Green, Green, and Green

There is a neat iPhone app that can help you find Green stuff at the store, I need to take a look at it. Sounds interesting. Frustration is getting past the green wash.

Green Ham - Environmental Pork

So what is the US Gov. going to do about the impact of the credit crunch? Nobody's sure. Will they help homeowners install solar, or direct loans to manufacturers, and/or just build a smart grid alternate energy? Some type of tax credits? I hope the right use of funding is done, and not more roads to no where based on the amount of power of a state's representative/senator has in congress. Environmental Pork - I guess the term would be Green Ham.

LED's and Prius in Denver at Cedia

When I was out getting lunch at the 16th street Mall, I saw a Prius taxi. This was after getting honked at by a regular taxi.

And in the show there was a booth selling LED's and I had a nice talk with the person. They new the practical side, but not the bigger picture. It's interested they are doing RGB LED's both in the doping as well as in the packaging, so you can get as many colors as you want. And with the power supply, you can put it 100 ft away using 10 AWG wire at 10Volts.

At a place selling power protection, the guy had no idea what he was selling. I spent 10 years in the UPS industry. I stopped by APC and they had a smart power strip, that when the main power plug was not drawing power it shut down the other plugs to save power. Neat idea so that printer is not on when the computer is off.

Green - who actually acts green?

Hassles, negative feedback affect green actions from the San Jose Mercury News.

Great Quote:

"people not defining themselves as green doing green things, and others that said they were green and drove SUVs and had big houses," she said.

This is also so true in the "Green" industry. I like Walmart's comment where they are not being green for the sake of being green, but because it makes economical sense "we are not green".

My opinion, it's called making everything more efficient which is common sense, which is unfortunately not that common.

Future Trends on Travel

At the show I am helping out at a booth, lots of vendors with tele-conferencing packages. Using flat screens in combination with a camera. The other hot product is smart white boards. Where you can write on it, then print out the results. There were also add ons for existing white boards for doing this.

There was not a lot of environmental emphasis, one projection screen reseller offered that if you bought a new one from them, they would take the old one back at no cost to be recycled. Since the screen is mostly metal and some plastic, recycling should be easy. It's frustrating when people use the word environmental or green, and it has no substance behind it.

Green Marketing is a big Gray...

Great article from SF Chronicle - Green product seals are gray area

The article discusses how many of the seals used in marketing are meaningless.

My favorite part of the article was the examples of green claims that are questionable...

• Nature Valley Crunchy Granola Bars are labeled as "100% natural" - but there is no government standard for what the word "natural" means except for meat and poultry. The list of ingredients in these granola bars is practically identical to a rival brand of granola bars that don't call themselves "natural."
• Jennie-O Turkey Store ground turkey is billed as "all natural." The U.S. Department of Agriculture says that natural poultry can't have artificial ingredients or added color. However, it's legal for "natural" turkey to have been raised on a diet that included hormones, antibiotics or genetically modified corn.
• Gillette shaving gel has a "no CFCs" label. That's factually accurate but irrelevant, since CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons, which damage the ozone layer) have been banned in the United States for nearly 30 years.

It seems there is no definition of what Natural means. The term that was not used in the article is green wash.

Walmart's not Green

Per Wal-Mart's CEO, "“We are not green.”"

Translation - Wal-Mart is doing the efforts they are doing to improve efficiency and increase their profits. An example of an effort is reducing packaging (lowers cost since more items take up less space and less cost of materials used for packaging). This also has an environmental benefit. The same thing by increasing the energy efficiency of their stores, this reduces cost. The celling of CFL's is a business opportunity that also helps the environment overall (mercury is an issue).

Bio Fuels - Another source of pollution?

Discharges from bio fuel producers can have a substantial environmental impact. NY Times story Pollution Is Called a Byproduct of a ‘Clean’ Fuel. The other day there was an article about the huge amount of water needed for producing ethanol, and how this poses a possible limit. Here is a positive view of how much water Ethanol production uses.

I am not sure if the reporting of negative articles about pollution is a trend. Yesterday's article about Solar Plant Waste in China is an example. Sometimes when you have to much positive reporting, there is a backlash with an increase in negative stories on subjects. A joke I heard was if your a company, start worrying when your CEO's picture is on business week, for that's when things are about to go negative.

Greed in the Name of Green

Greed In the Name Of Green from the Washington Post. Marketing is about getting people to buy your product, so if you can make some type of Green claim or change your product at minimal cost to be more eco-friendly to increase sales, it makes sense. The article shows some of the more absurd products that are out there. The challenge as consumers is how to make a sensible decision balancing being green, while managing the pocketbook.

Green Wash - False Environmental Advertising Claims

Wall Street Journal article about Green Washing. False 'Green' Ads Draw Global Scrutiny
Watchdogs' Rulings Bring Bad Publicity, But Many Lack Bite
By TOM WRIGHTJanuary 30, 2008; Page B4

Keypoints:

• Advertisements may contain false claims about the environment.
• Checking those claims takes time
• Some governments and NGO's check claims.
• Impact can be governments such as Norway banning an advertisement or bad publicity from NGO's.
• US FTC this month is starting to monitor for Green Wash.

My 2 Cents. I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here! The amount of companies claiming to be Environmental at CES is another example of this.