For approx. 300 some odd drivers across the U.S.A., it’s free to fill up. All of the cars are part of programs sponsored by GM, BMW, and Honda, designed to show the feasibility of hydrogen-powered vehicles. General Motors, has 80 Chevrolet Equinox fuel-cell vehicles spread out in CA, D.C., and New York as part of its “Project Driveway” program and BMW is passing out 7 Series Sedan vehicles to some select Hollywood celebrities to drive around in. A personal favorite, Honda, will also begin leasing 200 of its hydrogen fuel cell car, the FCX Clarity, for $600 a month to some of CA’s more influential lot. Looks like I missed the cut once again.

Many of the automakers have said that a major hurdle to mass-production of the new, zero-emission cars is the cost and lack of hydrogen filling stations. So, according to the Houston Chronicle, on June 27, California City Councilman Bill Rosendahl marked the opening of the state’s first public hydrogen station by driving his hydrogen powered Chevy Equinox into the station and filling up. Since all of the cars are a part of these test programs, there is no charge for filling up at any 26 hydrogen stations in the state of CA.

“This is the car of the future,” he said. “Let’s get rid of gasoline.” ( Bill Rosendahl, as quoted in The Houston Chronicle)

Maybe that’s really why our gas prices are going up - gas companies are looking five-years down the road and seeing a shift to more eco-friendly energy sources. The Houston Chronicle article continues by stating that officials see the new hydrogen station as part of the “Hydrogen Highway”, a not-so-distant network of fueling stations to promote hydrogen powered vehicles.

The worlds first eco-focused TV Channel, Planet Green, is less than a month old but is already generating some buzz – as well as some unique ideas. One of the ideas on the eco-friendly TV Channels website is a Public Clothing Library. The idea was allegedly born after learning that 70% of the world’s population wears 2^nd hand clothing on the Planet Green program Wa$ted.

The blog post reads –

“I once met a man who told me of an interesting way to always get free clothes and never have to do laundry. He told me about Goodwill’s two week return policy. He would buy all his clothes at a Goodwill store, return them after 13 days for a store credit, and then start the cycle again. I was a bit shocked, but impressed at the same time. What he did wasn’t illegal, and it wasn’t wasteful either. No new clothes were ever made for him, his laundry was done in bulk in large efficient machines (assuming the clothes didn’t just go right back on the rack), and the returned clothes were made available to outfit a new body. Brilliant! His friends must have thought he had a giant wardrobe, never repeating an outfit.”

The author, Trevor Reichman, finishes this post by saying –

“While this scheme could only work for the schemer, it makes us wonder if this man might get his act together one day and fashion up a business plan for a clothing library.”

Is this idea taking things to the extreme? Well, let’s be reasonable here. In some ways the notion of a clothing library isn’t all that far-fetched. There is actually a successful model for widespread implementation of this exact concept – it’s often called a family. For anyone that grew up with brothers and sisters this clothing library concept is nothing new. All the clothes seemed to be public property and you can ask your mom, but I’d guess that they were all washed together. And I’d guess your younger siblings would tell you that they felt like they were the 70% of the family that wore almost nothing but 2^nd hand clothing.

Local Boise-based TV Channel 6 featured Sattler Eco Clothing Monday as part of its bi-weekly “Green Living” segment. Michelle Stark and the Green Living team have some really cool resources on the site including videos about eco-friendly cleaning products, how to save gas lessons from the ‘hypermilers’, and how to clean with lemons. Here’s a link to their site

To read more and watch the video

 Back in April we talked about Dell and it’s eco-ambitions; both with products and operations. We talked about their eco-products here and Dell’s eco-operations here. We mentioned that Dell’s Chief Executive, Michael Dell, previewed a desktop PC at the Fortune Brainstorm: Green conference in Los Angeles on Earth Day that would be 81% smaller and use 70% less energy than current minitower Dell desktops. On top of that - the packaging will be recycled. Though Dell doesn’t have a name for the new eco-friendly desktop, Dell plans to make the more eco-friendly computer available by the end of the year. Dell anticipates that the “ecoputer” will retail in the $500-$700 range.

