Today's Green Minute from Creators Syndicate

Solar is Styling for 08/25/2008

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

John Langdon, with a company called HelioVolt, points out that solar power is in a state similar to the situation of air conditioning in 1950: not yet considered standard equipment in new construction. Back then, window units were the prescribed retrofit for buildings without central air — and 6-inch deep solar panels are the corresponding retrofit for non-solar buildings now.

In 2 ...

Updated: Mon Aug 25, 2008

Recycle for Mom for 09/01/2008

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Peter Lobin of Solid Waste Solutions Corp. calls himself a "Garbologist." He was visiting San Francisco's Embarcadero when he noticed the public recycling set-up: One 90-gallon toter for "Recyclables," one for "Trash" and one for "Organics."

Since his company's motto is Integrated Environmental Solutions for a Sustainable Future, Lobin was interest ...

Updated: Mon Sep 01, 2008

Soles for Souls for 09/08/2008

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

This is a story that will warm your heart … if not your feet. Its premise is quite simple: sending used shoes to people who need them.

The particulars: The Lehigh Safety Shoe Co. has teamed up with Soles4Souls in a program that will provide industrial companies with donation boxes, brochures, ad materials and local public relations in order to help these companies host a “shoe fair.” The ...

Updated: Mon Sep 08, 2008

Home Energy Bank for 09/15/2008

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

People who use solar energy systems to power their houses can watch their electric meters slow, stop or even run backward when the sun shines. But when the sun goes down, the power decreases. Now an MIT professor, Daniel Nocera, has developed a fuel cell that "banks" solar energy and makes electricity 24/7.

Fuel cells and batteries are alike in that they produce no greenhouse g ...

Updated: Mon Sep 15, 2008

G-Power for 09/22/2008

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

If you were riding a moneymaking machine and wanted to put your zillions into saving the world, where would you start? If you're Google, you're spending hundreds of millions of dollars to make electricity from renewable sources, which is cheaper than electricity from "dirty" sources.

One of Google's most interesting investments — for $10 million — is being made in & ...

Updated: Mon Sep 22, 2008

Greener Practices for 09/29/2008

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

We see everywhere how the American public has a hunger to live and work in green, healthy spaces — and now a statistic coming from the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) indicates that level of desire.

Here's the stat: One thousand professionals in the building industry have taken the NAHB's green training program. They've completed the classes, studied hard and passed th ...

Updated: Mon Sep 29, 2008

Transmission Problems for 10/06/2008

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

It may be that renewable energy sources will become cheap enough to someday be the Golden Goose, but it seems apparent that squeezing electricity out of wind, solar, biomass, etc. isn't enough. There's also the pesky problem of transmission — getting the juice from the place where it's generated to the location where it's used.

The U.S. Department of Energy has a target: generating ...

Updated: Mon Oct 06, 2008

Mysterious Kite for 10/13/2008

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

It's all shrouded in mystery, but the word is: the company was founded by a gifted inventor, the promise is to gather 10 times as much wind energy than traditional turbines, the financial backing is provided by the good folks at Google, and the product is a high-flying kite with membranes that harvest energy from the wind. Wow.

Makani Power is the company, Saul Griffith is the inventor, ...

Updated: Mon Oct 13, 2008

Fuel Bug for 10/20/2008

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Ethanol fuel has been touted as our current best alternative to fossil fuels, and corn has been the primary source of ethanol. But a significant side effect is that ethanol from corn is a threat to the stability of the world's food supply.

So the Holy Grail for ethanol producers has been to find a way to substitute bio-waste products — the stems, stalks and chips — instead of ...

Updated: Mon Oct 20, 2008

Chinese Methane for 10/27/2008

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The phrase "canary in a coalmine" comes from the age-old practice of placing a caged canary in a mine to detect explosive gases; the canary's death was a signal for miners to evacuate. The unfortunate death signaled methane gas. While the detection system has improved, coalmines tap into this dangerous, yet useful, gas in mines around the world.

Methane is a greenhouse gas 20 t ...

