the full story at GreenerComputing.

Dell will start shipping two of its products padded with bamboo cushioning, a part of the company’s broad plan to reduce its packaging while using more recyclable material.

Read the full story in the New York Times.

The sheer size of the airline industry’s emissions makes it hard to judge the effectiveness of carbon offset programs.

Read the full press release.

Business, states and higher education have a new resource to support efforts to advance safer products in the market place.

It’s a report released today by the Green Chemistry and Commerce Council (GC3), National Pollution Prevention Roundtable (NPPR), and the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell (UMASS Lowell). See: http://www.p2.org/wp-content/uploads/growing-the-green-economy.pdf

The report, entitled Growing the Green Economy through Green Chemistry and Design for Environment is a resource guide to assist states to develop a green chemistry and design for environment framework. Seeking to reduce the use of hazardous substances and finding safer alternatives will in turn promote environmentally sustainable business practices and economic opportunities.

Read the full post at GreenBiz.

With the steady growth of the green marketplace, there has come increasing concern about — and prevalence of, depending on who you ask — greenwashing: A surplus of labels and a lack of verification behind them has led to shopper distrust of green claims just when truly green products are reaching mainstream acceptance.

Green Seal, the nonprofit certification group, is celebrating its 20th anniversary by undertaking a dramatic shift in its operations: In addition to continuing to certify individual products and services as environmentally friendly, the group has just launched a company certification pilot project that aims to measure, verify and push for continuous improvement of a company’s entire operations.

Read the full post at Green Inc.

Federal regulators have accused four people and two companies of using bogus claims about “green initiatives” to entice more than 300 investors into what was really a $30 million Ponzi scheme.

Read the full story at GreenBiz.

Why do some people bluster when you talk about sustainability while others get excited?

Consider the question: “How’s your marriage?”

Answer: “Fine, it’s sustainable.”

Huh?

The terms and concepts of sustainability, and corporate social responsibility seem to have entered our everyday vocabulary and lifestyle, but these terms are packed with contextual meaning — and not everyone can have a conversation with a common understanding of these issues.

Read the full post at Green Inc.

According to Pavan Sukhdev, a banker working with the United Nations Environment Program, putting a price on the world’s trees, water stores and other natural resources will be the most cost-effective way of tackling the challenges posed by climate change — at least until cleaner energy technologies become available.

Treating nature and its benefits like other goods in the marketplace would also make it easier to carry out a more sophisticated cost-benefit analysis in sectors like fisheries, where resources are badly stretched, said Mr. Sukhdev, who is on leave from Deutsche Bank, where he headed the bank’s global markets business in India.

Read the full story in Scientific American.

There has never been a better time to upgrade some of those older creaky appliances that are gobbling up far more energy (or water) than they need

Read the full story at GreenBiz.

The 2010 Ford Flex will include the auto industry’s first use of wheat straw, a waste byproduct of wheat production.

Wheat straw will make up 20 percent of the vehicle’s two third-row storage bins, lowering the bins’ weight by 10 percent, reducing Ford Motor Company’s petroleum use by 20,000 pounds a year and lowering its carbon dioxide emissions by 30,000 pounds a year.

Read the full story at GreenBiz.

[This article is part of a series of interviews from the MIT Sloan Management Review published on GreenBiz.com. It is adapted from "The Sustainability Tradeoffs" an interview published by MIT Sloan Management Review in July 2009. The complete interview is available here. © Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009. All rights reserved. To read all of GreenBiz.com's interviews with MIT thought leaders, visit http://greenbiz.com/mitsloan.]

Let’s start by talking about how you define sustainability and how your ideas differ from those of others.

I see sustainability as continued economic development that meets environmental and social concerns. That idea can take you in many directions, from better design of a product in terms of trade-offs between energy and cost and weight all the way up to asking, “How do you run a sustainable organization?”

A “sustainable organization” will train people to be more flexible, able to change functions within the company as it evolves quickly. That’s a very different definition of sustainability, but one that could have an impact on environmental sustainability as well.

Read the full story at GreenBiz.

