Back in August of last year we talked about an amazing, world-changing product called Lifestraw. ( See post ) Well, last week the Lifestraw team received a very well-deserved award from Saatchi & Saatchi.

LifeStraw®, a revolutionary, personal water-purification tool, for use in the developing world, has won the fifth Saatchi & Saatchi Award for World Changing Ideas. It was announced last week by Her Royal Highness Princess Badiya of Jordan at a high profile presentation ceremony in New York.

Lifestraw is a highly portable, personal, water-purification tool that turns event the dirtiest water into safe drinking water. It contains a specially developed halogen-based resin that filters out 99.999% of bacteria and 98.7% of viruses that cause deadly diseases. It lasts for about a year.

For the more than one billion people who lack access to safe drinking water, Lifestraw could mean the difference between life and death, particularly for women, children and people with compromised immune systems. About half of the world’s poor suffer from waterborne diseases. Every day 6,000 people, mostly children, die from drinking dirty water.

The global Award is made biennially by Saatchi & Saatchi, who established the Award to recognise, celebrate and promote ideas that have the potential to change the world. The US $100,000 prize consists of US$50,000 cash and the equivalent of US$50,000 in Saatchi & Saatchi marketing consultancy.

Saatchi & Saatchi, one of the world’s largest and most creative advertising companies, with 154 offices in 84 countries has been widely recognized as leaders in what they do and have won over 4,000 awards in just the past 5 years.

CLSA is a leading provider of equity brokerage, investment banking and asset managememnt services. Recently CLSA conducted a survey among companies in the Asia-Pacific on climate change and for the most part respondents proved to be “largely oblivious” to the issue. Of the 582 companies that took the survey 40% didn’t even fill out “Clean and Green” portion. What of those that did fill it out? 64% of them scored a rock-bottom zero. Now the question here is what is your favorite retailer doing about the widely published results?

To date, only Wal-Mart, yeah - the Wal-Mart based in Arkansas- has acted on the news calling on suppliers to report their greenhouse emissions. Hopefully as the worlds largest retailer pushes for greener operations in Asia more of the products we buy can be made sustainably. Maybe Wal-Mart new tagline “Save Money. Live Better.” rather than “Always Low Prices” has prompted them to turn a new leaf.

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According to Eco-Libris, approx 20 million trees are being cut down every year to produce the books sold in the U.S. alone. For example, if a publisher sells one million copies of a 250-page book, it will take over 12,000 trees to produce just that one book. The Green Press Initiative estimates that nearly 40% of the materials found in landfills are paper products that produce methane as it degrades – a greenhouse gas with 21x the heat trapping power of carbon dioxide.

What to do? 2 options

Eco-Libris is essentially a carbon credit clearinghouse for your textbooks. You enter how many books you want to “balance out with Eco-Libris, pay for it online, and a tree will be planted for each of those books.” Eco-Libris then works with a planting partner in a developing country to plant a tree in a location that is sustainable and beneficial for the community. You even get a sticker for your books that is “designed for you to put on the cover of the books you balance out, to show your commitment to sustainability and responsible use of natural resources.”

Eco-Libris encourages users to do more “We would like to see more (and eventually all) books printed in an environmentally friendly manner on recycled paper. If virgin paper is being used, then it should only be from certified forests. You can help make this happen by writing publishers and encouraging them to do the right thing.”

Enter Chegg

Save money, plant a tree. Chegg can save you tons of much needed cash by renting your textbooks and Chegg plants a tree for every book rented.

“Chegg textbook rentals help college students save hundreds of dollars on buying new or used college textbooks each semester. With millions of new & used books, finding the textbook you need at discounted prices is easy, not to mention our fast delivery and easy book returns. In addition to renting cheap textbooks, Chegg is committed to preserving our forests by planting a tree for every textbook rented. Save big and be green by renting textbooks!”

And they give you a pre-paid return label.

A little bit more about Chegg for you Iowa State University fans.

“Chegg.com (formerly known as cheggpost.com) was first launched at Iowa State University (ISU) by a group of students to purchase and resell used textbooks. Since thriving at ISU, Chegg has blossomed to include more than 35 colleges and has expanded its categories to include furniture, event tickets, housing, computers and electronics”

An old-school screenshot of cheggpost courtesy of Dustyd.net

On Wal-Mart again. Just a few days ago, according to a greenbiz article, Wal-Mart became the newest company to join the Coalition for Responsible Transportation (CRT). The private-sector initiative (created by the retailer Target Corp. and logistics companies) is attempting to address the environmental issues caused by the shipping and trucking industries. As a member, Wal-Mart will begin to take a closer look at its logistics providers working in the ports to ensure that trucks being used to offload goods from the ships meet the emissions standards. Other companies already in CRT; Nike, Home Depot, and Lowe’s.

