MHI announces they now are producing thermoformed packaging made 100% from collected and recycled water, juice and sports drink plastic bottles. Trays, clamshells, blisters and more produced with Good Earth(tm) 100% recycled PET are also Biodegradable, Compostable and Recyclable. FDA approved, this proprietary material can be used for food and non food applications.

Good Earth(tm) 100% post consumer recycled content PET is the newest addition to MHI’s proprietary family of eco friendly packaging. This material expands MHI’s existing selection of material options marketed as “Todays’s Most Practical Alternatives” for environmentally responsible packaging.

Developed and manufactured by MHI, a vertically intergrated division of CEI Incorporated, this new proprietary material offers many environmental, performance and cost benefits for those looking to use more eco friendly packaging. This carbon footprint reducing option is not only made 100% from recycled plastic bottles, it is also biodegradable and compostable in a landfill or compost environment. It can also be recycled through existing programs.
Currently, the average person discards 166 plastic bottles annually with 8 out of 10 ending up in landfills.

FDA approval, high clarity, range of colors, temperature range and good strength make it an attractive and practical alternative for a wide range of food and consumer goods packaging. Performance and physical characteristics are the same as or close to the traditional materials (PET & PVC) it can easily replace and does not have any shelf life, storage or heat sensitivity limitations.

Cost of packaging manufactured from this newest Good Earth ™ material is usually less than the traditional material it replaces and is readily available.

Also available (depending on certain factors) is a “closed loop” program where plastic bottles can be picked up and then remanufactured into 100% post consumer recycled content thermoformed packaging for the company or institution returning the bottles.

For more information call 978-745-8876 or visit www.goodearthpkg.com

http://www.pr.com/press-release/106801

The hippies are coming! The hippies are coming!

That may have been what the Wakarusa Music and Camping Festival initially attracted in its first few years of existence. The four-day festival at Clinton Lake State Park in Lawrence, Kan., prides itself in bringing in plenty of big names from the jam band scene along with premiere acts in alt-country, Southern rock, reggae and bluegrass while raising awareness for environmental issues.

For its fifth year, Wakarusa is trying something different.

The festival, which takes place Thursday, June 5 through Sunday, June 8, is expanding its musical horizons even further. They are bringing in indie rock mainstays like Built to Spill, piano-playing singer/songwriter Ben Folds, country legend Emmylou Harris, goofy alt-rockers Cake, underground hip-hop acts like Blackalicious and Del the Funky Homosapien and Uncle Monk, a bluegrass duo featuring none other than Tommy Ramone, the last surviving member of the seminal punk rock quartet The Ramones.

These are just a few groups on a jam-packed lineup including headliners like The Flaming Lips, Sound Tribe Sector Nine, Keller Williams, Zappa Plays Zappa, Mickey Hart Band featuring Steve Kimock and George Porter Jr., Galactic, The Avett Brothers and a ton of others.

Brett Mosiman, co-director of Wakarusa, realized that this year instead of having similar genres competing for the festival’s crowd over the four-day period, it would be beneficial to the festival to do a little bit of counter-programming with the more than 120 bands on the festival’s lineup.

“I think of part of it was just getting a handle on the fact that we have 300 or 400 hours or music,” Mosiman says. “If we wanted to keep five or six stages, we had to broaden the booking.”

The festival’s five stages will have music playing nearly 24 hours a day, which will be perfect for attendees who pay between $129 to $169 for a four-day pass.

But this year, Wakarusa is hoping that their diverse lineup featuring several big-name acts will get more of a local audience from Kansas City and other areas close by to get the Wakarusa experience, even if it’s only for a night.

“We kind want to offer a little something more for the people here in the regional community,” says David Barrett, director of marketing for Wakarusa. “We want people just to come out to Wakarusa for a day and see what it’s like.”

Or a weekend. Wakarusa is offering its usual single-day tickets for $49 while also offering a weekender pass for $99 in case people couldn’t take off four days because of something silly like jobs or kids or things like that.

While you are at Wakarusa, you may notice how friendly the festival is to the environment it occupies. The generators run on biodiesel. Recycling also is a huge emphasis. Last year’s festival recycled 8,000 pounds of waste that would normally end up gracing local landfills. They are also instituting their first-ever composting program, so whatever food you don’t want (or think tastes like crap) can go towards growing a happy little plant. Bob Ross would be proud.

They will also have a sustainability meeting featuring the editor of Mother Earth News, Brian Welch, a campus tour of human rights awareness and a no-sweat fashion show to display clothes not manufactured in sweat shops.

If you ask Mosiman, these activities are an essential element of Wakarusa’s identity.

“(They’re) all the normal things for us, but I don’t think they are normal for most festivals,” Mosiman says. “We just consider that part of the brand now.”

And another characteristic of the Wakarusa brand is the vendors. The 75 food, arts and crafts vendors will be selling a little bit of everything. On the arts and crafts side, you could pick up clothing, glass marbles, art, glow-in-the-dark light covers, bottle holders and goods made of bee wax. As far as food goes, Madina Salaty, Wakarusa’s vendor coordinator, says they have everything from “healthy options to junk food.” You’ve got your pizza, hamburgers, fries, but you’ve also got organic and vegetarian options, Cajun, Indian, Middle Eastern, Mexican and Chinese food to choose from.

