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.

UL Environment plans to develop sustainability standards for stone, ceramic, clay and glass building materials, as well as glazing materials, windows and their associated hardware and accessories.

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

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.

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

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.

“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.

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

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.

While current federal standards set the maximum allowable flush volume at one gallon per flush, an estimated 7.8 million urinals in use today are older inefficient models. In addition to using no more than a half gallon per flush, urinals bearing the WaterSense label must meet EPA’s performance requirements, ensuring they work as well or better than standard models.

In addition to businesses, schools can save by switching to WaterSense labeled urinals; a college with 10,000 students that installs WaterSense labeled urinals in its classroom buildings will save each year enough water to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

All WaterSense labeled products are independently tested and certified to meet rigorous criteria for both efficiency and performance. To ensure satisfactory performance, urinals will be tested for flush effectiveness and other measures before they can earn the WaterSense label.

The urinals will be available across in the country in a few months.

WaterSense is a partnership program sponsored by EPA to protect the future of our nation’s water supply by promoting and enhancing the market for water-efficient products and services.

More information: http://www.epa.gov/watersense

According to a recent survey of 2,000 people in the U.S., the bulk of the more than 400 green labels on products have failed to make any mark in the minds of shoppers, and that among those that people are familiar with, there is very little trust in those labels.

Canon U.S.A. has announced its first set of products developed with the company’s own life cycle assessment design system, which looked at the lifecycle emissions and environmental impacts of the products and their materials.

The new imageRUNNER ADVANCE series of multifunction office devices are expected to result in 30 percent fewer carbon dioxide emissions than previous product models. Canon designed the new products to be smaller and lighter than previous models and to use less packaging, all leading to fewer materials used, fewer transportation emissions and more efficient shipping.

Construction material entrepreneurs discussed efforts to create more environmentally friendly cement and other building products at a conference in California.

With flu season approaching—on top of everyday Oh-God-I-don’t-think-he-washed-his-hand-after-using-the-restroom moments—we’re all a bit more wary of germs lately. Keep the nasty illness spreaders away with this DIY hand sanitizer.

New standards will make beverage vending machines energy sippers
Source: American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy

The average energy use of the most common new cold beverage vending machines would be cut by about 42% according to new national minimum standards published today by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Today’s move fulfills President Obama’s February 5th pledge to complete five new efficiency standards by August. Energy efficiency and environmental groups lauded the new standards and DOE’s prompt fulfillment of the President’s commitment while lamenting the lack of energy-saving smart controls for vending machines that could have achieved even larger savings.

“With roughly 3 million beverage vending machines in the U.S., or 1 for every 100 Americans, a strong national standard means real savings for all the universities, park districts, hotels, and other institutions and businesses that pay the electric bills for these machines,” said Noah Horowitz, Senior Scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “With these standards, we are assured that all new soda vending machines will be energy sippers and not the energy guzzlers of old.”

These standards build on a series of improvements in vending machine efficiency achieved over the past decade. According to Horowitz, who pioneered research into vending machine energy use, many machines used as much as 3,000 to 5,000 kilowatt-hours per year in the mid-1990s. With the new standards, per unit energy use will be no more than about 1,400 to 1,800 kilowatt-hours per year. Once the new standards take effect in three years, typical new machines will save well over $100 per year, with the savings being much greater for larger machines and those in warm climates.

+ Energy Conservation Program: Energy Conservation Standards for Refrigerated Bottled or Canned Beverage Vending Machines (PDF; 847 KB)

Companies struggle to look environmentally friendly while keeping their “secret sauces” away from competitors.

As its license plates proclaim, Minnesota is the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

Now a Minneapolis-area company says it has figured out the secret to the state’s famously crystalline watering holes: moss.

The field of bioplastics (plastics made from feed stocks other than petroleum) has been growing every year, but for the most part the use of biodegradable or “organic” plastic has been limited to low-cost items like plastic forks and food packaging.

That is changing. Samsung’s much anticipated “green” phone called ‘Reclaim’ will be hitting Sprint stores the week of Aug. 10 and the casing is made largely from corn-based plastic.

My last post covered the Dean Foods announcement about their Horizon Natural line … this post covers another, quieter announcement:  Green Seal recently announced they’re rolling out a certification program for personal care products.

