the greener side

Electric planes and superpower plants

Here's some more stuff I've been working on at work lately:

Junk journey highlights plastic soup of Pacific Ocean

Plant power to fight toxic tech

Baby cribs, computers share toxic traces

Clean tech promising but tricky in the developing world

Red tape, costs entangle fans of 'green' fuel

Your receipt is in the e-mail

Scorpion sportscar would burn gasoline and hydrogen

Carbon Belch Day' promotes un-green actions

Wind power outlook weak in Europe, report says

Will people pay more for cleaner energy? You decide

Satellite images link polluted clouds to lack of rain

Pictures: Flying on a wing and a battery
Personal, 'green' airplanes propel forward

Pictures: Measuring home energy use in dollars and trees

Pictures: Supersize solar power

Green this

In honor of Earth Day, I wrote what may start off as a pessimistic run-down of how to green your life, as well as a guide to green labels. So there. Everybody guzzle plastics! There's no escaping them. But what do they mean? Still, the planet will probably do just fine without us. Maybe we should have a "People on Earth Day," since the resources we seem to be ruining are what keep us hanging here.

Less than green at Black Rock

Contrary to expectations, I actually made it to Burning Man this year. You can check out some of the damage here. Despite so many good intentions and the hard work of many burners, Green Man was no Las Vegas, but it wasn't so green. Then again, what is? For me, the least green aspect was losing my shirt--not literally, but figuratively, in advance of the event, by shopping at Target and about four other big-box stores for a tent, cooler, LED lights for the bike, and so many other overpackaged, phthalate-ridden camping products.  (I felt less crazy after a new artist friend admitted that she, too, nearly cries in such emporia. Oh, the humanity.)  I didn't realize that the last time I used my own tent was for post-high school graduation bacchanalia on the beach. Because I decided to go at the last minute, I didn't have the luxury of collecting these things slowly and sustainably from friends, craigslist, or resale shops.

My petroleum-based "powdered" wig had to be new too. Or maybe the least green aspect was supplying gasoline to the theme camp's generators. Oh wait, that five gallons was nothing compared to the gasoline filling up the rental car. While I hate air conditioning in real life, some of my happiest Black Rock moments were of resting inside of other people's freon-cooled RVs and trucks for several hours during withering mid-day desert heat.

But I congratulate myself, as any self-righteous San Franciscan should, for spending $25 on a bucket of biodegradable, organic lavender handi-wipes, a hot item under the hotter sun. I brought a bottle of rosewater to spritz on dried-out compatriots too. The bottle claimed that people had prayed over it, and that it possessed special magnetic properties, but my failure to cover up the label made me feel as if I were advertising, a big burner no-no that may have demagnetized all that energy.

And despite the rush to shop at the last minute, the Alemany flea market the week before the burn was the best source of sustainable gifts. I bought a hat box worth of hand-embroidered, mid-century handkerchiefs, which my grandmother still requests at holidays, and passed them around to people. The least commercial, big tent aspect of the Burning Man experience was stopping at local shops and "Indian" taco stands on the way in and out of Black Rock, and sharing small talk with some Paiute people. Pyramid Lake is the bluest thing I've ever seen, especially after nearly a week of so much burning of the brain and fossil fuels.

P.S. See what I wrote for work on this subject here.

Lagging with blogging, so hopping around

This poor blog is becoming overrun by spam comments, like "bag leprechaun paper puppy," from prolific posters calling themselves "definition of douche bag" and so on. I'll keep updating the greener side here and there, but more often down the road you'll be likely to find me occasionally over at the Gristmill blog. Do you know what grist is? It's grain for grinding, or I guess you'd say something to chew on. Grist with a capital G is gritty, funny green news. You'll find my posts here once in a while, maybe more than that. More stuff I write elsewhere is here, here, here, and here. OK, I guess I've "outed" myself. Maybe I'll never work in this town again, as they say in Hollywood. Ah, what a relief.

Green is good. Green is healthy.

So take that, Gordon Gekko--er, Ivan Boesky. I poked around the Cleantech Forum a bit this week. Lots of gray and navy blue suits there, with few of the jeans-and-polos found at dot-com dealmaking events, but it was relatively laid back nevertheless when you consider all the money-matchmaking involved. The $3.6 billion poured into the emerging clean tech sector in 2006 is twice the 2004 amount for North America and Europe. There are billions and billions of dollars just waiting to anoint the next clean, green, money-making machine. Startup CEOs and scientists were snapping  wishbones, crossing fingers, trading cards.

Want to gobble up clean stocks? Be on the lookout for the IPO of some yet-unpopular, cleantech cousin of Google! But which company will it be? One that can print thin-film solar panels? A large-scale  maker of biofuel blends? A startup that's making LED bulbs cheaper?

I wandered around some booths and learned about Group IV Semiconductor, backed by $10 million and working to make silicon-based, energy-efficient LED lightbulbs that might sell for a mere $3 a pop by 2010. Cheaper, white LED bulbs could be the holy grail of bright, low-energy lighting. SpringStar is working to get rid of things that bug you without pesticides with gizmos that mimic insects' mating calls and perfumes. However, there's no bedbug treatment yet because mimicking their stinky pheromones would make your boudoir smell pretty skanky. Engineers at Lawrence Berkeley Labs are building air quality sensors that they hope they can shrink to fit in or on cell phones. Here's more show-and-tell.

In the adjoining rooms, each panel seemed to be running nearly an hour late. At a talk about corporate market drivers, Ali Iz of G.E. said his company has been snapping up great money-making green businesses, but it needs to figure out how to support innovation that's not yet profitable without spending hundreds of millions of dollars.