Last week Intel announced Spectrawatt, a spinoff of its photovoltaic division that will develop photovoltaic cells for companies that make electricity-producing solar panels. The new startup, SpectraWatt, will begin life with $50 million in its coffers thanks to the backing of some major financial organizations, including Intel Capital, Cogentix Energy LLC, PGC Clean Energy Technology Fund. Intel is hoping to draw from its four decades in processor production to develop innovations and efficiencies that make the manufacturing process for solar cells more efficient.

Who else is getting involved in Solar Energy?

HP

IBM

Why?

The recently released report dubbed the “Utility Solar Assessment” indicates that it is possible for 10% of energy production in the U.S. to be solar by 2025. According to the study solar power is closer to reaching cost parity due to increasing costs of coal, natural gas, and nuclear plants and that by 2015 solar energy will be the same cost as conventional energy.  Why is this relevant? - According to Clean Edge.com –

“The investment to arrive at 10% solar in the U.S. is not small, reaching $450 billion to $560 billion between now and 2025, an average of $26 billion to $33 billion per year. However, given utilities’ existing capital costs such an investment is not prohibitive. To put the investment in perspective: Utilities spent an estimated $70 billion on new power plants and transmission and distribution systems in 2007 alone.”

Even at the estimated $26 to $33 billion per year estimates, it is still a big enough to entice companies to throw their hat into the mix particularly when the outlook for solar and other alternative energies is looking pretty rosy.

The Utility Solar Assessment has resources for utility companies, solar companies, and policy makers that support a more sustainable energy future.

Download the Utility Solar Assessment and its Roadmap to 10% Solary by 2015 here FREE. 

As alternative energy companies continue to pop up across the globe, the very cool blog earth2tech.com provides a map of 101 “Cleantech Startups”. The map shows the location of companies involved in a variety of energy sectors including solar, energy storage, biofuels, and electric vehicles. The Google Map plots each company with a logo to indicate their industry accompanied by some vital stats for the company such as founding year, investors and etc.

See the map here.

         
Back in February we talked about a waterless washing machine that was developed by students at the University of Singapore. Today we heard about another waterless washing machine being produced by researchers at the University of Leeds. The new waterless washing machine allegedly uses plastic chips to clean clothes, eliminating nearly all water and energy used by current washing machines.

The University of Leeds has spun off a company dubbed “Xeros” to commercialize the technology and is headed up by Stephen Burkinshaw, a University professor. Of the technology Burkinshaw says “The performance of the Xeros process in cleaning clothes has been quite astonishing. We’ve shown that it can remove all sorts of everyday stains including coffee and lipstick whilst using a tiny fraction of the water used by conventional washing machines.”

According to U.K.-based organization, Waterwise, the average U.K. household uses about 5.5 gallons of water a day to wash their laundry, or 13% of total water consumption. The company is also researching other uses for the plastic or polymer chips such as dry-cleaning and textile dyeing. U.K. residents can expect to see the waterless washing machine on the market some time next year.

Read more here.

Sattler Eco & Fair Labor Clothing

http://www.sattlerclothing.com 

Ecobunga brings together all the eco deals and giveaways and brings them to one site. They describe themselves

“Ecobunga! is the net’s best directory of giveaways and deals on green products and services.  You’ll find sweepstakes, contests,  coupons, rebates, sales, free shipping and more. We link shoppers to great bargains and prizes while helping companies get the word out about their eco-friendly products and services. For more info, check out the FAQ.”

What is all the hulla-baloo about, how can clothing be eco-friendly? For starters let’s talk about organically grown cotton. The growth of conventional cotton is a very chemical intensive process. Growers dump synthetic fertilizers and pesticides on the cotton – it is commonly accepted that it takes approx. 9oz. ( just over half a pound ) of pesticides to produce just one t-shirt. So a wardrobe of just 10 shirts and 4 jeans dumps just shy of approx. 10 lbs. of pesticides into the ground. As a company, we have prevented over 1,100 lbs of pesticides from being dumped into the ground in the last 9 months alone. And I probably wouldn’t have believed it if you told me – but organic cotton is noticeably softer and breathes better than conventional cotton. Put an organic cotton shirt in one hand and a regular shirt in the other and you’ll notice that the conventional shirt feels like it has some kind of a film on it. How do you know if it is eco-friendly organic cotton? – Look for the certifications. We post them right online but you’ll want to look for the cotton to CERTIFIED organic cotton rather than just organic cotton. You should be able to notice a difference between a certified organic cotton product and it’s conventional cotton counterpart.

