Ecopreneurist

EcoTuesday, the sustainable business leaders networking forum, is celebrating it’s two-year anniversary this Tuesday, Feb. 24^th at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco. The featured speaker is Dave Rochlin, CEO of Climate Path and former COO of TransFair USA. Climate Path is applying transparency principles to carbon markets.

From it’s start in San Francisco in 2007, EcoTuesday has grown to a multi-city network of convenings, now including Detroit, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Seattle, Silicon Valley, and Washington DC.

Growth formula:

Unique format + thought leaders + passion

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UPS has been taking steps to go green for years now, but this Christmas season, they’ve taken their fuel-saving efforts to yet another level. In order to keep up with the holiday mailing demand, they continued a program that they tested out last year - using bikes to deliver packages.

Obviously, this can’t be done everywhere, but in locations with seasonally warm weather, this is an option that is saving 17 gallons of fuel per every three bikers on the road. On top of that, they’re saving money on vehicle maintenance costs and cutting down on emissions.

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The Environmental Leader reports that new green initiatives are changing the Great White Way.

The Broadway theater community has outlined a series of goals as part of a new environmental initiative. “Broadway Goes Green” hopes to reduce Broadway’s carbon footprint, adopt environmentally sustainable practices and promote environmental awareness in the creation and presentation of Broadway shows.

The new Broadway Goes Green website serves as a repository for all of the green initiatives undertaken by the theatre community in New York City. These include little things that we have recommended on our site, like replacing disposable mugs and turning off lights and big things like replacing the marquee lights that mark the top spots in the theatre district and encouraging purchase of carbon offsets for touring companies.

The initiative was announced with typical theatrics says The New York Times, by

And so it came to pass that Marcie Dodd, the current Elphaba in the Broadway production of “Wicked,” in full costume and green makeup, introduced Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to a crowd at the Eugene O’Neill Theater on Tuesday. The occasion was the official commencement of Broadway Goes Green, a partnership between the city and Broadway that is meant to shrink the Shrek-size carbon footprint of the Great White Way. Read the rest of this entry »

A post by contributing guest writer Melissa Chungfat.

I’ve been seeing a lot of Thomas Friedman on the tube talking about his book Hot, Flat, and Crowded. The three-time Pulitzer Prize winner is getting a lot of buzz stressing the necessity of a green global industry. Ecopreneurs are key in developing innovative solutions to deal with the tremendous global environmental problems.

The book title refers to the convergence of global warming, the rise of the middle class, and the exponential population growth. These factors drive the following five trends over their tipping point:

• Energy and resource
• Petro dictatorship
• Biodiversity loss
• Climate change
• Energy poverty

In our culture of convenience, so many people want to help the environment – if they can keep all of their luxuries; they want to green their habits – if it’s convenient enough; they want to buy green products – if it’s easy enough to find. But this attitude won’t fly anymore with the problems we are facing. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a great idea: A small non-profit, Global Giving, challenges Americans to avoid the long lines and return to the true “Giving Spirit” of the holidays. But is it? Is it with, what, according to Charity Navigator, the well-respected non-profit watch dog, NOT a top notch company…in fact, the lowest ranked of similar organizations! Global Giving, according to Market Watch is encouraging shoppers to give a donation instead of a gift:

To help Americans rediscover the true meaning of the holidays AND find a gift for “the person who has everything,” [Global Giving] — “the Amazon of philanthropy” — is launching the “Great American Sleep-In”: a challenge to get more Americans to spend time with their loved ones and avoid the mall traffic this “Black Friday” by giving a gift that gives back … all from the comfort of their own home…. This year, instead of spending $20 on another tie, how about providing baby bottles to mothers in Brooklyn, immunizing mothers and children in India or sending a child to school in Uganda?

The problem is, that the organization running this promotion — and don’t be fooled for a minute, this is a promotion — may not be such a great sponsor.  After a bit of research, I’m not sure I want to give them my donation. This, from their own site, troubles me:

All donations go through the GlobalGiving Foundation, a registered 501(c)3 organization, which receives a nominal 10% fee. This helps cover the cost of operating the marketplace - finding and researching projects, attracting donors, and building our website.

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I often have email exchanges with ecopreneurs, non-profits, NGOs and various business folks that don’t necessarily end up as a blog post. Sometimes I start in one direction and end up in another. That’s what happened here when I received an email from Rob Wallace at Keep America Beautiful.

