Social Investing News
Special Spotlight: Innovative Green Businesses
A green developer is behind the largest urban revitalization project in the U.S. - $1 Billion Charleston, SC. restoration.
Sydney's Solar Ferry
The Solar Sailor – the world’s largest solar vessel and the first to be totally powered by the wind and the sun – sailed for the first time into Sydney Harbor, Australia in June 2000. This revolutionary new ferry has been in service for over a year as a tourist ferry there. It has demonstrated the technical feasibility and commercial viability of this new hybrid power technology. Solar Sailer is the brainchild of Dr. Robert Dane, formerly a country physician practicing about three hours from Sydney. A $1 million grant from the Australian Greenhouse Office’s Renewable Energy Commercialization Program funded its development. Its ground breaking solar wing technology makes renewable energy transport a reality. The mounted wings harness the sun and wind and can be adjusted to adapt to prevailing weather conditions. It uses four power sources: solar, wind, battery and a backup LPG gas generator. They can be used individually or in combination. When fully loaded with 100 passengers it reaches speeds of 5-7 knots on solar power alone, and 10-12 knots sailing in trade winds. Solar Sailor won the gold medal at the 1999 Asian Innovation Awards and the 2001 Australian Design Awards for engineering. With many waterways […]
One World, Cooperatively
There's a strong connection between September 11 and the world's growing environmental mega-crises - the unchallenged power of private capital, acting unilaterally in a multi-lateral world.
Hawaii Veggie Fuel
Few people associate clean transportation with the smell of french fries sizzling in hot grease, but used vegetable oil can be converted into an alternative fuel with many environmental advantages. In 1995, the Hawaiian island of Maui became concerned about environmental and health problems resulting from restaurant grease clogging its landfill. Operators complained that static pile fires were becoming more frequent, and the oil could leak into groundwater. Robert King, owner of King Diesel on Maui, spearheaded the formation of Pacific Biodiesel (PacBio) in 1996. PacBio receives used oil directly from pump trucks that service restaurants and hotels, and the company converts this into 150,000 gallons of premium biodiesel each year. This fuel, made totally from recycled cooking oil, is used in generators, commercial diesel equipment, boats and vehicles. More than 40 tons of used cooking oil is recycled each month. Customers range from private businesses to farmers who fill their five-gallon buckets with fuel for their tractors. Biodiesel is safe for use in all conventional diesel engines, says King, and requires no engine modifications. Torgue, horsepower, and fuel economy characteristics are similar to regular diesel fuel. Engine durability may even be increased because lower sulfur content results in more […]
Mercedez-Benz Made From Coconuts?
The northern Brazilian state of Para is in the largest contiguous tropical rainforest in the world, four times the size of Germany. To protect the rainforest, it’s critical to build a sustainable economy for the 42 million people that live in Brazil’s rural areas. It starts with coconuts. There’s a well established market for coconut milk and meat there, but the shells are discarded or burned, adding to the pall of smoke hanging over rainforest land cleared for subsistence agriculture. In a small way, that situation is changing as the unlikely partnership between a tiny Brazilian nonprofit group and one of the world’s biggest auto giants, DaimlerChrylser, is getting those coconut shells out of the waste stream. In the small community of Praia Grande on idyllic Marajo Island off Brazil’s northern coast, 10 workers are employed by the modest, low-tech factory that processes the coconut fiber, turning it into headrests and seat padding for Mercedes cars and trucks. There are eight facilities like the one on Marajo Island, and together they keep 900 farm families at work gathering the coconut husks. The project began in 1991, with the creation of Program Pobreze e Meio Ambiente na Amazonia (POEMA), which uses […]
Electricity From Cows
Every day, the 550 half-ton Holstein cows on Dennis Haubenschild’s dairy farm near Princeton, Minnesota eat 90 pounds of food, produce eight gallons of milk and create 220 pounds of waste and manure.On another farm, cows making a quarter of their weight in waste pose a daily hazard. Manure from dairy farms festers in large lagoons, threatening ground and surface waters. It also creates global warming gases like methane, and the stench keeps neighbors indoors.But at Haubenschild’s, a family farm 10 times bigger than the average Minnesota dairy operation, each cow generates 5.5 kilowatt hours of electricity daily. That lets the neighbors smell the daisies on the windiest days and has eliminated the equivalent of 680 tons of carbon dioxide in 10 months.Haubenschild’s methane-fired electricity generator, engineered with assistance from the EPA’s AgStar Project, is a dream come true. “I’ve been interested in methane digestion since the 1970s,” he says. “I had no doubt that it would work; it just took quite a few years to tie everything together.”When federal regulators’ concern about the damaging greenhouse effects of methane – it’s 21 times as potent as CO2 – and Minnesota agriculture officials’ concern for declining farm incomes coincided in the […]
The Safety- Sustainability 'Connect'
One thing Ecos Corporation - a leading sustainability consulting firm - learned from the September 11 terrorist attack is the strong connection between safety and sustainability.
A New Marshall Plan? Advancing Human Security and Controlling Terrorism
Finding the terrorists should be part of a much more ambitious campaign - a New Marshall Plan, exhorts Dick Bell & Michael Renner of the Worldwatch Institute.
The PAPER Project
It's easy for magazines to use recycled paper and the costs keep going down.