Salaty says that while the number of vendors has slightly increased this year, high gas prices have kept vendors who consistently travel many miles to sell their products at Wakarusa from making the trip.

“We have lost several vendors,” she says. “They have specifically told me that that’s the reason.”

The location of Wakarusa should be enough for people to ignore the prices at the pump. The festival will once again place at Clinton Lake State Park, southwest of Lawrence, Kan. The 1,500 acre facility has plenty to offer those who aren’t just there for the music, with beaches, an 11,000 acre lake, horseshoe pits and hiking trails.

“The amenities are really like no other festival that’s held in a field or a polo ground,” Mosiman says. “It’s really like a family vacation.”

Mosiman knows the traveling aspect of Wakarusa may be less tempting with gas prices so high, but he thinks that shouldn’t stop you from enjoying a unique musical experience, no matter how long you decide to stay.

“I think it’s impacting everybody, and our big message is that you still got to have fun. You have to cut loose,” Mosiman says. “Don’t let those greedy oil bastards take away your fun and your Wakarusa weekend.”

For more information, go to www.wakarusa.com.

by Blake Hannon

http://www.stjoenews.net/news/2008/may/30/loud-outdoors/?diem

Of all the things to obsess about, toilet paper has never been at the top of my list. Or the bottom.

Then I met Jeff Wells, a pleasant, earnest ornithologist who lives in Maine and was visiting Philly. Wells and a few environmental groups say I should buy paper products made from recycled paper - not trees.

Now, Wells obsesses about birds, billions of which breed in Canada’s boreal forest, which he also obsesses about because he’s a scientist with the International Boreal Conservation Campaign.

The boreal stretches nearly from Alaska to the Atlantic; it absorbs tons of carbon dioxide and it’s a major summer nesting ground for birds that winter in backyards like mine.

But the boreal forest is being logged at the rate of 2.5 million acres a year, Wells says. Some is for lumber, sure. But also for paper. Toilet paper.

Paper giant Kimberly-Clark says all the leading consumer tissue brands in North America contain primarily virgin fiber.

In a longstanding dispute, the company says it mainly uses leftover tree pulp, but environmentalists insist that entire trees are being given over to toilet tissue.

The company said about 11 percent of its virgin pulp comes from the boreal - which is then reforested.

Still, environmentalists wonder why we are, in effect, flushing virgin wood pulp of any sort down the toilet when at the same time we’re sending nearly half of all the perfectly good paper left over from home and office use to landfills.

“It’s one of those things that just doesn’t make sense in today’s world,” Wells said.

At least half a dozen companies now make TP from recycled paper. I took a field trip to area grocery stores to investigate.

OK, then, talk about obsessed. In one paper goods aisle, there were 18 kinds of toilet paper - including one aimed specifically at children.

Every store also had at least one eco brand. I bought seven. Back home, I piled my loot onto the dining room table and took stock.

The eco-packages had pictures of trees and cute slogans: “Soft on Nature, Soft on You.”

And in case anyone should miss the “100 percent recycled” label, they had names such as Nature’s Balance, Earth First, Sunrise, Earth Friendly and Seventh Generation.

All were white, so I guess that matters to most people. (The eco brands touted a chlorine-free bleaching process.)

Many were embossed with flowers or butterflies, which seemed silly until I learned the designs hold the paper together after it has been air-fluffed to make it softer.

Traditional toilet tissue ranges from half a cent to 4.5 cents per square foot. The eco-brands were actually less: half a cent to 2.3 cents per square foot.

Seventh Generation contends on its packaging that if every household in the United States replaced just one four-pack of virgin fiber TP with recycled, it would save the equivalent of nearly a million trees.

The toilet paper awaited me. I tried them all.

I’m happy to report I have not had to seek medical attention for abrasions from scratchy paper - because it was fine.

Allen Hershkowitz is a proponent of recycled toilet tissue and a scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Now, he is obsessed. He has timed himself in the bathroom and says it takes less than five seconds to use up a piece of tissue.

And for that, he asks, we’re using trees?

Recently, he went to a swank French spa to give a speech. The TP was brownish, stiff. But, “the president of France goes there,” he said, “and everybody survives.”

Still, I recently had a bad cold, my nose raw from all the tissues, and I wasn’t even using recycled.

I told the spokeswoman at Seventh Generation, and she laughed. In cold and flu season, even they “concede to softer brands,” she wryly noted.

So maybe I’ll just go with the virgin pulp for my delicate nose. And I’ll take eco-paper for, uh, the other end.

No more trees for me.

GreenSpace:

For more about recycled paper and trees, go to: http://go.philly.com/greenspace

GreenSpace: Pointers for Paper Products

What’s in recycled: Environmental groups advocate paper products made from 100 percent recycled materials. Look for a high percentage of “post-consumer” material, made of paper recycled from homes and offices. Regular “recycled” can contain leftover paper from industrial processes.

Paper recycling update: Last week, the American Forest and Paper Association announced that in 2007, an all-time high of 56 percent of the paper used in the country was recovered for recycling. It totaled 54.3 million tons - more than 360 pounds for every person in the country. The group set a goal of 60 percent by 2012, which still leaves 40 percent more to go.