What about the screen-printing?

We talked about PVC more in-depth in this post, but the large majority of shirts are embellished using PVC or plastisol inks. How can you tell if your shirt has PVC or plastisol on it? If the screenprint is sitting on top of the shirt, you can see the artwork cracking or peeling, or if you can feel it when you pass your hand over it - then it is PVC or plastisol. What’s so bad about PVC? Again, visit this post here for a more comprehensive explanation but in short PVC comes with a host of toxic additives such as DEHP that is linked to cancer and birth defects. During the production of PVC, Dioxins, one of the most toxic chemicals and potent carcinogens known to science, are released into the air. It is estimated the U.S. screen-printing industry alone uses an estimated 1.5 million gallons of plastisol every year. Ironically, many companies take a shirt made of eco-friendly organic cotton and then put PVC-based inks on it. Sattler Clothing uses only water-based inks for all of our products as well as the custom work that we do.

What about Fair Labor Clothing?

In February of this year Megha Bahree wrote an excellent article in Forbes magazine portraying the reality of child labor today. Please note that this article was written less than 5 months ago, it is not old news. Child labor and unfair labor did not end with the Nike fiasco we still talk about today. According to the article, the government of India estimates that there are 12.6 million children under the age of 14 illegally employed in India.

Cottonseed farmer Talari Babu, who insists that he no longer employs children, told reporters that children make great employees because “They worked fast, much faster than the adults, and put in longer hours and didn’t demand long breaks. Plus, I could shout at them and beat or threaten them if need be to get more work out of them.’ He could also tempt them with candy and cookies and movies at night.”

Pesticides and child labor make for a bad combo. The Forbes magazine article continues -

“Their (the child laborers) bodies are no better at withstanding the poisons. At least once a week, says Davuluri Venkateshwarlu, head of Glocal, farmers spray the fields with pesticides like Nuvacron, banned by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and endosulfan, methomyl and Metasystox, considered by the EPA to be highly toxic. Venkateshwarlu ticks off the effects of overexposure: diarrhea, nausea, difficulty in breathing, convulsions, headaches and depression.”

There are organizations out there, like the Worldwide Responsible Apparel Production (WRAP) that can certify that a facility adheres to ethical standards of employment. WRAP certifies Sattler Clothing and we post their certifying book online so you know exactly what it means to be WRAP certified.

What about other eco-friendly fabrics like hemp and bamboo?

As we’ve mentioned before, like here, and here, we don’t sell any bamboo clothing products because of the chemical intensive process of converting bamboo to a textile. Read more about bamboo clothing here. We discovered a little while back that Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard feels the same way. Hemp can make some great products. If we could find some hemp products that could provide us with organic and fair labor certifications than we would consider introducing it into our eco-clothing product lineup. Until then we will continue trying to provide eco-friendly style for the masses with products that are certified organic cotton and fair labor.

Sattler Eco & Fair Labor Clothing

http://www.sattlerclothing.com

Last year 10 retailers joined with the U.S. EPA to launch an eco-friendly program dubbed the GreenChill Advanced Refrigeration Partnership. According to our Dec. 10 post about the program,

“Refrigeration consumes massive amounts of energy for retailers and brands and the writer of the article on Greenbiz.com wrote that “someone once told me that Wal-Mart’s second-biggest cost (after people) is energy, and that its biggest energy cost is refrigeration.”

Today the Green Chill program membership has nearly tripled to 28 members that have saved approx. $13 million in operating costs and avoided some 2.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from being emitted. Upon joining, members must “determine a baseline measurement of corporate-wide refrigerant emissions from 2007 and embark on a reduction plan this year.” Nineteen of the Green Chill program members are supermarket chains that are reducing emissions by preventing leakage by improving equipment tightness at install and retrofit. The Partnership is also helping many of the retailers take a look at converting to new equipment that uses advanced refrigeration technologies.

The growth of the eco-friendly program is amazing. When the U.S. EPA launched the The Green Chill Partnership late last November it had hopes of taking one million metric tons of carbon dioxide out of the air, the equivalent of taking 800,000 automobiles off the road every year. Well, according to these numbers, the less than one-year old partnership has already taken the emissions equivalent of 2 million cars off the road.

Sattler Eco & Fair Labor Clothing  

http://www.sattlerclothing.com