This is a good move, and I’m starting to think Green Seal may be the certification program to watch in the coming years. They have now established standards for 40 product groupings in seven categories, ranging from paints and coatings to alternative fuel vehicles and, now, to soaps and shower products. Their process is fairly stringent, manufacturers seem to respect them, and they appear to be in this for the long haul.  They’re also going after the right product categories. Sixty percent of the population told us in our Eco Pulse study they’re looking for greener products.  When we asked in what categories they’re looking for greener options, personal care products was the No. 3 category, chosen by a little over half the population.

Daniel Smith remembers when he first tried to sell a bamboo floor. The San Francisco entrepreneur thought his woodlike product was attractive and durable, but when he took samples to a Dallas trade show in 1994, the reaction wasn’t quite what he had hoped for. No one believed the plant’s round stalks—then most familiar in the U.S. as the stuff of backyard torches—could be turned into a smooth, lasting floor.

One of the most common complaints in the car rental industry is the smell of some vehicles, which can make you wonder what went on behind the wheel before you were handed the keys.

The Hertz Corp. is tackling the dilemma with a biodegradable, non-toxic product that saps the stench from stinky rental cars without comprising air quality or aggravating allergies — and so safe that the sales team of its maker, OMI Industries, will spray into their own eyes to prove a point. Hertz is rolling out its odor-free fleet program with Fresh Wave IAQ, a product that will be used at 72 North American airport rental locations, 1,000 off-airport locations and 170 licensee locations in the U.S.

Each one of us can make a difference- by changing how we use energy, how we use water, what we buy or don’t buy and how we think: but shifting 2 generations of habits in consumption can be a challenge.

Where to start?

• New section:  Get Organized: The GoGreen approach to stuff- and Green Cleaning
• GoGreen ROOM-BY-ROOM progressively make changes in each room of your house
• Start with the BIG 10: check off the most impactful household changes
• Invite your friends and neighbors to form groups and GoGreen together. Earn pointsfor learning, and growing the community.

Eligible Applicants:  State governments

The Recovery Act provides $296M to implement Section 124 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct 2005) establishing DOE support for States rebate programs for residential ENERGY STAR appliance products (those that represent improvements in efficiency compared to the majority of products in the market). States will receive formula-based funding to establish or supplement established ENERGY STAR appliance rebate programs. Federal funds, awarded from this FOA, may be used to pay up to 50% of the administrative costs to carry out the rebate program. The Appliance Rebate Program Objectives are:

• Save energy by encouraging appliance replacement through consumer rebates
• Make rebates available to consumers
• Enhance existing rebate programs by leveraging ENERGY STAR national partner relationships and local program infrastructure
• Keep administrative costs low while adhering to monitoring and evaluation requirements
• Promote state and national tracking and accountability
• Use existing ENERGY STAR consumer education and outreach materials

In addition to catching raindrops, homeowners and building managers are trying out another way to conserve water: composting toilets.

Last month the city of Austin, Tex., approved its first composting toilet. Columbus, Ohio is adding some composting toilets to its parks. Officials in Dutchess County, N.Y., are studying the concept.

Ten polymers developed by Eastman Chemical Company have received Cradle to Cradle (C2C) silver certification. The materials are used in a wide range of products and industries, including architecture, design and construction.

The polymers were recognized for being 100 percent recyclable, as well as having low toxicity and hazard potential. The C2C certification process, administered by McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC), looks at the materials that products are made of, what can be done with them when they’re disposed of, energy and water use, and companies’ social responsibility strategies.

Waste upcycler TerraCycle and bag-maker Yak Pak have teamed up to create a line of backpacks and other items made from reused vinyl billboards.

Cleaning company startup Xeros Ltd. and Cambridge Consultants have developed a washing machine that cuts water consumption by as much as 90 percent and launders clothes using reusable nylon polymer beads.

Bamboo has nothing but a positive reputation when it comes to the environment. It grows quickly, it doesn’t need pesticides or much water, it pulls carbon dioxide out of the air, and it can be used in a nearly unimaginable range of products. With its well deserved, eco-friendly reputation, companies have been quick to integrate bamboo into product lines and new bamboo-based businesses continue to pop up.