Historical note: Yo! Philadelphia is a cradle of paper progress. In 1690, William Rittenhouse and William Bradford founded the first North American paper mill along the Wissahickon Creek, making paper from old cloth rags. (Wood wasn’t used in the United States until the early 1900s.) Scott Paper Co., founded by two brothers in 1879 in Philadelphia, marketed the first rolls of toilet paper, and today Kimberly-Clark employees still make Scott products at the plant in Chester.

What’s ahead: Major manufacturers are making changes. Kimberly-Clark is test-marketing Scott Naturals. The line includes facial tissues from 20 percent post-consumer recycled fiber, TP from 40 percent, and paper towels from 80 percent.

By Sandy Bauers

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/sandy_bauers/20080407_GreenSpace__On_a_roll__Dead_trees_go_down_the_toilet.html

PHOENIX— Goodwill of Central Arizona celebrates its newest store opening with a “green spring cleaning” theme. So clean out your closets and clean up on bargains!  Donating and shopping at Goodwill keeps hundreds of millions of pounds of used clothing and household items out of landfills and puts them into the hands of those who can reuse them. Revenue generated from the resale of donated items is put directly into the community to fund work skills development and employment services for the disadvantaged in central Arizona.

Goodwill will open its 39th store near Ahwatukee, 15633 S. 32nd Street, at 9 a.m., Friday, March 28, 2008.  Stop by, shop and enter to win prizes, as well as find great bargains and unique treasures.  Prizes include an Oreck vacuum, EarthMaids cleaning services certificates and earth-friendly cleaning products and the grand prize of two open-ended roundtrip domestic air tickets, donated by US Airways. Individuals donating items during the grand opening will receive a $5 off coupon good toward their next purchase.  Refreshments will be served.

Regular store hours are 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday. Tax-deductible donations will be accepted during regular store hours.

Grand Opening events are stocked with over 100,000 quality items including electronics, furniture, clothing, jewelry and household goods.

Goodwill of Central Arizona, an organization dedicated to helping individuals in central Arizona with disadvantaging conditions overcome their barriers to employment and find self-sufficiency through the power of work.

Celebrating 60 years of serving the community, Goodwill of Central Arizona is one of the oldest and largest non-profit agencies in Arizona. Our mission is to “Put People to Work” throughout Arizona by providing job training and career services to those with vocational disadvantages that can include physical and emotional barriers, welfare dependency, illiteracy and age. In 2007, we served almost 11,000 youth and adults on their quest toward self-sufficiency and secured over 4,400 employment opportunities. For more information on Goodwill of Central Arizona visit www.goodwillaz.org.

http://www.evliving.com/cities_news.php?action=fullnews&id=9153

What role, if any, do antiques and collectibles play in the environmental movement? The answer at the moment is a small one, albeit a growing one. But it is time to make it a major one. Antiques and collectibles are environmentally friendly.

What can the trade do to increase public awareness that antiques and collectibles can and do play a vital role in the greening of America — no, make that the globe? The first step is to acknowledge our historical past. We are the first recyclers. As early as the Middle Ages, individuals gathered on Fair Days to sell and exchange used goods. The individuals who bought them reused them. ”Reused” is the key word. Reusing existing resources is one of the basic tenets of the environmentalist movement.

During my recent visit to Lincoln City, Ore., to participate in its annual Antique Week celebrations, I visited with Rick Brissette and Dan Beck, owners of the Little Antique Mall (www.littleantiquemall.com). During our conversation, I asked Rick and Dan if they had developed any new sales techniques. Rick offered a one-word answer: ‘’sustainability.”

I take pride in my ability to be at the cutting edge of developments in the antiques and collectibles trade. Rick’s ‘’sustainability” took me completely by surprise.

Rick explained that an increasing number of customers are shopping at the Little Antique Mall for environmental reasons. Their goal is to buy older goods for reuse. They have two primary motivations for doing this. First, all the items they purchase are cheaper than new. Second, by purchasing and reusing older items they are reducing the necessity to manufacture new products, thus conserving scarce environmental resources.

As I wrote the above paragraph I heard conservative cries of unpatriotic, antibusiness and unAmerican in the back of my mind. America is a capitalist country. The sale of new goods is a vital part of its economy.

While true, it is clear that global consumption of natural resources cannot continue at its current pace if future generations have any hope of maintaining our existing lifestyle. We need to conserve. We must restore balance.

When did America reach the point where reusing older goods became unpatriotic? My parents experienced the Depression and the shortages of World War II. They recycled goods. I wore more than my fair share of hand-me-down clothing. My first apartment was furnished with hand-me-downs from my parents, aunts and uncles, and friends of the family. We repaired appliances that did not work. My parents and my generation assumed products were meant to last more than one generation.

Although Bernard London’s ”Ending the Depression through Planned Obsolescence,” published in 1932, introduced the concept, it was Brooks Stevens, an American industrial designer, who popularized the concept in the mid-1950s. It was widely accepted by the 1960s.

When individuals in the antiques and collectibles trade complain about something, I often recommend they look in the mirror to find the first solution to the problem. An honest look in the mirror reveals that my generation and the first wave of baby boomers are largely responsible for the advancement of planned obsolescence. We were tired of the old. We only wanted ”new” things, if not for ourselves, for our children. We ignored the advice of our elders who urged us to check out auctions, thrift shops and garage sales where we could buy cheaper than new and often better quality.

