Archive for June, 2008

Don Millar, President of The Element Agency, has a story about green marketing running in The Vancouver Sun.  It’s definitely worth a read, especially if you are concerned about the legitimacy of your new sustainability initiative.  Below is an excerpt:

Ever been greenwashed?     You probably have, and you probably don’t know it.      If you are one of the many consumers who have a casual preference for environmentally-friendly products - we call you “light greens” in marketing - you’ve probably fallen for some claims that are more walk than talk.

As the move to green has picked up speed, so have claims that can’t be backed up or are misleading. It’s called greenwashing.

Take BP: the third-largest oil company in the world. Once British Petroleum, in 2000 they rebranded ‘Beyond Petroleum’ with a new age fuzzy sun logo. They spent $200 million on a worldwide advertising blitz and won a truckload of industry awards.  

But today BP is the new bête noire of the sustainability movement because they hit two of the major signs of a greenwash…

To continue reading Don’s article, click here.

By Stefan Deeran at The Element Agency in New York

For the past few years, seemingly every green website has been inundating us with the same “10 easy ways to go green” list.  It is good to see that a green living consciousness is becoming more mainstream and that people are taking steps such as switching incandescent light bulbs to CFLs.  But even if you change every lightbulb in your house, it may not be that significant if the electricity powering your town comes from coal.

Enter a new campaign from the Sierra Club called Lightbulbs to Leadership.  It satirizes politicians that are all talk on global warming and reminds us that consumer choices matter, but political action matters more.  Check out the video below:

By Stefan Deeran at The Element Agency in new York

I think that Apple skates by its fairly poor environmental because most environmental activists own ipods and generally identify with the slightly counter-culture orientation of the technology giant. There has been a long running guerrilla  to ‘Green My Apple‘ for awhile, My Green Element has noted it before.

Well, their reluctance to change their ways has not gone unnoticed in the activist community and the new report from Greenpeace shows they still have a long way to go. Larger companies like Sony and Toshiba have better practices so it can’t be a size/inertia thing. They claim to be working on it.

Here is hoping all these companies get better.

By Robert Anton at The Element Agency in Vancouver

According to Environmental Leader, next year, Sapporo, a Japanese beer company, will start labeling its beer bottles with the amount of carbon emissions associated with production and disposal. Japan’s Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry is working on standardizing how carbon can be measured and labeled on consumer products.

In the UK, the Carbon Trust, a government-funded independent company, is developing a similar scheme, set to launch in the coming months. According to their site, companies like Coors and Coca-Cola will add the carbon label.

So will this added transparency provide a competitive advantage? Are these figures meaningful to the consumer? And will people really track their carbon impact when they are also watching how many drinks they have consumed?

According to the Carbon Trust’s own research, reported in an Independent article, 66 percent of UK consumers want to know how much carbon is associated with their consumer goods. The UK labeling program will have a one year trial period, so we will hopefully find out how accurate that statistic is.

By Stefan Deeran at The Element Agency in New York

Over the weekend, former President Bill Clinton addressed the U.S. Conference of Mayors, urging them to go green for the sake of the planet and their economies.  Clinton boasted that his Clinton Climate Initiative will pump $5 billion into building retrofits in over 40 U.S. cities. Large companies are also investing in green cities.  CBS just announced a private-public partnership to bring green solutions to Miami, Chicago and San Francisco.

In many ways, cities have been ahead of State and Federal environmental efforts for the last few years.  In July 2007, 600 U.S. Mayors signed a Climate Protection Agreement, pledging to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.  There have been numerous notable investments across North America in public transportation and green roofs (Chicago comes to mind) and buildings.   Vancouver, home of The Element Agency’s Canadian operations, is possibly the greenest city in North America.  Check out their Sustainability website to learn more about their leading initiative.

North American cities still need to do a better job of bolstering their green manufacturing base.  New York City, for example, has woefully ignored its green-tech sector, despite Mayor Bloomberg’s relatively ambitious climate overtures.  Integrating solar or wind installations into existing energy grids often meets resistance from utility companies.  And brownfield schemes, which provide incentives for businesses to clean up and convert old industrial sites, are often inconsistent and bureaucratic.

Nonetheless, since Federal legislation seems to go nowhere due to the Jim Inhofes of the world, it is good to know cities are taking their role seriously.

By Stefan Deeran at The Element Agency in New York

The future is the most narcotic of thoughts….

More from the realm of green IT, something My Green Element has been on top of.

Grist does some interesting consumer affairs research on Green Soaps.