In the latest move to expand its sustainability efforts, Marriott International Inc. says its green hotel portfolio will grow tenfold in the next five years with the introduction of design prototypes for new green properties.

The company is targeting its limited service line — the brands that primarily serve business travelers — in seeking pre-certification of prototype designs through the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED volume certification program, Marriott executives said in announcing their plans at the Greenbuild 2009 conference.

Read the full post at Green, Inc.

In an effort to reform federal regulation governing toxic substances — and no doubt gain some marketing exposure in the process — Seventh Generation, the green household cleaning products manufacturer, recently started an ambitious campaign dubbed the Million Baby Crawl.

Through a series of Web advertisements, YouTube videos, and in-person promotions, the company invites supporters to post messages attached to virtual “crawlers” — essentially animated baby-avatars carrying personalized messages — on the campaign Web site, and to contact their representatives in Congress about soon-to-be introduced legislation that would amend the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976.

Via Docuticker.

Survey Finds a Majority of Corporate Respondents Measuring Their Carbon Footprints
Source: EcoSecurities, ClimateBiz, and Baker & McKenzie

Over 300 global companies, including 31 specialized carbon companies that act as carbon market intermediaries, responded to a survey published recently by EcoSecurities, ClimateBiz, and Baker & McKenzie, which sought to identify corporate trends in carbon management and offsetting. The survey, entitled Carbon Management and Offsetting Trends Survey Results 2009, is the second published by the organizations, and the first since the global economic crisis.

Despite the effects of the crisis, the number of respondents to the survey increased by more than 400% since its predecessor was published in early 2008, with a marked increase in participation of North American companies noted. Although budget concerns were cited by many companies as a motivation for delaying the purchase of carbon offsets, 60% of respondents reported that they measure their organizational carbon footprint, 44% have a defined carbon management strategy, and 32% report having such a plan in development. However, only 54% of North American companies measure their carbon footprint, compared to 92% of Australasian, and 62% of European, respondents.

+ Carbon Management and Offsetting Trends Survey Results 2009
Free registration required to download full survey findings.

Read the full story at GreenBiz.

The International Energy Agency on Tuesday called on world leaders to strike a deal to address climate change, warning that the current business-as-usual scenario is unsustainable and will lead to skyrocketing energy demand, price spikes and up to a 6 degree temperature rise.

Read the full story at GreenBiz.

IBM holds a lot of patents — in fact, it earned the most of any organization in 2008, with 4,186 new patents to its name.

And as readers of our sites should know, IBM is focused in a big way on sustainability and the role technology can play in achieving greener operations in any number of arenas, from water to supply chains, data centers to traffic.

But a new announcement from Big Blue this week serves to underscore the shifting role that technology can play in environmental issues, and how IBM is changing its own role to focus on that shift.

IBM yesterday announced the top five technologies developed under its Corporate Environmental Innovation Program in the past year, the five solutions that can have a significant impact on energy efficiency or environmental impacts.

Of the top five, only three are traditional IT-related technologies, with the remaining two falling under what has become known as “Green IT 2.0,” or technologies that can be applied to business operations beyond the data center or computer fleet, putting computing power to work on the firm’s environmental footprint.

Read the full story at GreenBiz.

In late August, Robert Pojasek posted an article on these pages in which he largely agreed with assertions made by Wayne Norman and Chris MacDonald in their 2004 paper entitled, “Getting to the Bottom of the ‘Triple Bottom Line’“. While in no way disputing the view that organizations should strive to meet social, environmental and economic goals, Norman and MacDonald generally called the authenticity and usefulness of the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) construct into question, and claimed that a TBL methodology, per se, did not exist. They further argued that without a way to accurately measure the “bottom line” social and environmental performance of an organization, the TBL amounts to little more than a slogan or metaphor.

Times, however, have changed. At Deloitte, we’re now using precisely the kind of methodology that did not exist when Norman and MacDonald wrote their article in 2004. The method we’re using is the Social Footprint Method (SFM), which when applied more broadly (in a TBL sense), is known as the “context-based sustainability method.” Thus, while Norman’s and MacDonald’s statement may have been true in 2004, circumstances have since changed.

