Why turn your business green

Posted on December 6, 2010 by Admin | Leave a comment | News

As more and more companies become aware of their responsibility with regards to climate change and taking care of the environment, there are more businesses looking to recreate their working environments into “green” spaces that are eco-friendly.

There is a current trend in small- and medium-sized businesses to ignore this responsibility. It is a contemporary trend for the people who run these businesses to believe that only change in larger corporates can make a difference. This notion becomes defunct when one considers that small businesses make up 60% of all business enterprises.

Well-known environmentalist, journalist, entrepreneur and author, Paul Hawken, believes that business is “the only mechanism powerful enough to produce the changes necessary to reverse global environment and social degradation”.

Many business owners believe that the impact of turning their enterprise “green” will cost them too much money and would not be feasible. In fact, that couldn’t be further from the truth. It has been the experience of businesses that have already adopted environmentally sustainable working practices that the increased energy efficiency has lead to significant savings.

Deciding to do business in a responsible and eco-friendly manner will also earn you more business. There is heavy societal, governmental and customer-based pressure on companies to reduce their carbon footprints. Consumer attitudes and expectations are going through a shift with more and more people wanting to support businesses that consider the planet rather than cause it more damage.

Being a “green” business will help you to develop a good reputation. Current worldly issues demand that businesses behave in an environmentally ethical way. A company that demonstrates a disregard for the environment will suffer in the numbers. Just think about BP, for example. The oil spill disaster that occurred earlier this year has seen the petrol giant struggle to maintain its good reputation among its customers. No-one wants to consciously support a company that is responsible for the death of wildlife or the destruction of eco-systems.

Your company will be more efficient. It’s the little things that count. For example, allowing your employees to work from home instead of daily travelling into the office will not only reduce carbon created from their mode of transport but it has been proven that employees who work from home are 20% more productive.

The benefits of turning your business “green” are obvious. Not only will you be helping the environment with eco-friendly practices, but you’ll also help your company to become an efficient enterprise that customers will want to support.

Eco-savvy heat

Posted on December 6, 2010 by Admin | Leave a comment | Uncategorized

As winter comes to an end and the warm rays of summer start to appear you might not even think about all the energy you and your household wasted during the cold season. People use many different appliances to keep warm during the coldest months, but few stop to think about the cost.

The most common way of warming a room is to use heaters, but it is these appliances that guzzle up your paid-for electricity leaving your pocket lighter and making the environment suffer from the overuse of unnecessary energy.

Gas is better than electric. Gas heaters burn cleaner than electric heaters, and they also heat up your home faster. However, if you decide to install solar panels to warm up your home then you can do away with both the gas and the electric heater.

The size of your heater is an important aspect to consider. You need to ensure that the model you use is large enough to have an effect on the size of the room you want to keep warm. Some people think that a smaller device will save on electricity but this is not the case. If you have to keep your appliance on full-blast constantly then you are using more energy than you need to, which means you are also paying more than you need to. To be efficient you should be able to turn on your heater for a while, allow it to heat up the room and then turn it off.

Often you can make small changes to your home that will make a big difference. Insulation is one of these ways. If you insulate a room effectively you will cut down your need to use your heater. Windows should be kept closed, draw your curtains at night and don’t leave doors open unnecessarily. All these actions will help to keep the warmth in the particular room you want to be cosy in.

By insulating your rooms and using the heater only to heat up the room initially you will be practicing eco-friendly heating, as well as saving yourself money on your electricity or gas bill. You can occasionally turn the heater back on to re-heat the space when needed.

This method of keeping warm is also much healthier than allowing your heater to blaze on day and night. When a heater is kept on for too long it dries out the air, which in turn will dry out the sensitive membranes in your mouth and nose. This will increase your susceptibility to colds and flu.

Green Practices: Carnegie Mellon

Posted on December 6, 2010 by Admin | Leave a comment | News

With so much global attention being paid to “living green” the responses from various individuals and corporates have been varied. Some businesses and people have accepted responsibility for the way the earth is being treated by humans and begun a journey of change. Others have completely ignored the glaring facts about the damage our worldly environment has suffered and continues to suffer.

Most people truly believe it is not up to them to save the planet, or complain that they can’t or don’t know how to. However, there are the few (and the number is rising) passionate people and companies who have pledged to do their bit and make the world a greener place to live. Carnegie Mellon, an American University, is one such responsible group.