Michele Bachmann is almost a parody of herself.

I hate to rip on some dude’s compost heap, but this isn’t that impressive. Off the top of my head: it is shoddily built, using lumber that will rot in a few short years, there is no lid on any of the containers, it is way to close to the house which can lead to rotting, and if any of those containers get filled anywhere near the top the internal dividers will fall over.

This week a special shout-out to My Green Element editor Stefan Deeran for his first contribution to uberblog The Huffington Post.

Enjoy the weekend!

By Robert Anton at The Element Agency in Vancouver

The big news affecting the green business sector from Washington this week (since that Production Tax Credit bill for wind and solar never went to a vote: hey, GE is lobbying hard for it; this ain’t no hippy bill) is the Republican push for more domestic fuel production. At a time when renewable fuel sources finally seem financially and politically viable, due to factors like skyrocketing gas prices, Republicans are pushing 20th century solutions.

Outgoing U.S. President Bush, with support from contender John McCain, yesterday pushed for a lift on the Federal offshore oil drilling ban.  For the record, McCain has announced his plan to also subsidize the nuclear and coal industry.

“Families across the country are looking to Washington for a response,” Bush said, trying to frame the issue in the classic “Democratic elites don’t listen to working people argument.”

But is this really about rising gas prices or are Republicans just looking for an excuse to continue subsidizing dirty fuels?

Republicans already put a bill on the table in May called the American Energy Production Act of 2008, which would allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the outer continental shelf. It would also mandate mythical “clean coal” technologies by 2022 and boost oil shale production on Federal lands in states like Colorado and Wyoming.

For the time being, Democrats have held their ground. Hopefully they are starting to realize that arguments centering around the right to cheap gas are ultimately counter-productive for both the environment and the clean-tech economy. And they need to make the point crystal clear that 11 mpg trucks are a thing of the past, for economic and geopolitical reasons beyond where we drill in the next 15 years.

“Despite what President Bush, John McCain and their friends in the oil industry claim, we cannot drill our way out of this problem,” Harry Reid said in a snappy response. “The math is simple: America has just three percent of the world’s oil reserves, but Americans use a quarter of its oil.”

By Stefan Deeran at The Element Agency in New York

By Dan Hendrick of the New York League of Conservation Voters, today’s guest blogger

With the end of the New York State legislative session quickly approaching, the fate of several environmental bills looks promising even as hope for more fundamental green reform is tenuous, according to the New York League of Conservation Voters.

This may finally be the year to end one of New York’s largest barriers to alternative energy, the state’s current net metering law. Also known as “turning the meter backwards,” net metering allows residential consumers to generate power and sell the excess energy back to utilities. But the existing New York law — one of the most restrictive in the nation — doesn’t allow commercial customers to do the same. That means the enormous potential of roofs (think malls, industrial parks and office buildings) to generate solar power is going untapped. Working with a broad coalition of labor, business and environmental groups, NYLCV is advocating for legislation that would allow commercial customers to sell up to 2 megawatts (2,000 kilowatts) back into the grid and expand the list of approved technologies.

After New York’s power-plant siting law — known as Article X — expired on Jan. 1, 2003, the Legislature has been unable to agree on how to streamline the permitting and regulation of new plants. Right now, new plants can still be built, but the review process requires power developers to seek permits from multiple agencies and local jurisdictions — a lengthy and complicated process. With the formation of a new State Energy Planning Board by Gov. David Paterson, plus new leadership by Sen. George Mazairz (R-Newfane) and Assemblyman Kevin Cahill (D-Kingston) in the Legislature’s Energy committees, there is renewed hope for Article X. Click here to join NYLCV’s call for a comprehensive state energy plan and ensure that renewable energy plays a big role.

The reform of the brownfields redevelopment law — which spurs the cleanup and revitalization of contaminated properties — is also one of NYLCV’s top priorities.

(more…)

By Drew Bush of the Wilderness Society, today’s guest blogger

As gas prices skyrocket, Congress is under increasing pressure to find a quick fix to our national addiction to oil. Together with Big Oil and the Bush administration, the Republican leadership has raised the prospect of drilling our way out of this energy crisis—and touted the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as our answer to energy independence. We need your help getting the word out that this simply is not the case.

What they don’t say, is that if we were to drill in the Refuge tomorrow, there would be no effect on gas prices today. The oil speculated to be in the Arctic Refuge would lower gas prices by less than four cents per gallon in 2027, according to the Federal government’s own Energy Information Administration (EIA). An economist recently analyzed the new data released by the EIA and you can find his results in the report here.