Read the full post at Green Inc.

“Smart appliances” are officially on their way to American households.

This month, General Electric began distributing a type of hot water heater that can link into the smart electric meters being doled out around the country — the first such “smart appliance” sold commercially in the United States, industry experts believe.

Whirlpool, meanwhile, plans to make one million smart dryers by 2011.

What constitutes smart? According to Kevin Nolan, a vice president for technology at G.E.’s consumer and industrial division, the water heater — which is very efficient in its own right — contains a port resembling an Ethernet port that can, in theory, plug into a converter box that, in turn, connects to the utility’s meter.

At times of high electricity use, such as the late afternoons, the consumer or the utility will be able to switch to a different, electricity-saving mode.

But there is a catch. Right now, smartness has virtually no benefit to average Americans — or to their utilities. “Smart meters” — which help control these devices — are not present in most households, though millions are on their way.

Read the full story at ClimateBiz.

With climate scientists warning that greenhouse gas emissions must decline upwards of 80 percent by 2050 to avoid catastrophic climate change, some like Salvatore Gabola are calling for businesses to move past normalized reduction targets to lower their total carbon footprints.

Read the full story at GreenBiz.

[Editor's Note: GreenBiz.com is pleased to present the second in a series of excerpts from Dave Douglas's new book, "Citizen Engineer: A Handbook for Socially Responsible Engineering." Read part one: "The Big Picture on Eco-Engineering Our Environmental Impact," and part two: "Beyond the Black Cloud: Looking at Lifecycles."]

Take a look at any consumer product on a store shelf and you’ll see why packaging is a growing concern for environmentalists. A simple electric razor, for example, is sold encased in a clear, rigid, molded plastic container (usually unopenable and virtually indestructible!) that houses a variety of separately packaged components: a cardboard box containing the razor blades, a power cord in a shrink-wrapped plastic tube; plastic-wrapped batteries; and another shrink-wrapped packet with various instructions and warranty cards.

Or consider a poorly packaged personal computer, which ships in a box of boxes — with a separate package for each component (even the power cord) — layered with molded polystyrene and cushioned by Styrofoam or hundreds of Styrofoam peanuts. And depending on who buys the product, these packaging materials may be headed straight for the landfill right after the goods are unpacked.

Two points here: First, packaging is often almost pure waste. As engineers, we need to stop asking ourselves how to make packaging more efficient and start asking how to get away with less of it. The good side of this is that, just as we have seen in other areas, there is the potential for some significant savings if we can figure out how to package products more effectively and efficiently.

Second, the “product” and the “packaging” have their own separate lifecycles and supply chains, and engineers who are designing for optimal environmental effectiveness need to consider both of them. Why? Regulations covering design and take-back of packaging materials are mushrooming throughout Europe, Asia, and North America, and compliance with these environmental packaging laws requires creative engineering.

Read the full story in Metal Finishing.

Drew Amorosi, managing editor of Metal Finishing, recently caught up with Dr. Manik Roy and Dr. Janet Peace of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change to discuss the climate change legislation making its way through Congress. One fact is clear from the conversation: Whether it’s via Congress, the states, or the EPA, the regulation of greenhouse gasses is very much on the horizon here in the United States, if not already upon us. The question for the business and manufacturing community is by which method and from what source will regulation emerge, and what system will be the least harmful to business conditions?

Read the full story at Mother Nature Network.

And if wind power isn’t enough of a draw, how about bowling, vintage arcade games and lots of craft beer?

Read the full story at GreenerDesign.

Axion Polymers has announced a design competition for its new product, a 100 percent recycled content plastic sheet called Axfoil.

The sheet is made with recycled polystyrene, identified by the number 6 resin code. While rarely accepted in recycling systems in the U.S., number 6 plastic can be recycled back into itself.

Read the full story at GreenBiz.

In another life, I was an educator for Save the Bay in Oakland, Calif.

With the humdrum of finance, technology, and transportation whirring around and above us, we spent our days with scores of middle schoolers, teaching them to paddle canoes and absorb the natural world around them for the first time. The most difficult part was to teach them to get into, and out of, the canoes without tipping them.