Planned obsolescence does work. Consider the abandoned BETA cameras and players, cassette tape recorders, out-dated computer equipment, dial telephones, pocket calculators, Polaroid and instamatic cameras, 331/3, 45, and 78 rpm records and the equipment to play them that consume space in America’s attics, basements, closets, garages and sheds.

The good news is that planned obsolescence does not work all the time. Consider the enormous quantity of reusable items available for sale at auction, estate/tag sales, flea markets, garage/yard sales and swap meets. Applying the cheaper-than-new concept, add antiques malls and shows to the list. There is more non-obsolescent material available than we realize.

In researching the concept of sustainability, I found numerous definitions. The definition on the Web site of the United States Environmental Protection Agency had the strongest appeal: ”Sustainability means ‘meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”’ The EPA Web site features four areas of concentration: (1) Built Environment, (2) Water, Ecosystems & Agriculture, (3) Energy & the Environment, and (4) Materials & Toxics. I assume the reuse of antiques and collectibles is one aspect of the Built Environment.

Sustainability’s goal is to achieve a level of balance that can last indefinitely. The critical question is: ”How long can human ecological systems be expected to be usefully productive?” Is our modern industrial society destined to collapse?

The answer does not have to be yes. I realize encouraging individuals to buy antiques and collectibles for reuse rather than collecting and decorating (although some decorating may be viewed as reuse) purposes has an extremely minor impact relative to issues such an anthropogenic climate change and the depletion of fossil fuel reserves. However, the old cliché applies: Anything is better than nothing.

Rick and Dan recently developed this tag line for their mall: ”Antiques — sustainability, retainability, sensibility!” It is a great marketing approach, especially for younger consumers. Rick indicated there’s a growing number of younger customers buying for reuse rather than collecting or decorating purposes.

In an editorial, ”The Compact Market,” S. Clayton Pennington noted: ”This type of buyer can help infuse new life in the world of antiques, where dealers offer plenty of functional yet unique objects, often for reasonable prices.

”Compact shopping may be coming to a neighborhood near you. We think it makes sense for dealers to embrace, and help actively promote, this green philosophy. It’s good for the Earth, and good for the bottom line.”

The Compact originated in January 2006 in San Francisco when nine individuals decided to purchase nothing new for one calendar year. It has become an international movement.

It is not clear if ”new” applies to all goods or only to newly made goods. It certainly means all goods to those participating in San Francisco’s Really Really Free Market where a sign reads ”No Money, No Barter, No Trade, Everything Is Free!” Such an approach is clearly an anathema to the success of all business, including the antiques and collectibles business.

The less extreme members of The Compact stress living with secondhand goods. They stress reuse and are willing to buy reusable goods that fit into their lifestyle. While the antiques and collectibles trade needs to be aware of The Compact and develop sales techniques that appeal to its members, it will achieve far more by stressing the sustainability concept.

Finally, I asked Rick and Dan what objects were selling well at the Little Antique Mall. Their immediate response was glass storage dishes, especially those that can be refrigerated and also used for cooking. Rick told me to check out the concept of offgassing. Offgassing is the evaporation of volatile chemicals in non-metallic materials, such as carpet, paint, plastics at normal atmospheric pressure.

When lecturing antiques and collectibles dealers about how to survive in the trade, I stress the concept of giving the customers what they want. Guess I will be seeing a lot more glass containers for sale at antiques malls and shows and flea markets in the months ahead.

Let the greening of antiques and collectibles begin!

Rinker Enterprises and Harry L. Rinker are at http://www.harryrinker.com .

You can listen and participate in ”Whatcha Got?, Harry’s antiques and collectibles radio call-in show, on Sunday mornings between 8 and 10 a.m. If you cannot find it on a station in your area, ”Whatcha Got?” streams live and is archived on the Internet at http://www.goldenbroadcasters.com

By Harry Rinker

http://www.mcall.com/entertainment/all-rinker303.6296622mar04,0,5606230.story

DUBLIN — There is something missing from this otherwise typical bustling cityscape. There are taxis and buses. There are hip bars and pollution. Every other person is talking into a cellphone. But there are no plastic shopping bags, the ubiquitous symbol of urban life.

In 2002, Ireland passed a tax on plastic bags; customers who want them must now pay 33 cents per bag at the register. There was an advertising awareness campaign. And then something happened that was bigger than the sum of these parts.

Within weeks, plastic bag use dropped 94 percent. Within a year, nearly everyone had bought reusable cloth bags, keeping them in offices and in the backs of cars. Plastic bags were not outlawed, but carrying them became socially unacceptable — on a par with wearing a fur coat or not cleaning up after one’s dog.

“When my roommate brings one in the flat it annoys the hell out of me,” said Edel Egan, a photographer, carrying groceries last week in a red backpack.

Drowning in a sea of plastic bags, countries from China to Australia, cities from San Francisco to New York have in the past year adopted a flurry of laws and regulations to address the problem, so far with mixed success. The New York City Council, for example, in the face of stiff resistance from business interests, passed a measure requiring only that stores that hand out plastic bags take them back for recycling.