The university adopted a formal recycling policy in 1990 and appointed campus Recycling Liaisons to implement the new policy. The liaisons took on the “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” philosophy and encouraged wide efforts on and off campus to reduce waste.

Then, in 1998, the Green Practices Committee was established to help develop a more comprehensive waste-reduction and energy conservation programme. The committee is comprised of staff members, faculty members and students who work together to establish green priorities, goals and mechanisms for the implementation of environmental practice around campus. Their online pledge:

“The Green Practices Committee will strive to develop university practices that improve environmental quality, decrease waste and conserve natural resources and energy, thereby establishing Carnegie Mellon as a practical model for other universities and companies.”
The university also endorsed the creation and distribution of The Green Scene. It is a newsletter about campus environmental news for students, staff and faculty members.

It is in cases like these that the logical and practical aspects of raising awareness around being environmentally-friendly and putting it into practice becomes a possibility and not an unsolved problem. It also becomes clear that educational facilities, from primary right through to tertiary environments, should be the first institutions to adopt a focused and organised green and environmentally-friendly programme to teach children from a young age about their responsibility to keep the planet safe and clean.

If the global educational systems (and the subject should be addressed on a global scale as it is a global issue) all pledged to imprint in the children of the world a sense of care and awareness of the environment, as well as how to look after it then the planet’s chances of being well taken care of would be much higher.

Supporting Your Local Farmers

Posted on October 4, 2010 by Admin | Leave a comment | News

Over the past few years buying fresh produce from local farmers has become all the rage, which is a good thing. In an effort to live an eco-friendly lifestyle, reducing carbon-footprints and being environmentally aware, the notion of supporting local farmers has emerged as an alternative to supporting major food companies who are monopolising the fresh produce industry.

The green benefits of buying local are numerous. The farms providing fresh vegetables and fruit to their local communities are bound to be a lot smaller than the corporate-owned farms. Because of this small-scale operation these farms will refrain from using pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers on a large scale. Instead these local farms grow different types of produce; some even practice the rotating method whereby they alternate their crops to benefit the soil and plant without the use of chemicals.

By supporting these smaller and local farms you are keeping your currency (dollar, rand, euro etc) in your community. You will also be helping those farmers provide for their own families while you ensure that your family will be eating healthy, wholesome, pesticide-free produce. These smaller farms also provide you with a wider range of better tasting foods than the produce grown from genetically modified seeds the corporations use.

The produce grown and sold by local farms also give you an opportunity to reduce your carbon footprint. Because the produce doesn’t have to be shipped, flown or driven very far to get to you less fuel will be used in the transportation process. You have the choice of buying some apples that traveled just 5 miles as opposed to imported ones that traveled a hundred miles. This can impact the environment tremendously if more and more communities buy their produce locally.

Your family will enjoy eating food that is far more nutrient-enriched than imported food; every day after a vegetable or fruit has been picked it loses its vitamins and minerals. An orange picked in another state or country would need to be picked early (and won’t have all its minerals and vitamins to begin with), artificially ripened on a truck en route and finally would be placed on your grocery shelves. It won’t be nearly as good for you as the orange that was picked a few hours away the same day.

Locally grown food also tastes much better than store bought – why not test the theory yourself: buy a tomato or banana from your grocery store and one from your local farmer and see whose produce is more delicious.

The local farmers also tend to sell other delights including meats, eggs, cheeses, home-made breads, honey and jams. You’ll be surprised at how many scrumptious, natural treats await your taste buds.

But how can you make sure you are buying from your local farmer and are not being scammed? The NBC Los Angeles team checked out some of the farms where the local market vendors said they grew their crops. The fields were filled with nothing but weeds. To avoid being scammed by unscrupulous vendors pretending to sell locally-grown produce here are a few tips:

Research: Try to get familiar with some of the vendors; ask where their farms are located, how long they’ve been farming, how they handle pests/diseases etc. you can check to see if they’re listed on any farmer sites (not all farms will be listed but check anyway), and ask them the specific variety of what they are selling. If they grew the produce they should know the scientific/proper name of that produce.