Rob had one of those ironic moments. He sent out an email and press release to us asking:

How can recycling wireless phones support the new administration’s energy policy?  Our recycling partner, ReCellular, is a reuse-oriented recycler of cellular equipment, and we’re confident that their structure and operations support zero-waste wireless recycling.

Great email pitch. Bookmark this page for next time you send out a press release. However, this pitch landed on my screen the day after I wrote this post on 60 Minutes and Executive Recycling. I immediately asked Rob if he’d be interested in commenting on the whole issue of dumping of e-waste in China instead. And he was and here is what he had to say: Read the rest of this entry »

An op-ed piece in the New York Times, The Climate For Change, by über environmentalist, Al Gore, outlines for President-Elect Obama changes we need to make to both improve the economy and decrease climate change.

Much of what he recommends is good news for ecopreneurs.

1…. incentives for the construction of concentrated solar thermal plants, wind and advanced plants in geothermal hot spots .

2… planning and construction of a unified national smart grid for the transport of renewable electricity from the rural places to cities

3…. help America’s automobile industry (not only the Big Three but the innovative new startup companies as well) to convert quickly to plug-in hybrids Read the rest of this entry »

No matter which presidential candidate walks away today with a key to the oval office, I’ll be a happy man. It’s not at all that I don’t care who sits in the hot seat on Pennsylvania Avenue - rather I’m just happy that I don’t need to be worried about a military coup or massive riots whether Obama or McCain wins the election.

Beyond the rhetoric, the mud-slinging, the polls, and even the “issues” is the fact that this “American Experiment” of democracy is greater than any candidate running for office, or political party. Like Thomas M. DeFrank at nydailynews says

“After 931 days of campaigning, 109 primaries and caucuses, 47 debates and $5 billion spent, this marathon election nears its historic finish. Whatever Tuesday’s verdict, America will demolish political barriers that have stood through 55 quadrennial contests by choosing its first African-American President or its first female vice president.”

The previous 2 presidential elections (2000, 2004) also generated record levels of interest and voters from both sides of the political fence, much like today’s election. Following those elections, the country seemed to become very politically divided and the whole thing created a new breed of partisan-based patriotism. No matter who wins today, the next president will have the challenge of uniting the country and bringing opinions together to reach consensus. So when it comes to eco-policy, just how different are democrats & republicans?

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The following is guest post submitted to me by the ecopreneurs over at Grow and Make - The Sustainable Living Store.

Currently, lobbyists working for Chrysler and General Motors are working to encourage the US Congress to direct part of the $170 billion bail-out to help Chrysler and GM merge into a new car company. The bail-out is intended to help the financial industry recover from the current hemorrhaging taking place and to ensure a stable consolidation. The argument the car companies are making to congress is that they are financial businesses due to their large interest in providing loans and financing for car buyers.

As an Ecopreneur I am outraged at the absurd notion that our government should bail-out two broken and dead-end businesses to encourage their intended merger. This bailout would be the closest thing to socialism we will have witnessed from our Federal Government in many years and would be more akin to the type of intervention typical or France or Italy in the past. The only innovation I’ve seen to come out of Detroit in the last twenty years was to focus on becoming finance companies and to then lose sight of their core business of building cars for their customers. As one executive at GM was quoted to say “We’re a finance company which happens to sell cars”.

These car companies could have made decisions to invest in better designs, quality and fuel efficiency years ago, but decided the margins in large SUV and trucks was where their focus should be. Now they want to be “rescued”. What venture fund or corporation would invest in a business, division or startup with this type of short-sightedness. Imagine if you will the outcome of spending the $10 billion they are asking for on small entrepeneurial companies building technologies which enable cleaner burning, fuel efficient, alternative powered transportation. Do you think ten years from now that $10 billion would show a return for tax payers and those who will be seeking jobs during the ensuing time? Read the rest of this entry »

We saw Wal-Mart, a company with worldwide-wide revenues only second to Exxon-Mobile, signal last week in Beijing that it is moving away from “intermittent transactions with many suppliers toward longer-term arrangements with a smaller group of manufacturers“. Then, this week in the news, IBM starts on a roll to eliminate the ‘burden’ of paper — including paper costs, compliance risks and environmental challenges — from their customers’ supply chains with a handful of recently launched software and services.

What is going on here? Both companies are adopting tactics used by sustainability minded entrepreneurs as part of the time tested sustainability supply chain model: measure, purchase local where possible, maintain long-term relationships and integrate accountability at all ‘nodes’ of the chain.

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