“Go slow, stay low” was the mantra. It worked for most, but not for all. Inevitably there would be a few life vest-wearing, mud-covered students waist high in the waters of the bay before class was over.

Canoes, like economies, are more stable moving steadily forward than still. As firms look ahead to 2010 and finalize their strategic planning and budgeting processes, they are asking themselves. “Will the economy return to its ‘normal’ growth patterns? What share of the market will we retain if it does?”

Read the full story at GreenBiz.

A significant gap lies between consumers’ attitudes towards “green” initiatives in the hospitality industry and their actual behavior, says a recent study by two hospitality and tourism management graduate students at Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business. Moreover, consumers who engage in environmentally friendly behavior at home behave differently when staying at a hotel, their study found.

Read the full story at GreenBiz.

Owens Corning is teaming up with one of the country’s largest environmental services companies for a new program aimed at reducing the amount of used asphalt roofing shingles sent to landfills.

Owens Corning will introduce its national shingle recycling program in the Midwest before rolling it out to the rest of the U.S. The company’s Preferred Roofing Contractors who pledge to recycle their shingle tear-offs will be able to take them to drop-off recycling and processing centers provided by Heritage Environmental Services. Rollout of the program will depend on participation and reaction from contractors and homeowners.

Read the full post at GreenBiz.

[Editor's Note: GreenBiz.com is pleased to present the first in a series of excerpts from Dave Douglas's new book, "Citizen Engineer: A Handbook for Socially Responsible Engineering."]

The planet’s population is now approaching 7 billion — an increase of about 5 billion people in just the past five decades — and the total population is likely to increase by another 1 billion people in the next decade. Analysts now expect that the ranks of the middle class (people who may want your products!) will swell by as many as 1.8 billion in the next 12 years.

You’ve probably seen similar projections, and even though you know intellectually that an extra couple of billion people represents a sustainability challenge, it can be hard to relate those huge numbers to your job. So, to make the scale more real, let’s work through what it would mean to give the next 1 billion middle-class citizens of the world a single 60-watt incandescent light bulb.

Read the full story at GreenBiz.

How have consumers’ green shopping habits changed during these tough economic times?

There are at least a couple schools of thought: One, that green consumerism has gotten steamrolled by the recession, viewed as a luxury no longer affordable; the other, that green shopping has endured as consumers go back to basics, rethinking the need to consume, redefining what it means to be fulfilled, and becoming less wasteful and more conscious of the impact of their purchases.

So, which is it? Is a green shopping ethic alive and well, or has “saving the earth” taken a backseat to “saving the day?”

In search of answers, I recently tracked down Kathy Sheehan, senior vice president, and Tim Kenyon, senior market analyst, at GfK Roper. For nearly two decades, GfK (formerly Roper Starch) has been studying green consumer habits. GfK’s principal product is the mostly annual Green Gauge, which it describes as a “long-term syndicated study of consumer attitudes and behaviors towards the environment.” Green Gauge was the first, in 1990, to illustrate the “many shades of green consumers” through its market segmentation: True-Blue Greens, Greenback Greens, Basic Browns, and the like.

Read the full story at GreenerBuildings.

The United States’ first voluntary rating system for sustainable landscapes launched last week, a development its creators hope will do for the landscaping sector what LEED did for the building industry.

The American Society of Landscape Architects, Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and the U.S. Botanic Garden partnered to develop the rating system as part of the Sustainable Sites Initiative, which they plan to test through a series of pilot projects over the next two years.

Read the full story at GreenerBuildings.

Seventy-four percent of corporate real estate executives now say they would be willing to pay a premium to retrofit the office space they own to achieve sustainability goals, a new survey has found.

Via Docuticker.

State Green Economy Profiles
Source: National Governors Association, Center for Best Practices

As governors across the country look at ways they can help build a green economy in their state, the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) has commissioned Collaborative Economics Inc. (CEI) to prepare a profile of each state’s green economy. State profiles can be found by clicking on the map above. This data is designed to provide a detailed, empirical account of each state’s existing assets across multiple green sectors and serve as a foundation for identifying future growth areas and related needs. The profile is based on a methodology presented by CEI (PDF; 2 MB) at the NGA Center’s Green Economy State Roundtable in April.

