We have been having a lot of discussions at Green Collar recently with companies involved in helping Vehicle Fleets become more efficient.  The great thing about this area of the Green Collar Economy is that it is an easy area to get a great business ROI (which CFO’s love) and a area where a huge amount of carbon emissions can be eliminated (which is good for all of us).  This short video highlights how quickly both of these benefits come to fruition when dealing with fleet vehicles.

If you haven’t yet, you should check out the White Papers and Case Studies on GreenCollarEconomy.com reviewing the different approaches and benefits to improving fleet efficiency, saving money and lowering carbon emissions in companies operating fleet vehicles (I’m looking at you municipalities, delivery companies, repair companies, etc.). Also, check out the huge directory of green fleet solutions.

Building efficiency may be the most visible low-hanging fruit in the race to become more sustainable as a nation and a planet, but with the ROI available to fleet managers going green, this area is going to get hot and get hot fast.

If you’re like me, you’ve often thought that we humans produce a huge amount of energy when we excerise - or just go about our daily lives. The huge majority of that energy is wasted - but perhaps not anymore. A startup out of Cleveland, Tremont Electric, just released a new kinetic energy capture device that can generate wall socket level energy just by carrying it around with you while you walk.

About the size of a flashlight and weighing in at 9 ounces, the nPower PEG (Personal Energy Generator) takes advantage of magnets and springs to capture and amplify the kinetic energy we generate when we move and turn in into enough power to recharge personal electric devices. In the short-term it seems like a dream come true for serious campers, hikers, lumberjacks - folks who spend extended periods of time outdoors and off the grid. Based on the feedback about how well these things work, it will just be a matter of time before we start seeing them integrated into appliances and products we are already carrying around with us.

The folks at Tremont are already scaling the devices up - way up - and looking at ways they can put them in buoys and use them to generate 50kW per device in lakes and the ocean to create kinetic energy from Wave Energy.

This is an idea that has needed to happen and seeing a product of this type commercialized and ready to roll-out to market is a great example of how American ingenuity will help us make up for lost time in sustainability. Now if someone will just roll-out an entire gym worth of exercise equipment that will make every health club in America carbon neutral - let’s turn all those burned calories green!

OK, so although I spent yesterday afternoon thinking about the giant floating plastic continent and feeling overwhelmed, I am feeling much more like my optimistic self today. However, this is not blind optimism that ’science’ is going to figure this out. I am feeling better because I was just visiting the Recycling White Paper section on GreenCollarEconomy.com and noticed that hundreds and hundreds of business people are downloading these documents while looking for best practices for ther companies.

I like to believe that they are doing this for two reasons - first, humans run companies and deep down, even the greediest captain of industry wants to protect the environment; second, they know they are throwing good money after bad by simply throwing out so much trash. Here is a great example. Bayer Healthcare has lowered their garbage disposal bill by over $500,000/year and diverted over 70% of their waste from landfill into the recycling stream - all while making their business more profitable.

We need more businesses to wake up and start looking at sustainability as a strategic opportunity. There are thousands of ways to make ROI-generating investments in sustainability that will make a business stronger in more ways than just the short-term bottom line.

Occasionally when I am working out on my cycling trainer, I bring my laptop downstairs and watch a TED video. If you are not familiar with TED, you should check it out. However, on this particular occasion I watched a video that did not so much inspire as it did daunt and depress. I tweeted several months back about an article I read about the floating plastic garbage dump that has been accumulating in the Pacific Gyre for the last 20 years. It is almost unbeliveable than an area of the pacific twice the size of Texas could have an average of 6X as much plastic in it as it does plankton.

This area of floating and submerged plastic does not biodegrade, it just gets smaller and smaller and ends up in our food supply. As Nicholas Kristoff wrote about in this Sunday’s New York Times, 92% of Americans have the chemicals from these plastics in thier urine. Certainly not only from the Pacific Gyre garbage continent, but we have plenty of other plastic that we consume on a daily basis….by the way, it’s made with synthetic estrogen. This brings me back to the TED video….take a look and let me know if you have any bright ideas. We have to go from capturing and recycling 5% of our plastic to 95% plus and we need to do it in a hurry.

