Sonoco’s Team Green

HARTSVILLE, S.C., May 10, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — Sonoco Recycling, LLC, a unit of Sonoco (NYSE: SON) and one of the largest packaging recyclers in North America, today announced that Sonoco CorrFlex’s Rural Hall, N.C., facility has successfully diverted over 95 percent of its waste to landfill. The plant is the second CorrFlex facility to receive a silver-tier Star Award.

In September 2011, employees at Sonoco CorrFlex’s Rural Hall, N.C., fulfillment facility formed Team Green, focused on achieving landfill-free status in two years. Since the plant is a fulfillment facility, its materials mix frequently changes based on the current customer and project. One of the major challenges for the team was staying on top of the flux of materials and determining the best outlet for each. To better understand their current program, the team began tracking landfill and recycling tonnage. Dumpster contents were monitored, assessing those areas that needed work to reduce the plant’s landfill tonnage. Common recycling areas were set up in production and office areas, and employees were encouraged to bring in their recyclables from home.  Rest

 

Greenpeace and the Cloud

Looks like an opportunity for providers of hydro, solar, fuel-cell, and nuclear power in South Carolina.  My friends at the SC Power Team will be all over cloud provider opportunities.

CNET 2012-04-17  Greenpeace is pushing harder for cloud-computing companies to cut back on coal and tap into cleaner sources of electricity.

The environmental watchdog group today released its latest rankings of companies, including Google, Apple, and Amazon, that run giant data centers to serve up Web pages and services. Greenpeace now has a “clean energy index” to measure how much electricity from renewable sources is used by these companies.

Greenpeace has been pressuring cloud companies for years to improve the efficiency of their data centers, advocate for clean-energy policies, and disclose energy usage.  Rest

Staples and Gazelle

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. and BOSTON, Nov. 18, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — With new electronic gadgets high on holiday wish lists this season, Staples is working with Gazelle to launch an electronics trade-in program. The Staples Tech Trade-In program makes it easy for small business and consumers to trade in eligible used electronics and receive a Staples eGift card for use at any Staples store nationwide. Gazelle is the nation’s leading consumer electronics reCommerce™ service.

Through the program, Staples will accept the trade-in of used electronics from more than 20 product categories regardless of where they were purchased. Eligible items that do not have trade-in value can still be sent to Gazelle for free recycling or brought to the nearest Staples store for recycling. This new service offering supports Staples’ industry leading commitment to providing easy electronics recycling solutions to customers.   Rest

Green Crowdsourcing

EDF is the non-profit Environmental Defense Fund that looks for solutions to environmental problems. The partnership between InnoCentive and EDF is based on the premise that “we is smarter than me,” and their first initiative together has produced a clever solution to an old agricultural problem. Using InnoCentive’s Internet platform, the two companies challenged the public to find ways to battle agricultural nitrate pollution.

The winner, Patrick Fuller, a PhD student in chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern University, has won $5,000 for his contribution. He presented a report on the benefits of recycling nitrogen-rich water to grow algae as fertilizer, which when implemented will cut down on fertilizer run-off and algae-filled dead zones.  Rest

Google Funds Geothermal Study

ScienceDaily (Oct. 25, 2011) — New research from SMU’s Geothermal Laboratory, funded by a grant from Google.org, documents significant geothermal resources across the United States capable of producing more than three million megawatts of green power — 10 times the installed capacity of coal power plants today.  Rest

Moskowitz Prize

Firms with strong corporate social responsibility (CSR) scores enjoy consistently lower costs of capital financing than firms with weaker CSR track records, according to a study that has won the 2011 Moskowitz Prize for Socially Responsible Investing (SRI).

The Moskowitz Prize, awarded annually by the Haas School’s Center for Responsible Business in cooperation with the Social Investment Forum, went to four co-authors of the study:

  • Sadok El Ghoul, University of Alberta, Canada
  • Omrane Guedhami, Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina
  • Chuck C. Y. Kwok, Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina
  • Dev Mishra, University of Saskatchewan, Canada

Their winning study, “Does Corporate Social Responsibility Affect the Cost of Capital,” was published in the Journal of Banking and Finance (Vol. 35, Issue, 9, Sept. 2011).     Rest

America Recycles Day

“American Recycles Day” (ARD) should really be “America Recycles Every Day” but then we wouldn’t have a special day to celebrate the cause.  Do you need ARD materials for your upcoming community event or office program or are you thinking about doing an ARD event but you are not sure where to begin?  Visit the ARD Toolkit pages for ideas on ARD events and pledge drives.  If you’re looking for ARD promotional material but not sure where to turn, visit the ARD store to order your ARD buttons, pencils and prizes for your ARD event participants.

Carolina Green Fair

The Carolina Green Fair is bringing their four year old event to Columbia on October 22nd at Finlay Park.  The South Carolina Green Fair is supported by a committee of passionate individuals, who believe that by educating both consumers and businesses through the Green Fair Events it is possible to make South Carolina an even finer place to live! Their purpose is to create excitement and enthusiasm for green products, services and technologies that are available to the residents of South Carolina using an environmentally responsible forum of education and entertainment.  More at CarolinaGreenFair

Fostering green innovation

Presently sitting in a very interesting session on the above topic at OECD Global Forum on the Knowledge Economy.  More on this later.

Later:

Steampunk describes a world of airships plying the aether and mechanical computing based on Babbage’s Difference Engine. Artists show great imagination in describing a world where coal is still king, streets are gas lit, and rock oil has not yet been rebranded as petroleum.

They play with the ideas of lock-in and path dependence, a situation where a technology that may be inferior to alternatives still dominates because switching would create too many problems, or be too expensive, or where an early decision limits the options available later, even if the original conditions are no longer relevant.

A new study from the OECD Fostering Innovation for Green Growth looks at these issues too, but with more of a policy focus than say Steamboy or FreakAngels. It may be hard to see what government bureaucracies with their rules and procedures could do to promote innovation other than shut up and leave the innovators to get on with it. In fact, they can do quite a lot. History has plenty of examples of inventions and other innovations that came about thanks to public money.   Rest