Shoe manufacturers have been busy burnishing their green credentials over the last few years, incorporating everything from recycled rubber soles to hemp shoelaces.

But one company appears to be taking the green theme to an extreme, integrating recycled CDs, old sofas, and even water bottles, among other materials, into a new running shoe.

Will a better aesthetic tempt more people into going solar? SRS Energy is betting on it.

The company has partnered with US Tile, a leading manufacturer of Spanish, slate, and shake roof tiles, to design solar panels with the exact same shapes as their clay counterparts.

The result is solar tiles that can be seamlessly integrated with the terra-cotta tiles on your roof. Instead of the solar panels being on your roof, your solar panels are the roof. Instead of consumers going solar as aftermarket adaptation, the Philadelphia-based company hopes that solar will become part of the architecture and building of residences and commercial properties.

Summer is the time for picnics, going to the beach, and barbecues. Unfortunately, it’s also the time for indoor pests. Commercial pest control is full of nasty chemicals, even though there are natural ways to fight off many pests.  Here are some ideas for ridding your home of creepy crawlies, without needing a hazmat suit (and of course, saving you some money).

Remember: The number one rule to keeping many bugs out is keeping the house clean. So don’t let your dirty dishes pile up, make sure to sweep and vacuum, etc.  Prevent any need for nontoxic pest control by using nontoxic household cleaners or even make your own homemade cleaners.

In an attempt to alleviate what can be an arduous evaluation process, the Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturer’s Association is introducing Level, a LEED-like third-party certification program for the contract furniture market.

BIFMA is billing their furniture sustainability standard as the first fully transparent, multi-attribute furniture sustainability standard addressing material utilization, energy and atmosphere impacts, human ecosystem health, and social responsibility.

Under the program, manufacturers’ products will be evaluated by third-party certifiers, NSF International and Scientific Certification Systems are the first bodies to be recognized for Level by BIFMA, in order to meet the commercial furniture industry trade association’s e3 sustainability standard.

A few years ago, when Stephen Yemm and his wife set out to build a bigger house for their growing family and home-based business in Marquand, Miss., an architect recommended cork flooring for some areas of the home. Yemm immediately thought of using wine corks for his new floor. “I’ve always been saving them, but never knew what to do with them,” he says. After all, there’s a limit to how many cork bulletin boards one person can make—or use.

But while wine cork recycling programs are common abroad, Yemm couldn’t finda a single one in the U.S. The stage was set for his company, Yemm & Hart Limited, to bring the trend to this country.

Y&H started out in 1981 making office furniture; eight years later, Yemm took a risk and pushed his company in a new direction, making construction materials out of recycled content—old rubber tires, detergent bottles, milk jugs, and the like. His grand experiment in wine cork recycling started in 2004.

http://www.mnn.com/the-home/interior-design/stories/old-wine-corks-to-new-floors

Reducing the amount of waste entering the waste stream is a central goal in the development of environmentally preferable purchasing. Purchase and production of recycled materials can have a huge impact. For example, paper and organic waste (food and yard clippings), both recyclable, account for an amazing 80 percent of the material sent to landfills.

You can read a label to find out what’s in your food. And a quick look inside a collar or hem tells you what your clothes are made of. Now, the same is happening with the stuff you use to clean your kitchen and bathroom.

Sierra Club Green Home was developed with a simple mission in mind: to help Americans make their homes more energy efficient, environmentally sustainable and healthy. We do not sell products or services. Instead, we provide great education to help you have a more sustainable home and make it easy for you to find local green businesses.

Investigating whether cleaning products labeled “organic” and “natural” really are better for the environment.

The soft toilet paper that Americans love uses millions of trees, because recycled paper does not have the same feel.

A new website now offers an empowering message and helpful resources for paper purchasers who want to make more earth-friendly consumer choices. Environmental Paper Network (EPN), a coalition of over 100 conservation groups, has unveiled WhatsInYourPaper.com, a comprehensive new online resource to guide and assist paper purchasers and companies to successfully switch to using environmentally superior paper.

