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The Environmental Working Group has an interactive website which allows you to enter the food you eat and find out the Unsustainable businesses you support. The powerful search engine matches your food selection against more than 90,000 government lab test results for pesticides in food. You can select a full day’s worth of meals and find out what pesticides you ate, or select a single item like an apple. The program matches it with the results of 2,500 batches of apples tested for pesticides by the US Department of Agriculture. You can voice your concern through emails to supermarket chains, food companies, and Washington. And it just might give you the impetus to support the Sustainable organic industry. This website gets 5 stars. http://www.foodnews.org
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Southern California Edison, a regulated subsidiary of Edison International, is one of three major investor-owned utilities in California and has experimented with solar for several decades. In 1998, Edison International formed a unregulated subsidiary called Edison Technology Solutions to meet the needs of emerging competitive energy markets. One of its goals is to aggressively assist the PV industry in bringing cost-competitive products to the marketplace. Edison is partnering with the California Energy Commission and U.S. DOE to educate the public about PV. The company plans to put panels on 100 schools in southern California by the end of 2000; presentations to science classes will inform students about what’s happening on their rooftops. To reach the public at large, they are setting up highly visible systems at tourist attractions like the Santa Monica Pier and the Long Beach Aquarium, where millions of people visit each year. Edison is installing so many systems, that they have matched SMUD, the industry leader (see Business Activism). An electronic kiosk at each of the sites will teach the public about PV. The Santa Monica Pier installation is complete, with a 50-kW array running a Ferris wheel. The 660 solar panels started generating electricity in October. […]
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Thanks to a change in federal tax law, commuters have new options to reduce pollution and be compensated for taking mass transit to work. Employees are eligible to receive tax-free transit passes and can be reimbursed for sharing a ride to work. For years, employees were able to get tax-free commuter benefits only if they took advantage of free or subsidized parking at work, but not if they commuted by transit, car-pool, bicycle, or foot. Under the new law, employers can give commuters travel vouchers for the local transit system and reimburse employees for ride-share expenses. Another option allows up to $780 per year of an employee’s gross income (tax free) to be used for transit and ride-share expenses. The law also allows for a combination of the two approaches in which the employer and employee contribute toward the cost of transit. Employees can save 25-35 percent on the cost of commuting this way. Association for Commuter Transportation: 202-393-3497 mailto:acthq@aol.com FROM Co-op America Quarterly
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A recent Food Marketing Institute summit focused exclusively on natural foods and highlighted Wild Oats Community Market as a model to follow. 40 mainstream retailers attended, proof that the natural foods industry is no longer a niche market. The conference goal was to help mainstream grocers and pharmacies gain market share with shoppers seeking one-stop shopping to meet all of their health-related needs. “We believe the whole health concept is going to be the major driver of the supermarket industry in the next few years,” said Roy White, executive director of the General Merchandise Distributors Council’s educational foundation. One roundtable discussion promoted the idea of hiring produce, health and beauty care, and natural foods category managers, as well as nutritionists and “earth people” to lend credibility to the store image. Attendees included: Bergen Brunswig Drug Co., Bristol Myers Squibb, Food Circus Supermarkets, Nabisco, Pfizer, Pratt Foods, Procter & Gamble, SUPERVALU Pharmacies, and Wegmans Food Markets. Source: Natural Foods Merchandiser: [sorry this link is no longer available]
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In this millennial edition of its yearly sober overview of the “State of the World”, Worldwatch, shows us how we can create a sustainable economy in the next century. “Satisfying the projected needs of eight billion or more people with the economy we now have is simply not possible,” says Lester Brown, president. “The western industrial model – the fossil-fuel-based, automobile-centered, throwaway economy that so dramatically raised living standards in this century – is in trouble.” “No challenge is greater, or more satisfying, than building an environmentally sustainable global economy, one where economic and social progress can continue, not only in the 21st century, but for many centuries beyond,” Brown concludes. Another Worldwatch release, “Mind Over Matter”, chronicles the growing movement toward “dematerialization” as a solution to the “unparalleled waste that characterizes this century.” Worldwatch: http://www.worldwatch.org