One rule of the initiative states that beginning in September of this year, 2008, the two California ports (LA and Long Beach) will no longer allow trucks built before 1989 to enter the port facilities. (1998 was chosen because that was when pollution controls began coming pre-installed in most big rigs.)

This from Hoovers IPO Central

“Real Goods Solar hopes that environmentally conscientious consumers will “go green” and join the solar energy movement. The firm, a leading solar energy company that offers services in California and Colorado, is involved in the design, procurement, installation, grid connection, monitoring, and maintenance of solar energy systems that power residential homes. Since president (and alternative lifestyle adopter) John Schaeffer founded the company in 1978, it has installed more than 2,400 residential and small commercial systems. Parent company Gaiam Inc., a media firm specializing in green living and personal development, acquired Real Goods in 2001. The company filed to go public in February 2008.”

Interesting news piece seen while looking at Real Goods Solar. -

Private Companies Lead Push for Sustainability - Small, privately held companies are advantaged over large, public ones when implementing environmentally friendly business practices, according to Duke University. Stockholders interested in the bottom line will let public corporations go only so far in implementing environmentally friendly practices, and corporate managers must account for the benefits of sustainable manufacturing, such as disposing of hazardous wastes, recycling, and reducing dependence on foreign oil. Small companies are likely to have an advantage over time, as governments are likely to start imposing taxes on greenhouse gases, tougher disposal laws, and penalties for not using green power.

Real Goods Solar Financials 

It didn’t start out as a focus on green. It started out as a health-and-wellness push ( what CPG company DIDN’T do a health-and-wellness push last year?) that morphed into some kind of “sustainable well-being”. Coke is hoping to S - T - R - E - T - C - H the meaning of “sustainability” into something that is less about being green and more about filling your needs as a consumer.

“We’re thinking of well-being from a mental, physical, community and environmental perspective that encompasses every part of our North American business,” a Coca-Cola spokeswoman said. The new campaign will launch this week with ads in the New York Times, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal. The 3 page spread will focus on how Coke products have evolved over the years to fill the needs of its North American consumers. According to the spokeswoman quoted on AdAge “Our own consumers were saying, ‘Where are you in this [sustainability] space?’”

The newspaper spread will be followed by a commercial during American Idol this Thursday with another TV ad to be aired sometime during the Smoglympics this summer. Personally, don’t really get it. Does it address Coke’s “greenness”? Not really. If you go to the website that they include in the print ad there is some material addressing the environment and Corporate Social Responsibility. Interesting, blurry campaign. If you want to connect on the basis of being green then tell and show us that. If you want to tell us that “Like a good neighbor, COKE is there” - then tell us that.

Coke’s Green Street Cred’s

The $10 million campaign hopes to build some green street cred for the company looking to jump on the bandwagon of concepts surrounding green and sustainability. Coke company spokeswoman points to its promise to recycle 100% of its aluminum cans sold in the U.S. and its financial support of construction of the world’s largest bottle-to-bottle recycling plant in Spartanburg, S.C.

Illustration: Marc Simon accessed via AdAge article

Michigan and Arkansas.

According to an article in the LA Times, Wal-Mart is looking to green up its operations.

Last fall Arkansas-based retailer Wal-Mart (heard of them?) teamed up with Michigan based Cleantech Group. As a result of that contract Cleantech will begin taking suggestions for Wal-Mart on how the mammoth retailer can make its operations more sustainable. Cleantech Group, a small, private company, helps 1,300 big-pockets investors connect with inventors of sustainable technologies and, since its inception in 2002, has facilitated over $1.1 billion in investments.

According to Rand Waddoups, Wal-Mart’s Sustainability Director, “The number of innovators and well-funded ideas is growing so rapidly that we can’t keep up with it. We’re looking for something that’s got potential, even if it’s not here today. We want to be able to implement this as quickly as possible because we’ve set some pretty lofty goals, and those savings translate into savings for our customers.”

Got any good ideas?

Sustainable Life Media Interview with Rand Waddoup

Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcgutierrez/145814234/

Well, while we are on the topic of green cars - D.C.- based ACEEE (American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy) released their 11^th
annual Green Book 2008 with scores on cars for their environmental friendliness. The report publishes the top “green” cars and the top “meanest” cars.