Pro-drilling proponents also claim that drilling in the Arctic Refuge can be done in an environmentally sensitive way. We have prepared a fact sheet that looks at Big Oil’s dismal track record in Alaska—and shows that drilling has already impacted the Arctic’s wild places in irreversible ways. You can download a copy here.

We believe that these missing pieces of essential information prove that the drilling in the Arctic Refuge is not worth the cost to future generations. Home to more than 200 species of wildlife, the Coastal Plain of the Arctic Refuge is one of our nation’s last, untouched wilderness places—and once it’s gone, it’s gone forever.

Editor’s note: Drew Bush is a Communications Associate at the Wilderness Society.

The views expressed above are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent The Element Agency. If you are interested in penning guest posts for My Green Element, please email Stefan Deeran via stefan@theelementagency.com.

By Warren Carr of EcoNeutral, today’s guest blogger

Sixty percent of the worlds ecosystems are dead, dying or degraded.  That number increases every day as does the amount of emissions we spew into the atmosphere.  National and international reduction targets aside we still have a thickening layer of GHG in our atmosphere, approximately  75% of it is CO2 and the number is escalating.

While alternative energy and clean technologies are essential components to solving this problem, the fact remains that 50% of the CO2 that is blown out of the exhaust pipes of the world today will still be in the atmosphere in about a century.

As the problem gets worse it compounds. A forest in Brazil or the Philippines slaughtered by the blades of loggers contributes to the destruction of another ecosystem without one human setting foot in it.  Take for example the case of the Mountain Pine Beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) in British Columbia, Canada.  It gets under the bark of four types of pine trees and works away under the bark leaving a blue fungi which helps kill the tree.  These bark beetles were usually controlled by sustained deep sub freezing temperatures which killed the larvae gorging themselves under the bark through the winter and into the spring.  These larvae, who are not vulnerable to the mild freezing temperatures and short winters brought on by climate change, are now surviving winter and moving in masses into fresh forests to repeat the process.  In B.C., millions of hectares of pine trees are dead and dying which translates to hundreds of millions of tonnes of CO2 no longer being sucked out of the atmosphere.

Now countless hectares of forests of dead, kindling dry trees sit…..one hot summer, one lighting strike is all that is needed to trigger the mother of all forests fires adding a massive dose of carbon to the problem.

So to put it mildly, we have a problem. But we also have the ability to deal with it.

Editor’s note: Warren Carr, Communications and Sales, works at EcoNeutral, a leading carbon offset provider in Canada.

The views expressed above are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent The Element Agency. If you are interested in penning guest posts for My Green Element, please email Stefan Deeran via stefan@theelementagency.com.

Gotta love chemistry.

Someone might want to tell Rachel Bilson that getting permission to pick flowers is about twenty miles short of being green, but her other efforts are alright.

Count me dubious, a real greenwasher is investing in some real green tech.

Sunmicrosystems goes green, MGE been on this story before.

Bluefin Tuna is one of those crazy evolutionary step animals, a warm-blooded fish with serious brain power and amazing physical attributes, unfortunately they are really valuable to the sushi markets and nearly fished out of every corner of the ocean. Good to see the EU doing something, if 20 years late.

Enjoy the weekend,

By Robert Anton at The Element Agency in Vancouver

Yesterday we reported that there is a new oil refining boom for synthetic fuels in the Rocky Mountains, although it is still flying under the radar.

Today the Wall Street Journal’s Op-Ed section decided to join the debate, blaming Democrats and their “anticarbon theology” for the high gas prices due to their refusal to allow more domestic production in Alaska and Federal lands (mostly Wyoming) that hold oil shale reserves.

According to the spin, engineers have recently “perfected refining solid shale rock into diesel or gas, which may amount to the largest oil supply in the world – perhaps as much as 1.8 trillion barrels in the American West.”

Since synthetic oil production is ecologically disastrous, we would hardly classify it as a perfected technique.  Oil shale production combines the ecological degradation of coal mining with the increased greenhouse gas emissions associated with Canada’s oil sands production, a similar synthetic fuel.

Right now, there is a new law on the books which prohibits the Federal government from purchasing dirty, synthetic oil.  If politicians are serious about combating global warming, they simply cannot justify supporting oil shale production.

And speaking of “anticarbon theologians,” isn’t the Journal’s new boss a signature member of the Climate Disclosure Project?

By Stefan Deeran at The Element Agency in New York