But in the parking lot of a Superquinn Market, Ireland’s largest grocery chain, it is clear that the country is well into the post-plastic-bag era. “I used to get half a dozen with every shop. Now I’d never ever buy one,” said Cathal McKeown, 40, a civil servant carrying two large black cloth bags bearing the bright green Superquinn motto. “If I forgot these, I’d just take the cart of groceries and put them loose in the boot of the car, rather than buy a bag.”

Gerry McCartney, 50, a data processor, has also switched to cloth. “The tax is not so much, but it completely changed a very bad habit,” he said. “Now you never see plastic.”

In January almost 42 billion plastic bags were used worldwide, according to reusablebags.com; the figure increases by more than half a million bags every minute. A vast majority are not reused, ending up as waste — in landfills or as litter. Because plastic bags are light and compressible, they constitute only 2 percent of landfill, but since most are not biodegradable, they will remain there.

In a few countries, including Germany, grocers have long charged a nominal fee for plastic bags, and cloth carrier bags are common. But they are the exception.

In the past few months, several countries have announced plans to eliminate the bags. Bangladesh and some African nations have sought to ban them because they clog fragile sewerage systems, creating a health hazard. Starting this summer, China will prohibit sellers from handing out free plastic shopping bags, but the price they should charge is not specified, and there is little capacity for enforcement. Australia says it wants to end free plastic bags by the end of the year, but has not decided how.

Efforts to tax plastic bags have failed in many places because of heated opposition from manufacturers as well as from merchants, who have said a tax would be bad for business. In Britain, Los Angeles and San Francisco, proposed taxes failed to gain political approval, though San Francisco passed a ban last year. Some countries, like Italy, have settled for voluntary participation.

But there were no plastic bag makers in Ireland (most bags here came from China), and a forceful environment minister gave reluctant shopkeepers little wiggle room, making it illegal for them to pay for the bags on behalf of customers. The government collects the tax, which finances environmental enforcement and cleanup programs.

Furthermore, the environment minister told shopkeepers that if they changed from plastic to paper, he would tax those bags, too.

While paper bags, which degrade, are in some ways better for the environment, studies suggest that more greenhouse gases are released in their manufacture and transportation than in the production of plastic bags.

Today, Ireland’s retailers are great promoters of taxing the bags. “I spent many months arguing against this tax with the minister; I thought customers wouldn’t accept it,” said Senator Feargal Quinn, founder of the Superquinn chain. “But I have become a big, big enthusiast.”

Mr. Quinn is also president of EuroCommerce, a group representing six million European retailers. In that capacity, he has encouraged a plastic bag tax in other countries. But members are not buying it. “They say: ‘Oh, no, no. It wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t be acceptable in our country,’ ” Mr. Quinn said.

As nations fail to act decisively, some environmentally conscious chains have moved in with their own policies. Whole Foods Market announced in January that its stores would no longer offer disposable plastic bags, using recycled paper or cloth instead, and many chains are starting to charge customers for plastic bags.

But such ad hoc efforts are unlikely to have the impact of a national tax. Mr. Quinn said that when his Superquinn stores tried a decade ago to charge 1 cent for plastic bags, customers rebelled. He found himself standing at the cash register buying bags for customers with change from his own pocket to prevent them from going elsewhere.

After five years of the plastic bag tax, Ireland has changed the image of cloth bags, a feat advocates hope to achieve in the United States. Vincent Cobb, the president of reusablebags.com, who founded the company four years ago to promote the issue, said: “Using cloth bags has been seen as an extreme act of a crazed environmentalist. We want it to be seen as something a smart, progressive person would carry.”

Some things worked to Ireland’s advantage. Almost all markets are part of chains that are highly computerized, with cash registers that already collect a national sales tax, so adding the bag tax involved a minimum of reprogramming, and there was little room for evasion.

The country also has a young, flexible population that has proved to be a good testing ground for innovation, from cellphone services to nonsmoking laws. Despite these favorable conditions, Ireland still ended up raising the bag tax 50 percent, after officials noted that consumption was rising slightly.

Ireland has moved on with the tax concept, proposing similar taxes on customers for A.T.M. receipts and chewing gum. (The sidewalks of Dublin are dotted with old wads.) The gum tax has been avoided for the time being because the chewing gum giant Wrigley agreed to create a public cleanup fund as an alternative. This year, the government plans to ban conventional light bulbs, making only low-energy, long-life fluorescent bulbs available.

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/world/europe/02bags.html?_r=3&hp=&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Tech is gradually becoming greener, and some of its biggest companies are leading the environmental push.

Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) Wednesday plans to announce that it is putting recycled plastic into the ink cartridges for its printers. Although ink cartridges are small, there are so many of them they can be a sizable environmental problem.

HP plans to use 10 million pounds of recycled plastic in its cartridges this year. And the plastic isn’t just easily reused factory waste — it’s made from recycled bottles and other goods previously owned by consumers.

Intel (INTC) and IBM (IBM) are also announcing new environmental programs. Such moves may help improve the tech industry’s reputation for often causing harm to the Earth.

Intel is now the largest corporate user of renewable energy in the USA, the Environmental Protection Agency said this week. The chip giant plans to purchase more than 1.3 million kilowatt hours in wind, solar and other types of green power each year. That’s enough energy to power about 133,000 households.

