If you’re interested in both business ethics and environmental sustainability (as I am), read this article on Triple Pundit that shows how corruption can degrade our environment, citing a few among many examples. They didn’t even mention many well-known cases, such as the lead-poisoned toys and adulterated baby formula from China a few years ago.
Do yourself, your customers, and your bottom line a favor: remember to be both green AND ethical.
It’s nothing new to have bicycles as commercial haulers. In much of the world, bicycles are commonly used to haul both freight and passengers. In the US, where I live, I remember hundreds of delivery bikes on the streets of New York when I was a child: industrial-frame one-speeds with huge boxes on the front. More recently, many cities have added bicycle-rickshaws to their public transportation fleets, competing directly with gas-powered taxis. They’re cheaper and of course much greener than motorized ones, and in congested, traffic-clogged cities, often just as fast.
My much more rural area has had Pedal People, a bicycle-based trash-hauling and farmshare-delivery company, since 2002. Oh yeah, and when I was a high school student in the 1970s, I commuted by bike, 5-1/2 miles uphill in New York City traffic, when the weather permitted. It saved me half an hour each way over the bus, because the bus route was far from linear (although I could read on the bus and not on my bike).
So what makes this decade different?
First, the growing green consciousness. When people who are already disposed to lower their carbon footprint (and their costs) learn that bicycles are really viable transportation alternatives in many cases, the switch becomes easy.
And second, the rapidly developing technology of bicycles. The kind of high-tech freight-hauling bikes described in this article about a bike-powered cargo company in Victoria, British Columbia would have been unimaginable just a few years ago.
This is a reminder of two critical concepts for the coming years:
1. Money is not a goal; it is a means of accomplishing something. While having more money means you can purchase the goods or services you want, there are often other ways to accomplish the goal.
2. Buying stuff is not the only way to accomplish something.
Here’s a look at how to leverage other methods of getting your needs met and your wants fulfilled.
Zipcar just commissioned a study on the sharing habits of Millennials, showing that they are more willing to share not just cars, but a wide range of resources, than their parents and grandparents.
That may be true of the majority culture, but there are plenty of us older folks who know a good thing when they see it. I’ve been lifelong practitioner of this sort of approach, and a public advocate all the way back to at least 1995, when I published my fourth book, The Penny-Pinching Hedonist. I’m turning 55 on Saturday, and here are some among many sharing experiences I’ve had over the years:
The article, in The Atlantic, also linked to a cool website (and concept) called Collaborative Consumption, which may be increasingly important as we try to turn the world green.
It’s been a good year for recognition of my work for a better world. In October, I was inducted into the National Environmental Hall of Fame (View pictures and read the transcript here.)
And then last night, I received notification that I (as the human face of GreenAndProfitable.com) am the very first business in the country to be certified by Green America at the Gold level (which was a fairly arduous process involving several reviews of an extensive questionnaire covering socially responsible investing, supply chain, commitment to social and economic justice, and, of course, environmental benchmarks, among other things).
I’m thrilled. After 40 years in the environmental world, it is nice to have people notice.
Now through Monday morning at 6 a.m., youhave a chance to enter a contest for a brand new Dell Dell 3335dn multifunction printer, which not only prints two-sided at high resolution from any computer on our network, but also scans, copies, e-mails, and stores documents in its memory. I have to tell you, even though I’ve gotten along just fine without in-house copying and faxing capabilities, I’m finding that I really enjoy having them.
Because the company is courting the green market for this printer (which not only can print both sides of the paper but also has some cool energy management features), Dell’s promotion team came to me and asked if I’d like to give one of these printers away. Of course, I agreed–but I put a condition on it. Rather than just give one away randomly, I’ll give it to the person who submits the best sustainability tip via my Twitter account during the giveaway days.
So you’ll be rewarded for your thinking processes, and probably not facing an enormous number of entries. In other words, if you give this your best shot, you’ll have a much better chance of winning than in most contests.
And five runners-up get a copy of my very useful e-book, Painless Green: 111 Tips to Help the Environment, Lower Your Carbon Footprint, Cut Your Budget, and Improve Your Quality of Life-With No Negative Impact on Your Lifestyle.
Disclosure: as is obvious from above, I got one of these printers as a gift and have been using it steadily ever since.
By entering, you agree to both my rules and Dell’s rules for the contest, which are both posted at https://painlessgreenbook.com/win-a-1299-printer-december-16-19-2011.
Note: Posting a comment here or e-mailing me, while welcome, does not enter you in the contest. You must follow the specific procedure outlined on that page. There’s a specific place you need to enter, and your entry has to contain two specific things.
Good article in Renewable Energy World, showing that despite such setbacks as Solyndra, solar is actually a pretty solid player these days.
In fact, for the first time ever, the U.S. solar industry installed more than a gigawatt of new capacity. That’s like a whole nuclear power plant, without the risks.
In honor of the push to bank local by Green America, the push to buy local by Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, and because business bankers want to see business plans and December is National Write a Business Plan Month, I present this guest post from Tim Chen of NerdWallet, on sustainable banking.