Via RFF Library Blog.

Via RFF Library Blog.

Via RFF Library Blog.

Brookings Institution / by Craig Pirrong
http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2009/09_cap_and_trade_market_oversight_pirrong.aspx

[From introduction] The original concept of cap-and-trade envisioned that the total amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions would be capped and rights to emit would be traded. But it is inevitable that there will be demand to trade instruments other than emissions rights themselves. Specifically, there will be a demand to trade derivatives on emissions rights…

the current regulatory environment is extraordinarily hostile to derivatives generally, and to carbon derivatives particularly. Indeed, several proposals have been introduced to constrain or eliminate various types of derivatives trading, including proposals to:

• Impose limits (e.g., speculative limits) on the uses of these products, or on the amount of trading certain kinds of entities can undertake;
• Restrict where and how derivatives are traded, with a decided preference for trading on organized exchanges;
• Constrain arrangements for the allocation of performance risk, with a decided preference for “clearing” derivatives transactions through central counterparties (“CCPs”);
• Ban certain derivatives altogether.

The American Clean Energy and Securities Act (ACESA), passed by the US House of Representatives in June, includes provisions mandating many of these restrictions.

All of these proposals are misguided, some extremely so. They are predicated on a widespread misunderstanding of what derivatives are, how they work, and the reasons that firms trade them…In this chapter I will support them by going back to basics, describing what derivatives are, why they are used, how they are traded, the abuses they are subject to, and the most efficient ways to constrain those abuses.

Via Docuticker.

Global Climate Change Policy Tracker: An Investor’s Assessment
Source: DB Climate Change Advisors (Deutsche Bank Group) and Columbia Climate Center at the Earth Institute, Columbia University

This report, “Global Climate Change Policy Tracker: An Investor’s Assessment” (Climate Tracker), provides investors with an analysis of climate change policies and assigns a risk rating to 109 countries, states and regions based on key government mandates and supporting policy frameworks. The report was produced by DBCCA, working with the Columbia Climate Center at the Earth Institute, Columbia University.

The “Climate Tracker” is the first publicly-available analysis of its kind. It incorporates results of a model prepared by Columbia Climate Center researchers that estimates the impacts on carbon emissions of each of 270 major climate policies, and aggregates them at country, regional and global levels. The “Climate Tracker” provides a risk rating of countries and regions based on their relative attractiveness to investors. It is designed to help investors identify the best risk-adjusted returns in climate change investment opportunities around the world.

+ Executive Summary [PDF; 382 KB]
+ Detailed Summary of Targets by Region & Country [PDF; 474 KB]
+ Detailed Analysis of Targets by Region & Country [PDF; 1.74 MB]

Via Docuticker.

Maker of Rayon Clothes Barred from Deceptive “Bamboo” Claims
Source: Federal Trade Commission

Just because bamboo is green does not mean that companies who purport to make clothing and other textiles from processed bamboo can make unsupported “green” claims. The Federal Trade Commission today announced a settlement with a company that allegedly falsely claimed its rayon products are made of bamboo fiber, retain bamboo’s antimicrobial properties, and are biodegradable.

Under the settlement, the company has agreed that it will not make any future bamboo claims unless they are true and backed by reliable evidence, and that it will no longer claim that the clothing and bath products it sells are made of bamboo fiber – when they actually are made of rayon processed from bamboo plants.

+ In the Matter of The M Group, Inc., also doing business as Bamboosa…
+ Have You Been Bamboozled by Bamboo Fabrics?
+ How to Avoid Bamboozling Your Customers

Paved parking lots and driveways make our lives easier, but they often create an easy pathway for pollutants to reach underground water sources and alter the natural flow of water back into the ground. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today announced a study that will investigate ways to reduce pollution that can run off paved surfaces and improve how water filters back into the ground. EPA is testing a variety of different permeable pavement materials and rain gardens in the parking lot at the agency’s Edison, N.J. facility, which houses offices and its laboratory. Most major sources of pollution going into our waterways are well-controlled, but pollution runoff from hard surfaces remains a complicated problem.

