The Cost of Business

General view of the city and the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad, Amarillo, Texas. Santa Fe R.R. trip (LOC) by The Library of Congress

According to a recent United Nations report, that’s being complied by Trucost, the world’s top 3,000 companies cause $2.2 trillion in environmental damage per year1. The report is said to include all 500 companies on Standard & Poor’s list of the largest publicly traded companies in the United States. Richard Mattison, the chief operating officer of Trucost, commented that the report not only examined company impacts but also goods and services, greenhouse gas emissions, local pollutions, particulate emissions, and use of natural resources like water and timber.  While the aim of the report is to bring light to environmental business ethics, it’s also telling how complicated such reporting can become: many US companies do business and manufacture products globally making regulation, evaluation and monitoring a challenge. Nonetheless, Mr. Mattison notes that the intent of the report is to capture the attention of investors and educate those who want to affect positive environmental change through business decisions. He goes on to say that, one that of the things investors can do is engage with companies in a collaborative way. Seeing as we live in a global society heavily influenced by the corporate model, there may be no other immediate solution to meeting the demands of consumers and the demands of our planet.

1. By comparison, the gross world product is on the order of $50 trillion, and in 1997 ecosystem services were valued at $33 trillion; $44,000,000,000,000 in 2009 dollars.

Oceanic hydro-power digest

wave crash by silverxraven Oregon is set to test another buoy-based power generation system after the previous system sank two years ago.

Closer to home, plans to deploy a more traditional turbine-based system known as SeaGen in the Bay of Fundy were announced last year. An earlier Irish SeaGen installation has been operational for more than 1,000 hours since it was installed in 2008.

Both systems use “run-of-the-river” technologies which should minimize disruption of the surroundings, unlike the Annapolis basin installation also in the Bay of Fundy which operates more like a conventional hydroelectric dam.

Also of note, a relatively recent announcement about more cheap renewable energy in the future from north of the border into “Boston” which seems to have received little attention.

Volunteers go door to door in East Cambridge

CFL exchange volunteers On Sunday, February 21, eighteen volunteers participated in a community canvass campaign to spread awareness about simple home improvements to save money, energy, and the planet. The event organized by the Home Energy Efficiency Team and the Cambridge Energy Alliance sought to help cut carbon emissions in East Cambridge through a CFL light bulb exchange.

Exchanging incandescent light bulbs for compact fluorescents is one of the easiest and effective ways to reduce energy use at home. A compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL) will save about $30 over its lifetime and pay for itself in about 6 months. It uses 75 percent less energy and lasts about 10 times longer than an incandescent bulb. If every Massachusetts household would exchange just one incandescent light bulb to an energy saving CFL, it would save enough energy to light all the homes in Boston for 100 days, reduce greenhouse gas equivalent to removing more than 17,000 cars from the road, and save more than $20 million annually in reduced energy costs.

Volunteers exchanged 129 incandescents bulbs for CFLs, saving over 76,000 lbs of CO2 emissions. Volunteers worked together in teams, offered free energy-efficient CFL light bulbs, initiated dialogue about simple home energy-saving tips, and invited folks to participate in an upcoming Community Weatherization Barnraising on February 28th. The Home Energy Efficiency Team will be weatherizing two houses in East Cambridge. Special guest Andrew Ference—Boston Bruins defenseman and avid climate change activist—will be attending this exciting event and making a donation to the New England Grassroots Environment Fund, one of HEET’s funders.

These type of events go a long way to spreading important information about climate change and energy efficiency solutions to people in our communities who may not otherwise receive it. To learn more information about community barnraisings visit HEET’s website.

Remember the rainforest?

Logging in PNG by Greenpeace Esperanza The poster child of human environmental destruction in the 90’s is still imperiled, even if the focus has shifted to global warming. Of course the two are intimately related, and besides the forests’ huge impacts on local watersheds—effectively creating their own rain—the forests’ trees and soils obviously have a major impact on the carbon cycle. Still, the onslaught upon the lungs of the world is not only unrelenting but expanding. Continue reading

Extreme documentaries

Are there cars in heaven? by eqqman

Last week’s episode of NOVA Extreme Cave Diving was an interesting foray into “blue holes,” and the evidence they offer of paleo-climate. If you missed it, check the website to view it online. Similar, though less-breath taking evidence is offered in a recent paper from Yale.

This week’s Extreme Ice, provides a stunning and more in-depth review of the photographic documentation of glacial melting by James Balog, which we have mentioned before.

CEA debuts Climate Change Art Project

Climate Change New England

The Cambridge Energy Alliance is debuting a poster art exhibit to inform the public about climate change and its impacts, the carbon emissions of Cambridge, and how local citizens can make a difference. Over 80% of Cambridge’s Climate emissions come from residential and commercial buildings, so eliminating wasted energy in our homes and workplaces is a priority.

To view the full CEA art poster exhibit visit:

http://cambridgeenergyalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/posters.pdf

The Cambridge Energy Alliance art exhibit displays many ways people can conserve energy and get connected to efficiency programs and resources. The Exhibit will be on display from Wednesday, February 16th, 2010 through March 20th, 2010 at the Clear Conscience Café (C3) located inside Harvest Coop‘s Central Square location.

Following the 4-week showing at C3, the CEA art exhibit will be rotated to other locations throughout the city. You can preview the posters by clicking the thumbnail above.

Converting to a Dual-Flush Toilet

No, we didn’t get a new toilet. We converted our old one with a One2flush kit. Turning the handle one way makes a half flush and turning it the other makes a full flush. And it’s easy to increase or decrease the water levels of both of them if necessary by adjusting the settings on the flapper.

Our toilet was already a modern, low-flow toilet, using just 1.6 gallons of water per flush. But you really don’t need 1.6 gallons for every flush. That’s now the default setting for the full flush, and 0.8 gallons is the default setting for the half flush, but we’ll have to continue playing around with the water levels to figure out what’s the least amount that we can use.

The kit was relatively simple to install—you can tell by the fact that two very non-handy people did it without flooding the bathroom. Taking the toilet tank off was obviously terrifying, and a little difficult, too, because the bolts were corroded. But this video walked us through the whole thing step by step.

We did run into one problem when we were done. The fill valve continued to allow a steady trickle of water through, even when the tank was already full. We were afraid we’d have to replace the whole fill valve (or shamefacedly ask our landlord to do it), but cleaning the valve did the trick.

The problem? The previous tenants had put bricks in the toilet tank to save water. The bricks had started to degrade in the water, and brick dust had gotten into the valve. This is why people now emphasize that if you want to displace water in your toilet, use a bottle of water—don’t use [unprotected] bricks!

Cross-posted on pragmaticenvironmentalism.com

Solar Shingles Heat Up

Solar Shingles from The Dow Chemical Company Check out a recent story I wrote for Technology Review on a new plug ‘n’ play solar shingle from Dow Chemical. Dow plans to release a small test batch of the solar embedded shingles later this year and while they haven’t yet announced who will get them, I think they’d compliment my solar hot water system quite nicely.

My guess is this and other attempts to merge solar panels with conventional building materials will initially cost a premium and the technology will likely encounter some hiccups along the way. But, eventually, I think solar embedded shingles will become a standard part of new roofs. Like one industry analyst told me, “two hundred years ago they didn’t build buildings with electrical systems in the walls and wiring buildings was a really expensive retrofit. Today, its standard practice.”