Take it away, Tim:
Seems like everywhere you turn these days people are promoting something green. From locovore diets, to green building and green business, there’s a big push for more sustainable living, and a certain trendiness that goes along with it. Chances are if you’re reading this blog, you’re already in the know. Maybe you have your own sustainable business venture, and you’re looking for tips and ideas to make it work. Here’s one for you: Green banking.
Green banking means different things to different people. Maybe you switched to online statements, and you’re darned proud of it. If so, good for you. If not, check it out. Going paperless with your banking is one of the easiest ways to give the environment a little help, and just about every bank offers the service.
But there are other ways to green your banking, and options you may not have heard of. Take, for example, New Resource Bank in San Francisco. The bank only offers accounts to green businesses, and allows accountholders to network with each other. New resource composts and recycles in an effort to meet their goal of 95% waste diversion away from landfills, and every swipe of your debit card earns money for their nonprofit partners.
There’s also GreenChoice Bank, which is based in Illinois. The bank targets their lending to the sustainable business community, and half of the management is accredited in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED).
Houston-based Green Bank will donate $50 to one of a list of local environmental organizations when you open a business or personal money market or checking account. The bank headquarters are LEED Gold-Certified, with minimized resource consumption and rainwater irrigation.
If these banks aren’t in your area, don’t despair! Green America offers a list of community development banks and credit unions, as well as a campaign to “break up with your mega-bank.” Switching to a greener bank can help you take your business sustainability one step further. It will also put you in good company––who knows, you might even make valuable connections with likeminded entrepreneurs.
Tim Chen is the CEO of NerdWallet, an unbiased resource for the best business credit cards.
Maybe once or twice a year, I actually get an unsolicited bulk e-mail that is targeted, relevant, and has a subject line that makes me open it. nd while I absolutely detest spam, I don’t object to this. If I am exactly the right audience for an offer, it’s not spam; it means a company is doing its homework and compiling a list of actual prospects.
This morning, I got one with the subject, “recycle related/reuse and swap search engine.” Since I write about the environment and have a 40-year commitment to encouraging reuse, I opened the e-mail.
This is an excerpt:
ecofreek.com is a search engine that searches the web for free and ‘for swap/trade’ items people no longer need from over 45+ major sources, providing the most diverse and accurate results anywhere in the world.
Also included are items for trade like books, sports equipment, antiques, automobiles, bicycles, motorcycles, CDs/DVDs, computers, property, seeds/gardening supplies, and lots more.
We also encourage people to exchange and re-use items though our search engine and also our ‘places to give things away’ section. Feel free to recommend us new resources as well, we have a section we link to other environmental/green sites.
We hope you enjoy your experience at our site and welcome any and all feedback.
Please contact me for any questions about our site/service or working together.Sincerely,
Nicole Boivin – Founder
She also included her personal e-mail and phone number.
So I went over to look, and I like what I found (mostly).
As a longtime participant in Freecycle.org, I was interested to compare. I found several major differences:
1. The search engine is elegant and allows you to choose a geographic area ranging from your own town or US state to anywhere in the world. Freecycle restricts you to your own community.
2. Ecofreek is web-based, rather than e-mail-driven, which means you can search for what you want instead of just posting a wanted or offered notice and hoping for response.
3. Freecycle is about gifting. While gifting is an option at Ecofreek, swaps are also encouraged.
I did get very weird results when I clicked a suggested link (not a database result) for free samples of Kashi. And I do see that this site will need to be prepared to deal with people spamming the message boards (I saw one or two noncommercial spams). But I think it’s a good addition to the frugality and environmentalism toolbox.
And I will write to Nicole and ask her how I get listed in the environmental section she referred to.
According to a new study by Environmental Health Perspectives, biking instead of driving for trips under five miles turns out not only to be healthful, cleaner, more fun, etc.–it’s also apparently good for the economy to replace car trips with bike trips.
As a long-term bike fan (and sometime bike commuter all the way back to high school), I’m not surprised.
(via @undriving)
Two commentators demonstrate why solar continues to be viable, and why the dramatic and very public failure of Solyndra has nothing to do with the viability of solar.
On Huffington Post, Graciela Tiscareño-Sato writes, in “A Teaching Moment About the Green Economy,” of several brilliant entrepreneurs who are helping us take big steps toward a green economy, emphasizing multiple benefits such as saving cost and carbon and creating jobs at the same time. Her examples (all from the Latino world, incidentally) cover the building industry (specifically, solarizing schools in California), fashion, eco-consulting, and more.
And in the New York Times, Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman points out that Solyndra’s failure was directly related to the success of solar. Solyndra’s model was based in high prices and scarcity, but as solar becomes more popular, the energy equivalent of the computer industry’s Moore’s Law kicks in; we get ever-more-powerful, cheaper, more effective systems as the quantity goes up. Solyndra couldn’t compete with the new low-cost solar providers. (Note: this is a different aspect of the same article I blogged about yesterday.)