“Runoff from parking lots and driveways is a significant source of water pollution in the United States and puts undo stress on our water infrastructure, especially in densely-populated urban areas,” said EPA Acting Regional Administrator George Pavlou. “By evaluating different designs and materials, this study will help us develop strategies to lessen the environmental impacts of parking lots across the country and make our communities more sustainable.”

This summer, EPA replaced a 43,000-square-foot section of the parking lot at its Edison facility with three different types of permeable pavement and planted several rain gardens with varying vegetation for the study. Over the next decade, EPA will evaluate the effectiveness of each pavement type and the rain gardens in removing pollutants from stormwater, and how they help water filter back into the ground. The parking lot will be functional during the study to accurately evaluate how the different types of pavement handle traffic and vehicle-related pollution like leaking oil.

Stormwater runoff is generated when precipitation from rain and snow flows over land or impervious surfaces, like parking lots or rooftops, and does not readily flow back into the ground. As the runoff flows over the land or impervious surfaces, it accumulates debris, chemicals, sediment or other pollutants that could adversely affect water quality if the runoff discharged is not properly treated.

This study is part of an effort by EPA’s National Risk Management Research Laboratory to evaluate permeable pavement as it relates to stormwater management practices on a national scale. While the installation of permeable pavement systems has become more prevalent, there is a lack of full-scale, outdoor, real-world permeable pavement research projects.

EPA also recognizes the potential of rain gardens as a green infrastructure management tool to lessen the effects of peak flows on aquatic resources. While local governments and homeowners are building many of these systems, relatively few studies have quantified the ability of rain gardens to allow the ground to better absorb and filter stormwater, which reduces peak flows.

For more information on how EPA manages and regulates stormwater, visit http://cfpub.epa.gov/npdes/home.cfm?program_id=6.

Read the full story at Mother Nature Network.

Ever wonder what happens to a billboard after it’s been taken down? Assumed they just wound up in a landfill?

At CNN, the vinyl promotional campaigns are escaping the dump and finding new life as fashion accessories. The vinyl used for CNN’s outdoor billboards is being recycled into tote bags as the company transitions to digital boards. The idea came about as CNN developed its outdoor marketing campaign for Planet in Peril; the company did not want to just discard the vinyl once the campaign was finished. An intern (who later landed a full-time staff position) suggested the idea to reuse the boards.

Read the full story in the Green Guide.

You recycle, ride a bike to work, and buy organic food. You pay extra for “green” electricity and have an eco-friendly car. So can you rest easy, with a clean conscience that your life is as sustainable as it can reasonably be?

Well … although many of us try our best to minimize environmental impacts, our actions don’t always achieve as much as we believe.

Expensive products that are marketed as eco-friendly may help us to assuage our guilt while drawing our attention away from the more pressing issues.

Meanwhile, other actions and products can be useful, but only when used as part of a wider environmentally aware lifestyle. Most worrying of all, some things marketed as sustainable can have negative side effects for the environment—that’s called greenwashing.

The Green Guide talked to several sustainability experts who highlighted five eco-strategies and products that may not be all they are hyped up to be.

Read the full post at Lifehacker.

The Printliminator bookmarklet lets you selectively remove any element from a web page to make it printer friendly in just a few simple clicks.

It (almost) goes without saying that such a tool minimizes paper use. :-)

Read the full story at New American Media.

When supermarket janitors in Local 1877 of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) rallied last month at Safeway and Lucky stores in San Jose, Calif., they weren’t only demanding improved wages and health benefits. They were calling for the adoption of green cleaning standards to make their jobs safer.

Earlier this year, SEIU janitors in Southern California made similar demands. Union members even dressed up as fruits and vegetables and picketed outside the 2009 National Grocers Association Convention in Las Vegas. They were calling attention to the safety of chemicals used to clean supermarkets.

Putting green cleaning standards on the agenda with wages and benefits is evidence that one of the country’s largest unions is broadening its idea of a safe and healthy workplace.