Intel won’t say how much extra the green power costs. But the company considers the purchase an “investment in the renewable-energy market,” spokesman Bill Calder says.

IBM this month launched the Eco-Patent Commons, a program to help inventors share environmental knowledge. Anyone who has patented a green process or product can contribute it to the commons. There, the patent is made available for anyone to use, for free.

IBM contributed a patent for a green cleaning process used in electronics manufacturing and one for environmentally friendly packaging materials. Nokia, Sony (SNE) and Pitney Bowes (PBI) have also donated patents. Since companies usually guard patents, “It’s a little counterintuitive,” says IBM spokesman Mike Maloney. But it’s a way to “team with other like-minded companies to see what we can do,” he says.

Dell (DELL) last year pledged to become “the greenest technology company” through recycling and other initiatives. Apple, (AAPL) Panasonic, Sun Microsystems (JAVAD) and Motorola (MOT) also recently launched initiatives.

Environmentalists applaud the moves but say much more needs to be done. “There needs to be a major paradigm shift, and right now we’re just trimming around the edges,” says Sheila Davis, head of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, an advocacy group.

Tech is still not very Earth-friendly, Davis says. Most computers and electronics contain dangerous heavy metals and un-recyclable plastic. Semiconductor manufacturing requires lots of water and dangerous chemicals. Computer data centers, which power most big websites, use massive amounts of electricity.

And while tech firms are happy to put out green-themed press releases, they’re often reluctant to release statistics about their environmental impact. HP won’t say what percentage of its print cartridges will be made using the recycled plastic, for example. Companies “really need to look at their entire footprint,” Davis says.

By Michelle Kessler

 http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/environment/2008-01-29-green-tech_N.htm

Half buried in the dry, red earth of New Mexico, are a series of buildings, unconventional in appearance and radical in design. They’re Earthships — sustainable, self-sufficient homes — and the 50 or so that are scattered outside the New Mexico town of Taos constitute the Earthship world community.

Earthships are the brainchild of Michael Reynolds, a motorcycle-riding son of the counter-culture movement of the 1960s and 1970’s. Having trained as an architect in Cincinnati he moved to New Mexico to experiment with his designs, ride motorcycles and avoid the Vietnam War.

From building houses using aluminum cans in the 1970’s to the state-of-the-art Earthships currently being built around the world, Reynolds has devoted his life to building self-sufficient homes. It’s been an evolutionary process.

Steel and aluminum cans, tires and other reclaimed materials are all used in Earthships, but they are far from primitive frontier cabins. Rather they are self-sufficient, off-grid homes that provide their own water, power and heating.

Long time residents of Taos, Tony Marvin and his partner Katy Grabel are recent converts to Earthships, which seem to be a way or life as much as a place to live.

“Having been here for more than 18 months now, it really has exceeded all our expectations. It really is quite an art form, and we’re not roughing it by any means. Reports are that it is the best functioning Earthship to date utilizing all the latest technology,” says Marvin.

Self-sufficiency at heart

All Earthships are built around a few core concepts.

Water is collected from rain or snowfall and stored in large underground cisterns. It is then used a number of times, first for bathing or washing. It is then recycled into “gray” water, which is used to flush toilets before being taken out of the internal water system as “black” water. It is then treated and used to water the Earthship’s plants.

As Michael Reynolds says: “If water is falling from the sky, and it is on the majority of the plant, it’s crazy not to catch it.”

Power is supplied by solar panels and wind turbines and even in areas where sunlight is more likely to be caught through overcast skies, modern photovoltaic technology means that they can still be effective enough to make any Earthship anywhere in the world self-sufficient.

“It sounds sophisticated and it is, but really it is the profound simplicity of Earthships that means it really doesn’t take much for an average person to figure out how to work it and even build it themselves,” says Marvin.

“I’d known Michael Reynolds for a long time. I’d seen his early examples and was unsure of them at first, but a few years ago when we were in process of retooling our lives and looking for a new place to live, we saw this Earthship and were completely blown away by it.

“There really was nothing as beautiful in Taos at this price. We also really chose to live here to participate in the concept of Earthships — to live off-grid and be self-sufficient.

“It’s like in the olden days of the 1960’s — the drop out, hippie thing of not wanting to be dependent on huge energy companies. That ethos is still there, but now it’s also about conservation. And it’s not just a worthy project. People with lots of money are looking at buying them,” says Marvin.

Experiments and obstacles

If Earthships are now finding favor among people who wouldn’t normally adhere to a conservation or alternative lifestyle ethos, they haven’t had a smooth ride.

Reynolds’ architecture license was revoked in the early days of his experiments building Earthship — radical ideas of running sewage through the front room fell foul of the authorities — and he recently battled for three years to pass a law in New Mexico that allows more research into sustainable building projects.

At it’s most basic, Earthships can be simple shelters with their own water supply. Basic but essential, especially in the aftermath of natural disasters, where Reynolds has built Earthships on the Andaman Islands after the Tsunami in 2004 and New Orleans after the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina.

Kirsten Jacobsen has spent 14 years working with Reynolds and says that a completed system is possible within six weeks. With new Earthships planned across the world, a 16-unit project is scheduled to be built in Brighton, England, the hope is that whole towns are built from Earthships.