Updated: Mon Oct 27, 2008

Algae Crude for 11/03/2008

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

When oil prices soar to places they've never risen to before, unconventional sources of energy become ... well, less unconventional.

Consider the recent attention given to the lowly algae, and its ability to make fats. The fats can be made into refined crude oil in the same way ground crude oil is refined. But in order for crude oil from algae to be made into commercially viable quantiti ...

Updated: Mon Nov 03, 2008

Green Gizmos for 11/10/2008

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Black & Decker invented the first portable electric drill in 1917, and the company is still ahead of the curve. It's introduced three smart gizmos to lighten homeowners' impact on Mother Earth — and save them a few bucks along the way.

The Lights Out AutoSwitch is a motion detector and timer combined into a sleek unit that fits over a light switch. Walk into a room, the lights ...

Updated: Mon Nov 10, 2008

Biomimicry for 11/17/2008

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

A new UN survey says that big firms like General Electric and Procter & Gamble have, in their search for new ideas, been turning in greater numbers to Mother Nature. Janine Benyus, of the Biomimicry Guild (that wrote the report), points out that life — in its 3.8 billion years of inventing — has created an enormous number of "blueprints, designs and chemical recipes."< ...

Updated: Mon Nov 17, 2008

Chinese Pollution Protest for 11/24/2008

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Several months ago, residents of the Chinese town of Xiamen did something unheard of in this country of powerful Communist rule — they protested a government action. The object of this protest was the proposed construction of a chemical plant. Stranger still is the result: The protest succeeded; the chemical plant was never built. Now a new plant, three times larger, is proposed for the c ...

Updated: Mon Nov 24, 2008

Young Green Entrepreneur for 12/01/2008

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

It's not out of the ordinary for a CEO to ring the opening bell at NASDAQ, but it's noteworthy when the CEO is only 13 years old.

The bell ringing occurred on Oct. 16, 2008. Leanna Archer is the CEO — and as the developer of a natural hair care company called Leanna's Hair Inc., she's the youngest CEO ever to have the honor.

The story is that she started with a family formul ...

Updated: Mon Dec 01, 2008

Cloning the Extinct? for 12/08/2008

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

It's possible that a baby wooly mammoth carcass that Russian scientists discovered in 2007 — which has been frozen for over 40,000 years — may be able to be cloned. Someday soon. Wow.

Until now, cloning frozen tissue was impossible because cells burst open during freezing, which damages the DNA. (The only exception to this is when cryoprotectant chemicals are used to preserve ...

Updated: Mon Dec 08, 2008

Here Come LEDs for 12/15/2008

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

CFLs have been heralded as the green alternative to the familiar incandescent light bulbs that were brought to us by Thomas Edison, but CFLs reign may be short-lived: LEDs are on the horizon.

We've seen LED bulbs in digital clocks, outdoor television screens and traffic lights, but with semiconductor technology falling in price and a promised 50,000 hours of use, their appeal is growing. ...

Updated: Mon Dec 15, 2008

Solar Advances for 12/22/2008

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

With energy manufactured directly from the sun's rays and requiring no moving parts, solar energy is among the most promising of the alternative energies. With all the attention it's garnering, improvements in efficiency are coming thick and fast.

Current panels are able to convert only about two-thirds of the sun's light into electricity, but Shawn-Yu Lin, of Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst ...

Updated: Mon Dec 22, 2008

Magic Number 350 for 12/29/2008

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Andrew Gardner and Bill McKibbin are fixated on the number 350. And they want everybody in the world to be fixated on it as well. They've got high-profile athletes wearing green sweatbands that bear the number. They have church bells ringing 350 times, polar explorers planting the number on mountaintop banners, quilters affixing it on their quilts, farmers planting 350 trees and grads in office ...

Updated: Mon Dec 29, 2008

Spray-on Power for 01/05/2009

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Cheap and inexhaustible electricity production remains one of the Holy Grails of the green movement, with solar running neck and neck with wind in its ability to inspire innovation. Here's an example: Conventional solar cells are made of silicon, a brittle substance that requires a solid backing.

But recently, Xiaomei Jiang from the University of South Florida has announced the developme ...

Updated: Mon Jan 05, 2009