I read a great quote in The Daily Climate

Author and reporter Dianne Dumanoski noted in her recent book, The End of the Long Summer, that the only thing certain about the coming century is “its immense uncertainty.”
“It will take conscious effort to resist taking refuge either in despair – in the conviction that ‘it’s too late’ – or in the alternative, to bask in groundless, sunny optimism that ‘we’ll figure out something, because science always does.’ “

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am about as optimistic person as you will meet. Looking at something like this can take a little wind out of your sails. It is another huge problem to deal with that is going to require billions or trillions of dollars - like we don’t have enough of those right now.

I was just watching Hardball (on MSNBC)  with Mike Barnacle (a Boston-guy) sitting in for Chris Matthews.  Towards the end of the show, Barnacle asks his guests (paraphrasing) “When is one of these presidential candidates going to get specific about their energy policy and when are they going to get the guts to tell the American people the truth.   That it is going to hurt and that we are going to have to stop driving so much.”  

This seems like a reasonable question to ask, but to ask it two days after Barack Obama gave his speech on energy and announced his formal energy platform either means he is, a.) not doing his homework (at all), or, b.) actively trying to keep people from learning about it by making obtuse statements that change the conversation away from substance and towards rebuttal.  He continued this pattern with the other main point he brought up, that Obama would tax the oil companies on their windfall profits.  That he would do this to help  provide $1000 energy rebates for families unable to afford gas or heating oil was barely touched on, but plenty of time was spent on the part about how Obama hates companies that make a profit.  Mike, you can change the subject all you want, but you’re from the northeast, and you probably know people personally who are not going to be able to pay their heating bills this winter.  There are lots of working families and people on fixed income that are being hurt by these price increases and one of our presidential candidates presented his ENERGY POLICY, and American’s deserve to know what it is and how he plans to pay for it - all without partisan talking points as the main focus.   I am equally interested in learning how Senator McCain is planning on addressing this short-term issue and the much larger issue of his long-term energy policy.

I urge you all to watch or read Senator Obama’s speech, as it is vitally important.  Early on he eloquently lays out the essence of his position with this statement:

When it comes to our economy, our security, and the very future of our planet, the choices we make in November and over the next few years will shape the next decade, if not the century. And central to all of these major challenges is the question of what we will do about our addiction to foreign oil.

OK, that is exactly what we want and need to hear.  What’s more important than our economy, our security and our planet?  The fact that energy policy can positively impact all three is why Green is going to help America get its Mojo back and is why I started Green Collar Media.  He makes it clear that there are some short term pains that need to be addressed due to the price spike and he makes the following suggestions:

1. Provide $1000 energy rebate to every working family in America (to be paid for by windfall profits tax, as mentioned earlier by Mr. Barnacle)
2. Increased domestic oil production
3. Not opening up new areas to drilling but making the oil companies drill on the 68 million acres they already have, or give up their leases to someone who will
4. Increasing shale oil extraction
5. Drilling in a portion of Alaska (not ANWR)
6. Releasing 70 Million barrels of oil from the strategic reserve to bring prices down quickly

He states, though, that these are short-term fixes and in no way address or solve our addiction to foreign oil which is so poisoning our nation.

…breaking our oil addiction is one of the greatest challenges our generation will ever face. It will take nothing less than a complete transformation of our economy. This transformation will be costly, and given the fiscal disaster we will inherit from the last Administration, it will likely require us to defer some other priorities.

It is also a transformation that will require more than just a few government programs. Energy independence will require an all-hands-on-deck effort from America — effort from our scientists and entrepreneurs; from businesses and from every American citizen. Factories will have to re-tool and re-design. Businesses will need to find ways to emit less carbon dioxide. All of us will need to buy more of the fuel-efficient cars built by this state, and find new ways to improve efficiency and save energy in our own homes and businesses.

This will not be easy. And it will not happen overnight. And if anyone tries to tell you otherwise, they are either fooling themselves or trying to fool you.

