Gertie is a camper — a “short” bus with a powerful International engine. In 2006, I drove her from Colorado to Maine while chronicling in this blog a quest for biodiesel fuel. This week, Gertie found a new home with the Maine Earth Walk Project. Her owner, the organizer and publicist for Maine Earth Walk, [...]
The Economist had an article in a recent issue about the “anthropocene” period, our new geologic era, where mankind is the dominant force in the geology of the planet. A period where our agriculture, cities, dams, etc literally have and will permanently change the face of the earth itself, forever. The article suggests that we [...]
Sandor Schoichet s a longtime Cleantech Blog reader, and Director of Meridian Management Consultants. Sandor has EE and SM degrees in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science from MIT, where he studied artificial intelligence, office automation, and business process reengineering, and completed a joint program in Management of Innovation at the Sloan and Harvard business schools. [...]
I had a chance to stop in at the Campus Sustainability Day at my alma mater, Texas A&M today. It was great to see all the activity. We definitely didn’t have such when I was in school. The turnout included various Texas A&M facilities and utilities departments, a number of student committees and organizations, and local [...]
by Richard T. Stuebi In today’s world, it’s easy to claim being “green”. You can recycle, you can drive a Prius, you can have solar panels on your house, you can install CFLs in every light socket, but…in actuality, how green really are you? This question was the focus of a recent posting on Yahoo! [...]
by Richard T. Stuebi One of the more promising stories to emerge from Cleveland in recent years is the formation of the Evergreen Cooperatives, a holding company to fund start-up companies that: Employ disadvantaged citizens from some of the most poverty-stricken neighborhoods in Cleveland Are founded on the principle of being worker-owned cooperatives, to enable [...]
by Richard T. Stuebi I’ve been crunched for time over the holiday season, so I’ve dropped the ball on writing original content. Sorry about that. To fill the gap, I received the following email from Katy Rohlicek representing EcoCAR, which I’m posting verbatim: “When it comes to making a fresh start at the beginning of [...]
by Richard T. Stuebi as posted to Huffington PostIt is the best of times; it is the worst of times. The climate isn’t changing; we must move to a sustainable way of life. Earlier in August, a meeting called “Debunking Climate Change Myths” was held in Springfield, Missouri, bringing together about 150 figures and sympathizers [...]
Nine months ago, I joined Terraqualo, a new startup aimed at helping growers of specialty crops make best irrigation decisions, using a cost-effective wireless network of sensors and actuators. In this new weekly column on “Sustainable Agriculture on Cleantech Blog”, I will share some of the lessons I have learned, and invite you to contribute [...]
Pretty much everything you eat these days contains corn, whether in the form of corn syrup, sauces, starch, or other food additives. Pretty soon, we will also get upholstery made from this plant. Already being used for biofuels, corn is also a chemical feedstock. Joel Makower shared this story from his attendance of a gathering [...]
by Heather Raefor cleantechblog.com The term came up over lunch. A group of home energy evaluators convened at King Eider’s pub in Damariscotta. That morning, we had completed filming of an energy evaluation with the film crew from Maine Public Broadcasting Network. We were talking about the future of the country and the economy and [...]
by Richard T. Stuebi Earlier this month, I had the privilege of joining a delegation led by Cleveland Mayor Frank G. Jackson to visit Baden-Wurttemberg, the southwestern-most state in Germany. The aim of the trip was to begin building stronger commercial bridges between the Cleveland area and Baden-Wurttemberg – two heavy industrial economies of similar [...]
by Marguerite Manteau-Rao I got a sneak preview of Scientific American’s Earth 3.0 special issue on ‘Solutions for Sustainable Progress’. Mostly great stuff, with the exception of one article, that prompted me to write this rebuttal. In ‘Learning from the Internet’, Robert M. Metcalfe, venture capitalist and Internet pioneer, expands on the dangerous idea that, [...]
by Marguerite Manteau-Rao (This post originally appeared on La Marguerite blog) Sustainability wikis such as Wikia Green or Appropedia have an important role to play, in the gathering of solutions for a sustainable future. The big challenge of course, is how to engage contributors into volunteering free content. As a content creator in the sustainability [...]
By John Addison (8/28/08). About half of the global warming caused by transportation is the result of goods and services that we all use; the other is from our personal vehicles ride. We can buy an organic apple that was grown locally, or we can buy an apple grown ten thousand miles away that used [...]
by Marguerite Manteau-Rao Green or sustainability? Clean tech or environmental conservation? If you want to get a sense for what topics generate the most buzz at any point in time, Nielsen BlogPulse is the place to go: ‘Green’ is a word understood by all. Sustainability is still a concept for the business elite. I [...]
by Marguerite Manteau-Rao While the majority of global executives consider carbon reduction an important aspect of purchasing and supply chain management, only a minority follow through: That’s too bad, according to the McKinsey study. Not only are these companies not helping fight climate change as much as they could, they are also missing out on [...]
by Heather Raefor cleantechblog.com One of three dealers of Benjamin Moore paint in my travel distance (which is getting shorter and shorter with the increase in gas prices) carries the new Aura line, as well as the EcoSpec low-voc line of paints.Farther north, along Route 1, another dealer is weighing the costs of the investment [...]
by Heather Rae Maine Congressman Tom Allen hopes to dislodge Senator Susan Collins from her Senatorial seat. Allen spoke a few weeks back at an event sponsored by the Hydrogen Energy Center and other energy-oriented organizations at the Frontier Cafe in Brunswick. Allen said that without the right kind of leadership in the executive office, [...]