Resolving to save money? And the planet? Compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs promise a win-win: according to the industry and U.S. government’s Energy Star program, which promotes CFL bulbs and other substitutes for energy-hogging incandescents, a CFL uses 75 percent less energy than its incandescent counterpart, lasts up to 10 times longer and prevents more than 450 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions from entering the atmosphere.

Over its lifetime, a single CFL can save the consumer $80 or more, depending on local electric rates.

But all CFL bulbs aren’t equal. Some have lower mercury content than others, and some last much longer. Unfortunately, you can’t tell the best of the best by their labels – or the U.S. government Energy Star logo. Some Energy Star labelled bulbs could not be legally sold in Europe due to excessive mercury content.

An Environmental Working Group investigation has identified 7 bulb lines made by Earthmate, Litetronics, Sylvania, Feit, MaxLite and Philips that trump the rest. These bulbs, listed in our Green Lighting Guide contain a fraction of the toxic mercury allowed by Energy Star, reducing the mercury contamination from a broken bulb. All last 8-15,000 hours, dramatically longer than the Energy Star standard of 6,000 hours, and also offer high efficiency.

At CES today, Motorola unveiled a new phone with a unique environmentally responsible design: The plastic housing of the Moto W233 Renew is made of plastics from recycled water bottles, according to the company, and is itself 100 percent recyclable. Moreover, the company says the device is the world’s first carbon-neutral phone.

Talking to consumers about buying less stuff just might be the third rail of green marketing. Reducing or limiting consumption is antithetical to marketing, or at least it has been so far. Practically no one seems to want to go there. I’ll accept my portion of responsibility. In the late 1980s, when I penned The Green Consumer, I helped advance the notion of solving our planet’s environmental ills by making good purchasing choices — that we could, in other words, shop our way to environmental health. “By choosing carefully, you can have a positive impact on the environment without significantly compromising your way of life,” I wrote. “That’s what being a green consumer is all about.”

Is that laundry soap truly “environmentally friendly”? Was that mattress treated with toxic chemicals? Is that sweatsuit fashioned from organic cotton? Is that lipstick “natural”?

California officials launched a sweeping green initiative on Tuesday to inform consumers exactly how hundreds of thousands of products sold in the state are manufactured and transported and how safe their ingredients are.

Hangers? I mean, seriously, do we really need eco-friendly clothing hangers?

“Do we ever,” says Danny Schrager, CEO of Mountain Valley Recycling in Morristown, Tenn. “Ninety percent of America’s clothes are now imported, and every garment that comes in from overseas comes in on a hanger — 30 to 40 billion of them each year.”

Tips and tricks from the Environmental Protection Agency on what you can do to conserve energy, reduce waste and even lower your carbon footprint this holiday season.

Also in the spirit of the season, an article from the November 28, 2007 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, “Real vs. fake: Which tree is greener?”

Factories, data centers, power plants–even your clothes dryer–throw off waste heat that could be a useful source of energy. But most existing heat-harvesting technologies are efficient only at temperatures above 150 °C, and much waste heat just isn’t that hot. Now Ener-G-Rotors, based in Schenectady, NY, is developing technology that can use heat between 65 and 150 °C.

The company replaces the turbine in a typical electrical generator with a device called a gerotor, which it claims to have made “near frictionless.” “If this works, it’s so huge,” says Bob Bechtold, president of Harbec Plastics, one of Ener-G-Rotors’ potential customers. “I’ve been dreaming about the concept of using [low-temperature waste heat] ever since I first knew what it was about . . . It’s all about using what we have more completely.”

• Serious Materials EcoRock
• Electratherm Green Machine
• Envirofit Clean Cookstove
• Enphase Energy Micro-inverter System
• Mariah Power Windspire
• Agroplast All-in-One

At the Greenbuild International Conference and Expo in Boston, Mass., Owens Corning (NYSE: OC) announced it has increased the certified recycled content in its flagship PINK Fiberglas(TM) insulation to a minimum of 40 percent. At this level of recycled content, the amount of waste glass diverted from landfills could form a two-lane glass highway that extends 1.3 times around the world(1). The certification, supplied by leading, independent third-party certifier Scientific Certification Systems (SCS), demonstrates a five percent increase over its prior level and maintains the product line’s status as the fiberglass insulation with the highest level of certified recycled content in North America.