“As much as idealism there really is a pragmatism to Earthships. Even people working within the energy industry acknowledge that we have to adapt and need to look at decentralized systems in the future,” said Jacobsen.

“It’s been an evolutionary process. The systems used in Earthships are now more exacting and more reliable than ever before, so more energy can be put into creating beautiful interiors. I’d say were at the apex of what Michael’s been working towards,” says Marvin.

By Dean Irvine

http://edition1.cnn.com/2007/BUSINESS/08/29/skewed.earthships/index.html#cnnSTCText

WASHINGTON - Though you have to bend down to read it, the fist-size green logo on the front window of Le Pain Quotidien might be the most visible sign that the bakery-restaurant is environmentally sensitive. But that little sticker’s declaration that the Georgetown business is a “certified green restaurant” describes a host of ecologically minded practices taking place on the other side of the door.

Going green, it turns out, is all in the details. And some are less obvious than others.

At Le Pain Quotidien, which opened last spring, the 39-seat communal dining table was fashioned out of reclaimed wood from vintage Belgian train cars. Cleaning products used on the floor and kitchen counters are nontoxic and non-polluting. The to-go cups are made of corn and the spoons of potato starch; they will disintegrate within 30 to 90 days in a commercial compost site rather than sit in a landfill. The exceptional croissants, like the other baked goods, are made with organic flour and butter.

Although it is so far the only restaurant here to earn certification from the Boston-based Green Restaurant Association, Le Pain Quotidien is in good company nationwide. Restaurateurs increasingly are realizing that environmentally minded customers care about more than local produce, sustainable seafood and free-range meats. In a survey by the National Restaurant Association, 62 percent of consumers said they would be likely to choose a restaurant based on its environmental friendliness.

Bergen Kenny, 29, was one of them as she stood in Le Pain Quotidien’s takeout line on a recent morning, waiting for her daily organic pumpkin muffin and fair-trade coffee. “You try to be green in your life, and when you come here they’ve taken care of all that,” says Kenny.

The restaurant association also reported that, in another survey, a quarter of restaurants said they plan to spend more on going green this year. Besides the environmental benefits, restaurant owners hope that such efforts can in the long run help them deal with increased energy and waste-management costs.

“Companies and restaurants are investing in the hard costs of ecologically friendly operations, and people are responding,” says food industry consultant Clark Wolf, president of the New York-based Clark Wolf Co. “These green restaurants are popping up all over the country, in New York like crazy.”

Although the GRA has certified all U.S. operations of Le Pain Quotidien (French for “the daily bread”), a Belgium-based chain with 28 locations in the United States, none is totally sustainable. The D.C. restaurant still needs to find a company in the area that will haul away compostable kitchen waste. It can’t find a source with adequate supplies of organic chicken. But it has satisfied the major requirements of the GRA, a nonprofit organization that has bestowed “certified green” status on more than 300 restaurants and cafes in 30 states and Canada.

“We look at everything,” says executive director Michael Oshman, who founded the GRA in 1990. His 11 environmental guidelines cover energy and water efficiency and conservation, recycling and composting, the use of sustainable food, green building design and construction, and more. The association helps clients find suppliers of locally grown foods, which helps reduce the amount of pollution from fossil fuels used in transportation. “We take a restaurant, no matter where they are in being green, and help them with the steps,” Oshman says.

The stakes are high. Among other environmental effects, the GRA says, the U.S. restaurant industry accounts for one-third of all energy used by retail businesses and is five times as energy-intensive as other retail businesses, including lodging. The group cites studies gathered for Dining Green, a book published by the GRA in 2004, showing that on average, every restaurant meal served produces 1 1/2 pounds of trash. Half of that, the GRA says, is food waste that could be composted.

This past year, the GRA has generated the most interest in its history. Oshman credits the popularity of Al Gore’s documentary on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Since the movie’s release in May 2006, Oshman says, “the phone has been ringing off the hook.” Not only restaurant owners are calling. Oshman says the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., has asked for an environmental assessment of its food service operations.

The GRA did not invent the concept of the environmentally friendly restaurant. The group has, however, raised the consciousness about Earth-friendly issues beyond a niche group of food businesses that were sometimes perceived as esoteric.

But in Washington, one chef was green long before green was cool.

“For them it’s all big news. It is a wonderful thing for awareness. But we’ve been doing these things for years,” says chef Nora Pouillon, who opened Restaurant Nora 29 years ago. Eight years ago the restaurant was the first in the United States to be certified organic.

In addition to cooking with all organic and mostly local ingredients, Pouillon has long used recycled paper and soy-based ink for the menus, which change daily. Four employees compost 75 gallons of vegetable waste in home gardens each day. She eliminated fresh flowers in the restaurant when it became too difficult to find blooms that had not been heavily sprayed with pesticides. Pouillon’s search for Earth-friendly solutions goes on.

“What I haven’t been able to find is certified organic cotton chef jackets and pants,” she says. “No one is making organic shirts for the wait staff anymore.”

Overall, she says, organic ingredients add 20 percent to her costs, and labor costs are 20 percent higher than for a restaurant of comparable size.