If that is not a presidential candidate telling us the truth, than I cannot imagine what that could possibly look like.  Mr. Barnacle, you owe this guy an apology.

He goes on to outline 3 main steps that he would take as president to help America succeed in meeting these challenges and taking advantage of the opportunities it will create:

1. Help American car companies create the next generation of electric-hybrid vehicles that get 150 miles to the gallon and get 1 Million of them on the road within six years.  To do this, he suggests investing in advance battery technology, leverage private sector funding to bring the products to market, but offer a $7000 tax rebate for purchasers of the new cars.
2. Require that 10% of our energy come from renewable sources by the end of his first term.  Tax breaks, incentives, funding for entrepreneurs…all the stuff you would expect, but hey…they work.
3. Start a nationwide conservation effort.  He wants America to use 15% less energy by the end of the next decade.  This is the easiest and most cost effective thing we can do and it will save us $130 Billion a year if we can pull it off.   He wants to make national building efficiency standards so that new buildings will be 50% more efficient within 4 years, and based on California’s success, change the ways that utilities get paid by compensating them on how much energy they save, not how much they sell.

This is a substantive and well thought out stance on the most important strategic decision of our time.   I’ll let Senator Obama’s optimistic words, which capture my own beliefs, sum up his policy.

But I know we can do this. We can do this because we are Americans. We do the improbable. We beat great odds. We rally together to meet whatever challenge stands in our way. That’s what we’ve always done — and it’s what we must do now. For the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, we must end the age of oil in our time.

Game On!  Senator McCain - you have your work cut out for you.

All I wanted for father’s day was to enjoy a very relaxing, kicked back day.  It worked out great…I didn’t do a single dish, didn’t cook for myself, I took a nap and laid on the couch to watch the US Open - and that’s when things feel apart….that was THE WORST GOLF COVERAGE I’VE EVER SEEN!

I mean, can we PLEASE have a few more hours of commentary about Tiger’s knee while we only bother to show about 3 shots an hour, and not a single shot of a golfer out of the top 3?   Painful. 

And since I had plenty of time to channel surf, I found “An Inconvenient Truth” on Showtime.   I know many (most) of you have seen this film by now, but I hadn’t seen it in over a year, and it is well worth watching again.  It is powerful, to the point and drives home why we need to move to solve this problem as quickly as we possibly can, and why America needs to take THE leadership role.  I have been so focused on determining how to help businesses make more money while going green, that it was good to have myself scared silly a little bit.  The discussion of the movie led to some heated discussion at the dinner table that night (with the in-laws), but the question was not should we do something, but how to do it.  I think that people (and businesses) everywhere are waiting for the answer to the question, ‘what should I do?’

Americans are already figuring it out on their own, and so are American businesses.  If you have an idea that has worked for your business already - regardless of your industry - click on the ‘Green Collar Forums’ icon on the top of this blog and add your story to our “Success Stories” forum.  We can’t solve this problem on our own, and we need to share solutions that work, or we’ll never succeed in time.  Looking at An Inconvenient Truth again, really brought that home to me.

Communities around the country are organizing to find ways to become green, and in my hometown, we are no different.  Independent groups of concerned citizens are taking up the baton and running when there is no help from government, and the group in my town, the Newton Green Decade Coallition, has come up with a simple and exciting idea that should be replicated around the country.  A green welcome wagon basket. 

When new familiies move into town, they are  provided with a welcome basket filled with hundreds of dollars of green lifestyle goodies.  Lighbulbs, green cleaning supplies, reusable grocery bags, outlet insulators, coupons for energy efficiency audits, etc  (see the whole list here).

What a simple and powerful idea, and what a great way to welcome new residents to town.  It shows the new neighbors how progressive the city is, encourages them to go green and makes it easy for them.   It provides them with something that is meaningful to all of us right now, as opposed to just a bunch of stuff that would all be put aside and most likely never used (except the baked goods, we all eat the baked goods).  

Of course my business mind started taking leaps about how to take this concept and roll it out nationwide.  The welcome wagon association must be out there somewhere, and this is an idea that they should pick up and run with.