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Dutch farmers, aided by federal subsidies, now stake out canals for wildlife, using willow branches instead of old cars and washing machines. Farmers and residents are becoming aware of the agricultural threats pervading these verdant fields: pesticide runoff, increased development, fragmented wildlife habitat, and intensive crop growing, which leaves little room or fodder for wild animals. Ferdinand Ex of Amsterdam’s Environmental Planning Department says, “In Waterland, farmers are in charge of the nature reserves and get paid by the government for protecting the area and wildlife.” Says M. De Gier, a biodynamic farmer, “We’ve developed a program where animals, people and nature are the three tenets of protection. 450 farmers of the 600 in Waterland are members, and each gets a task, depending on what they can do. One example is a farmer flooding part of his land to make a pond for birds during migration stopovers. The lapwing has been helped tremendously by this.” Most of the farms consist of low-cropped grasses for dairy grazing; they are no orchards or bird-friendly crops. 70 percent of endangered redshank birds and 80 percent black-tailed godwits breed in the Netherlands. Farmers search for the birds breeding in their fields, and mark the […]
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SMUD (Sacramento Municipal Utility District) offers customers the opportunity to purchase rooftop solar PV panels through their PV Pioneer II Program. Units are net metered; any excess power is sold back to the utility. and on days when the PV panels can’t meet a household’s demand, the customer buys the additional energy from SMUD. SMUD will “buy down” over half the cost of the system. A typical 2-kilowatt system generates enough energy to offset about half the annual energy needs of a household and costs under $4500 through SMUD (total cost is over $10,000). A financing program to provide a loan is also available. In Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has started a $1.2 million Residential Photovoltaic Program. It will install 125 PV rooftop systems on customer homes in 1999. Six 75-watt modules will be placed on the roof, providing about two-thirds of the energy needed for a typical home. Interested people are encouraged to contact them to find out if the roof meets specifications. The PV program has been successfully tested on six homes. SMUD: riwasko@smud.org [sorry this link is no longer available] FROM Solar Today
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By 2050, the ozone layer is likely to return to the condition it was in before 1970, when freon was first used, according to the Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion 1998, by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The predicted recovery depends, of course, on fully implementing the Montreal Protocol, including its ultimate goal of a total ban on ozone-destroying chemicals in the 165 countries that are parties to it. The U.S. has kept its commitment to ban CFCs and developing countries will begin phasing out the chemicals this year. Unfortunately, one of the riders passed for this year’s U.S. budget postponed the phase-out of methyl bromide until 2005. CFCs already in the stratosphere will peak at about 2020 before gradually declining. FROM E Magazine
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New York City is a leader among municipalities that are incorporating green building practices into the construction process. The results of their efforts thus far are in High Performance Building Guidelines. Besides covering the usual topics – site design, energy, indoor environment, materials and products, water – it examines post-construction issues of construction administration, commissioning and operations/maintenance. Each chapter contains a series of “Performance Goals” and strategies for reaching the goals. It includes NYC’s green guidelines, and a high performance building workplan and sample. 144 pg., $25. City of New York Department of Design & Construction: [sorry this link is no longer available] You can also find High Performance Building Guidelines from Pennsylvania at the website in the previous article. FROM Environmental Building News
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“Industrial Systems of Tomorrow: Finding Sustainability Through Natural Cycles” is a documentary film for grade 10 – Adult which demonstrates the efforts of several pioneers who are finding ways to improve the bottom line through pollution prevention and other forms of sustainability practices (soft & hard) found throughout business. The video introduces the theory and reality of a sustainable business in four innovative companies: * Digital Equipment Corporation: their reclamation and refurbishment processes alone have saved them many thousands of dollars. * Robins Company, a medium sized metallurgical corporation: industrial analysis allowed them to cut their water needs by 95%. They reclaim, reuse, and recycle what was formerly considered industrial waste into new profits. * Tom’s of Maine challenges their personnel to think and act green, creating improved sales. * Stonyfield Farm demonstrates that what is good for the environment has to be good for the bottom line. The Video Project: Media for a Safe & Sustainable World: 800-475-2638 videoproject@videoproject.org [sorry this link is no longer available]
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