“Someone has to haul the compost. Everything adds up,” Pouillon says. “But my business is better than ever, because more and more people are aware and concerned about healthy eating and the environment.”

Nicolas Jammet, co-owner of Sweetgreen, a salad and yogurt bar in Georgetown, also hopes to be certified in the next month. Energy-efficient wiring was installed before the business opened in August. Walls are made of recycled hickory. The owners use salad bowls made of corn-based materials, and the forks and spoons are biodegradable.

For Jammet, there is more to accomplish on the green checklist. Every step, he says, “adds to our mission.”

“It’s not a trend or a gimmick,” says Jammet, a Georgetown University graduate who has lots of customers from his alma mater. “It’s the future to be eco-conscious.”

For Le Pain Quotidien, the environmental commitments extend to some of the smallest decisions that employees make.

“You must watch your trash audit,” says Patrick Jenkins, vice president of operations for the chain. “When you make a latte, you can’t throw a milk container into the trash instead of recycling.”

One model, Oshman says, is the Grille Zone in Boston, which he calls “the best example of a zero-waste business.”

Through recycling and composting, this GRA-certified burger joint has pared its total waste per day, after serving an average 150 customers in 900 square feet, to half of a standard 55-gallon trash bag. (By Oshman’s calculations, a similar-size restaurant without recycling and composting procedures produces 10 to 12 bags of garbage per day.)

Le Pain Quotidien is working toward such success. Managers in Georgetown regularly check bins for misplaced refuse and call it to the attention of employees. And they continue to look for a company to haul away scrap dough and other food waste for composting.

It’s a difficult challenge, Jenkins says. “We’re looking for a total zero” when it comes to waste, he says, “but we’re not there yet.”

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0118restaurants-ON.html

Gardening, fashion meet in chic collision

Whether you hear it being called eco couture, eco fashion, agricouture, ground-up fashion or just plain earth-friendly clothing, the hot trend is threads that tread lightly.

They might be recycled, grown from organic plants or even materials you’d never dreamed would be comfortable clothing alternatives, but the world of fashion and the world of the gardener are joining hands to prove that sustainability is more than just smart. It also is chic.

At the 2007 New York Fashion Week, 28 fashion designers with household names like Oscar de la Renta, Diane von Furstenberg and Halston, and up-and-comers like Derek Lam and Heatherette, dazzled the runway with eco-friendly fashions in partnership with Earthpledge.org. The designers pulled out full lines from sportswear to evening gowns using materials like organic cotton and wool, hempsilk, corn and bamboo fibers. There was even recycled polyester. Models flaunted haute couture dresses made of bamboo or corn with sequins made from recycled soda cans, all in the name of being “green.”

Local eco couture designer Loni Hosking, owner of Ecoboutiquo, explains why fashion following the pulse of our landscape is a natural progression.

“Green is in. People are seeking ‘green’ as a way of life,” she says. “Trends are always the heartbeat behind fashion. The trend is to appear like you care for the environment and to appear in step with the trend. It is a good thing because in the process of seeking this trend, the planet is getting viewed from a fresh and new perspective — one that is long overdue.”

According to Earthpledge.org, 25 percent of agricultural pesticides are used on cotton. This can cause water pollution, illnesses to farm workers and harm to plants and animals that inhabit the same space, according to Web site. Those aren’t really concerns we think about when buying a sweater for Uncle Joe on our Christmas list, but maybe they should be.

“We are waking up from a long, wasteful sleep, and Americans have to be the trend setters for the planet,” Hoskings said. “It is our way of life that is affecting the earth, the weather, the waste. People do care about what is happening, and they are seeking ways to feel better about the choices they make. We, the shopkeepers, need to make that easier for the consumers to make a purchase that is good for the planet.”

Ecoboutiquo is one such earth-conscious shop; it was born from Hosking’s desire to eliminate waste by using resources more wisely — plus her appetite to have a really “cool” job. She was concerned with the excessive waste, global textile saturation and sweat shop clothing conditions.

“Something regarded as trash or unusable I magically transform into art,” she said. “I began by thrift store shopping, at first which was motivated by economics to start with, then the ability to score something completely out-of-the-ordinary and unexpected. The thrift stores have really become my art supply shop.”

The alternative fabric sources are a fascinating aspect of eco shopping. Take bamboo, for instance. It is an extremely fast-growing plant, as durable as any fiber you’ll find and when translated into fashion, quite comfortable. Hemp has been on the radar for a while for many of the same reasons; it grows quickly, is highly resilient and strong, it is good for the soil, and renewable.

Maybe in the end the reasons to care are as simple as why every time I lug my trash to the recycling center, no matter what time of day, there is always a plethora of concerned Lawrence residents hoping that jar of pasta sauce will live to see another day. By reducing, reusing, rewearing, recycling, conserving and caring, we are not just another consumer that throws out that ridiculous Santa sweater along with the cans and bottles consumed on any given day. Instead we think, “Who can use this next?”

Eco fashion might take a little effort to find, but it is slowly entering the mainstream. With earth-friendly threads, we don’t have to sacrifice style for a clear conscience.

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2007/dec/20/sustainable_style/By Jennifer Oldridge

— Jennifer Oldridge, a Kansas University graduate, is an avid gardener who previously operated a landscaping business.