For the 5^th consecutive year the number one spot on the list of the greenest cars goes to the Honda Civic GX followed by the Prius, the Civic Hybrid, and others. And American based car company, Ford, took 9^th place, making up for an absence of domestic carmakers on last years list.

“Hybrids stand out, even after being taken down a notch by the new fuel economy calculations,” said ACEEE vehicle analyst Shruti Vaidyanathan. “And sales rose by a whopping 40% last year. This interest in hybrid vehicles should shine the spotlight on other green vehicle technologies that can significantly improve fuel efficiency.”

Widely regarded as the pre-eminent buyer’s guide to environment-friendly passenger cars, trucks, and SUVs, greenercars.org provides the facts necessary to examine the eco-performance of any 2008 model. Vehicles are analyzed on the basis of a “Green Score”, a singular measure that incorporates unhealthy tailpipe emissions, fuel consumption, and the emissions of gases that cause global warming. 

So who is on the mean list? The list of meanest cars list is dominated by European imports with the VW Touraeg taking the spot as the year’s most environment-unfriendly vehicle followed by Bugatti, Mercedes, Bentley, and, of course, the Hummer and Yukon aren’t too far behind.

ACEEE  

See the top 12 green cars and compare

See the Meanest Vehicles

Read This Years Market Trends in the Auto Industry

So the whole Bob Lutz thing got me thinking about poo - elephant poo in particular. You can do the coolest things with elephant poo. Check out this cool site of paper products made from, yep, elephant poo. So to answer your next question “Does it Smell?” the answer is No. According to their website the products don’t smell because they allow the poo to completely dry up before they thoroughly rinse and wash the elephant dung and then all they are really left with are the fibres from the vegetation that the elephant didn’t digest. The company also seems to be pretty efficient - producing 25 large sheets of paper or 10 standard sized journals from a single piece of, er…poo.

Yeah. Apparently in a closed-door session with reporters in January, Bob Lutz, GM’s Vice Chairman said that “Global Warming is a total crock of poo” (read poo insert other naughty word). Lutz continued to say that hybrid cars, like those made by Toyota, “make no economic sense” because their price will never come down, and that diesel autos like those touted by Chrysler are also uneconomic. Never mind that Toyota forecasts that it is unable to meet the ever-growing demand for it’s flagship Prius in ’08.

Mr. Lutz responded to criticism of his remarks with a post on GM’s FastLaneBlog. I will post some of his remarks here followed by a translation. Now, I am not fluent in BS-ese but I’ll give it my best try.

Jewel #1 - “But among my strongest beliefs is that my job is to do what makes the most business sense for GM”

Trans. - “People that work for GM may actually read this”

Jewel #2 - “And I think that many of the people who’ve been spewing their virtual vitriol in my direction in the past week are guilty of taking the easy way out.”

Trans. - Something akin to “I’m rubber your glue bounce off me and stick to you” or “Whoever smelt it dealt it”

Jewel #3 - “General Motors is dedicated to the removal of cars and trucks from the environmental equation, period. And, believe it or don’t: So am I! It’s the right thing to do, for us, for you and, yes, for the planet.”

Trans. -“I am committed to dragging my feet as the industry moves toward eco-friendly innovations. I don’t understand why these cars are so popular but by george I’ll sell them to you!”

Jewel #4 - “The Chevrolet Volt program is occurring under my personal watch, because I — and others in senior management — believe in it. I fully expect that it will revolutionize the automotive industry, and I’m committed to seeing it successfully developed and in showrooms.”

Trans. - “I believe, along with others in our management, that we can make a fair chunk of change with the Volt and it sure better, we spent a lot of money and effort on it.”

That is coming from the VP involved in Global Product Development. Tough spot, I’d think. struggling with the greatest differentiator in the auto industry right now - alternative energy. You know, that’s fine if that is his opinion. I almost don’t even care if his excitement about the Chevy Volt is purely because he thinks it will fatten his wallet. What I think is too bad is what his remarks along with this one from GM Director Vehicle Emissions Issues Bob Babik tell me about the company -

“The key is offering technology at a cost-effective level so that the consumer values it and makes that choice. This is why in the early years of a certain technology, GM supports government incentives when the technology may be more costly to help consumers make that choice.”

– Read - blah-blah-blah. Hear - we want the government to subsidize any risk that we take as a company. Innovation is evil and scary.

What does this tell me? Don’t look for any real industry-leading innovations from GM. Look for them to be the last company trying to sell gas-powered cars and the first one with lobbyists in your Senators office looking for cash.