Look Over the Display: If the tomatoes are all the exact same size and the apples have a waxy-store look, the cucumbers are all perfectly straight then they probably aren’t selling locally-grown produce. All those aspects of perfection suggest the produce was grown from genetically modified seeds.

Know What’s in Season: For example watermelons in April or peppers in December in Minnesota or Michigan are probably not locally grown. If the vendor is displaying a lot of out of season produce then steer clear.

Is the Arctic Really Melting? Really?

Posted on October 4, 2010 by Admin | Leave a comment | News

Rumours that the Arctic ice is melting have been announced, denounced, cause for concern and cause for debate over the past few years, but is it really melting?

In September 2007 satellite images (being used by scientists studying the Arctic’s ice health) showed the record minimum of the region’s ice cover; the result of a massive summer melt. Then the 2008 and 2009 satellite images displayed the moderate recovery of the late summer, resulting in some believing that the imminent ice-free polar ocean was not as serious as was first feared.

However Arctic climatologist, David Barber of the University of Manitoba, got an unpleasant surprise while conducting an on-the-ground research expedition. While he was onboard the Canadian research icebreaker “Amundsen” he was checking on the ice in the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska and Western Canada. The “Amundsen” was within a region that the satellites said should be impenetrable due to thick, multi-layered ice. The ship however continued to cruise through, even piercing the “thick” ice easily when they reached it.

Basically the satellite information was wrong. Where they said there should be melt-resistant tightly-packed ice there was instead holes “like Swiss cheese” Barber explains. It is something that hasn’t been seen before. The recent declines are consistent with a world warming unevenly. The Arctic has experienced around twice the rate of warming it’s used to in the past several decades.

Glaciers do tend to come and go, however never at this fast rate. Ruth Little describes the scene from her expedition there: “It’s a strange and dispiriting experience… [these] landscapes are vast, but not sublime in the way the glaciers themselves are. Perhaps [it’s] because they’re so recently exposed”. She spots a white Arctic fox, commenting on how exposed it is against a backdrop of brown. She explains that while there are birds around for the fox to feed on the bears have to travel great distances to find sea ice where seals are found.

Barber discovered that the sea was not just whisper thin, even where the ice was thick, according to the satellites; it was only in chunks, masked by the new top layer of ice. The incorrect information suggests that satellite analyses should be reconsidered. The algorithms used to analyse the ice were developed years ago, and could very well need updating.

What’s scary is that the weakness of the multilayer ice could mean that if the unfavourable winds of 2007 could result in the Arctic experiencing another dramatic summer melt – not just of the first-year ice on top but some of the “rotten” multilayer ice. A large-scale melt like this would mean a speed-up of Global warming; the open ocean reflects less of the sun’s energy than ice does.

No one knows when this disaster may occur as the long-term rise in temperature globally as a result of greenhouse-gas emissions is influenced by natural, year-to-year variables. However, due to the cyclical tendencies of these variables the conditions that resulted in the 2007 massive summer melt will probably return at some point and if they do the Arctic could experience major and possibly irreversible changes.

Green Alternatives to Your Cosmetics

Posted on October 4, 2010 by Admin | Leave a comment | News

Most women who won’t leave the house without wearing makeup are unaware that the cosmetic and fragrance industries are not required to list the chemical-laden ingredients on their product labels. In their book “No More Dirty Looks: The Truth About Your Beauty Products and the Ultimate Guide to Safe and Clean Cosmetics” authors Alexandra Spunt and Siobhan O’Connor answer the questions:

Does this beauty product work?

Is it worth the risk?

Is there a better solution for beauty without the drawbacks of harmful chemicals?

Why would any company put harmful chemicals in a beauty product?

Their book analyses the toxicity of the chemicals in makeup as well as offering the reader a solution: a comprehensive listing of real, organic and healthy solutions. Alexandra and Siobhan believe that girls shouldn’t have to deal with rashes, allergies and serious illnesses (cancer) that are increasingly being linked with chemicals found in cosmetics. They uncover some of the dirty secrets of the industry and offer green alternatives so that their readers can make informed decision about what mascara they use or lipstick they buy.

According to them some of the beauty products actually put women onto a vicious cycle of deteriorating skin and hair so that even more cosmetics are needed to compensate. They are not completely anti-cosmetics and in some case admit that while a product may have some risks it still works – thus they give their readers a well-rounded account of the industry and who they can and should trust.

The two women even use themselves as guinea pigs, testing the cosmetics and giving feedback on treatments that seem appealing and pique a woman’s curiosity. They have created a well-researched book that equips the every day woman with a starting point from which they can take control of their beauty regime.

Know Your Cosmetics Ingredients: Top 3 Ingredients to Avoid

Placenta: Extracts from cow and human placentas can give you glowing skin and shiny hair, these extracts potentially have enough hormones in them to cause breast growth in toddlers (according to a recent study).

Mercury: This can damage brain function even in tiny quantities. It was found in Paula Dorf mascara listed as the mercury preservative “thimerosal”. Look out for mercury in eye drops too.

Lead: Lead poisoning is serious and can damage the function of a child’s developing brain. This neurotoxin is found in many black hair dyes for men, and have been discovered to spread throughout the household.

Here Are Some Green Alternatives:

Dr. Bronner’s All One Lavender Coconut Lotion

Miessence Organic Mascara in Pure Black

Eminence Herbal Eye Makeup Remover

NVEY ECO Organic Eye Shadow

Pangea Organics Bar Soap Indian Green Tea with Mint & Rose Petals

Mineral Fusion Bronzer

There are many more organic cosmetics to choose from, why not ask the lady at your local cosmetics shop what organic and green options they have in stock.

The Man Making Electric Cars Mainstream

Posted on October 4, 2010 by Admin | Leave a comment | News

The notion of electric cars has been whispered about, analysed and eagerly awaited for a good few years now with few people enjoying the privilege of owning one. This year all that will change; two of the major EVs aimed at the mainstream are scheduled to launch their electric cars.

Currently the cultural and political climate are shifting away from oily-fuel as gas prices are rising fast and there are new premiums on efficient vehicles. It seems the long-awaited electric car is teetering on the edge of becoming widely available, all is needed is a push in the right direction. That is exactly what Brain Wynne of the Electric Drive Transportation Association (ETDA) is planning to do.

He believes the production of Electric Vehicles (EVs) will increase phenomenally over the next several years, with many auto manufacturers getting in on the electric action; Ford, GM, Mitsubishi, Toyota and Nissan. By 2011 GM alone hopes to have produced 80,000 Chevy Volts and 200,000 by 2014.

This is an exciting time, especially as Wynne notes that the growing demand for EVs is an example of the public’s desire to move away from dependence on foreign oil/fuel, and more towards supporting the environmental benefits of this new eco-technology. As it stands the US imports around 57 percent of its oil, much of it coming from the Middle East.

The widespread use of EVs will reduce carbon-based greenhouse gases. It is these gases that heat up the ozone layer and cause climate change. In the US more than 20,000 charging stations are being deployed across the country in anticipation of the roll out of EVs.

While the EDTA is pushing the process of EVs becoming mainstream, there are a few challenges that the association has to deal with. The public needs to be educated on the product and EDTA need to ensure that the cars are available and at a reasonable and viable cost. The government is, however, offering incentives that make owning and operating an EV affordable – drivers in the United States who purchase a plug-in electric stand the chance of qualifying for a federal tax credit of up to $7,500. Drivers in Wahsington DC who purchase a plug-in electric (and in several other areas) become eligible of receiving a free home-charging station from the ChargePoint America program.

Consumers will be able to choose from 15 different EV models by the year 2012 from manufacturers such as Ford, Toyota, Chrysler and Honda. Only consumers who are aware of the environmental benefits, money-saving opportunities and the convenient charging system are excited about the imminent rollout. The EDTA has some work on their hands educating the masses about the benefits. They plan on doing this with the National Plug-In Vehicle Initiative – to allow the necessary information to be available.

Wynne, and others, see the electrification of the transport sector increasing over the next 20 years. The goals of sustainable transportation and national energy security can all be met, in Wynne’s words, by the increasing role that hybrid, plug-in electric and fuel cell vehicles will play.

The continued advancement of battery technology allows vehicles to provide increased performance at a reduced cost. The EDTA also believes other market factors will accelerate the widespread acceptance of electric drive. The increase in global demand for oil due to the growth (economically and in auto sales) in India, China and other fast-growing economies will result in rising gas prices, which in turn makes the chargeability of electric vehicles that much more appealing.