PG&E, the villain of Erin Brokovich, has greened nearly every bus station in San Francisco with ads for its eco-friendly efforts in recent months. During the Cleantech Forum, PG&E let loose that it's donating a year of office space to hot startups Adura Technologies (makes wireless lighting sensors) and GreenVolts (working on cheaper, more concentrated solar panels). I planned to make it to the mayor's announcement about launching a cleantech S.F. business campus near the former PG&E plant, but I was interrupted by friends who were wine tasting a block away. Cabbing it home two champagne flutes later, there was no hybrid to flag down. But that could change soon too.

What's next? If you're dying to get rich off of companies built to keep the planet from dying, then scroll down and look in the left column for my updated "Green Money" links of lots of cleantech-related blogs. The tickers at Sustainable Business can be useful too.

 

Mac attack

There wasn't as much sustainable stuff at Macworld as there was even last year, except for the Greenpeace protestors outside, and big booths showing off Google Earth/Sketchup software and MacKiev's cool satellite weather application. I did learn that the way to measure the purity of the silicone in your iPod cover is to stretch the plasticky material. If it's clear, as pictured here, good news. If it's milky, clouded with white, then yuck. However, although there aren't any phthalates in silicone, it stays in the ground forever once you toss it.

On another note, Apple's ad campaign for its latest invention is ripping off Christian billboards circa 1999. Can God sue?

Look at my footage below: the oglers at Macworld are venerating the new iPhone as if tears and blood were streaming from its Magic Touch screen, imparting a telepathic message of eternal life and everlasting forgiveness. Instead, the gadget comes with a mortal battery, it demands a contract with a devilish telecom, and nobody's even touched it. Get real, people. It's a phone...oh yeah, and a music player and an "breakthrough Internet communications device." It can't feed or clothe you or detoxify your drinking water. Before I leave this earth, maybe I'll see a crowd like this one oohing and ahhing and elbowing over some new invention that actually helps people and the planet.

Maybe I'm forgetting that Apple's inventions just might usher in world peace! After all, as singer John Mayer said after Steve Jobs' keynote address--in the greatest WTF?! moment of Macworld (apart from the media's frenzied stampede up the escalators): "You know, Steve Jobs and Apple are making life more fun. It's the exact opposite of terrorism." Golly.

Give me your tired, poisonous electronics

Back in October, I trekked to Burlington, VT, for an annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists. Plus, one of my bestest friends, Amani, lives within a two-minute jog of the conference center, so I got to hang out with him. Lo and behold, I even ran into Nicole from high school as she spoke about green labeling on products and foodstuffs.

Arguments and emotions were intense in more than one conference discussion, especially those about nuclear power, climate change, and government secrecy. I'd have so much more to show (such as the hydrogen car fueling station) and tell if I'd remembered to bring my camera battery charger. Luckily, though, plenty of journalists did what comes naturally, so you can listen to MP3s of the heated debates and check out slide shows here.

At least I typed up some notes about the well-attended panel on toxic trash. You can blame Moore's Law for chips doubling in power and dropping in price every two years or so, feeding the mad cycle of obsolescence in consumer electronics. Want a phone with a video camera? You'll probably throw away last season's model that only took still pictures. Some 4,000 tons of gadgets and appliances get tossed each hour around the world.

''We're going through the largest industrial expansion in the history of the world,'' said Ted Smith, former executive director of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition.

Lately, however, big stories are piquing the public's interest in electronics waste. For instance, IBM electronics factory workers suffer high rates of cancer. We hear about iPod maker FoxConn's labor rights violations. The SVTC's Toxic Sweatshops report shows how prison labor is used to make shiny, new digital toys.

''It's not a good guys versus bad guys kind of issue," says High Tech Trash author Elizabeth "Lizzie" Grossman, whose book took an axe and gave the electronics industry so many whacks.

The Electronics Industry Alliance's Richard Goss agreed. "There's no desire by industry to use mercury or lead," he said, adding that the alternatives are dubious both in terms of practicality and safety. For instance, what if we learn later, after phasing out lead solder, that the substitute solder falls apart and millions of products need to be recalled? Wouldn't that be a bigger disaster than simply managing and recycling the known toxicants responsibly?

Goss noted that even while Europe bans heavy metals and brominated flame retardants from electronics, there are many exemptions. Flat screen monitors like the one that might be in your lap are allowed to contain 5 milligrams of lead. But that's far better than the four to 6 pounds of lead in boxy CRT monitors that were necessary to shield us from radiation back in the day. Plus, LCD monitors use 10 times less energy than cathode ray tube boxes.

Plastics containing DECA, a brominated flame retardant, are also exempt from Europe's ROHS rules, although manufacturers are phasing out this endocrine disruptor. But little is known about the ingredients in these plastics because NO epidemiological studies exist about BFRS, said Kellyn Betts, an editor at Environmental Science and Technology.

"This is one of the hottest research areas that we write about," she said.

Europe banned BFRs Deca, Penta and Octa. But because the United States and Canada have such high fire safety standards, BFRS and PBDES are 10 times more common in the bodies of North Americans than in people in the rest of the world. Omnipresent, these substances travel in dust, leaking from our supposedly sealed personal computers, televisions, and so much more.

"'They're everywhere,"' Betts said--probably in the cushions you sit on, the carpet underfoot, the drapes you toss open when you rise from the flame-retardant-soaked mattress on which you sleep. And these poisonous flame retardants wind up in our tissues and breast milk.

Next year China will introduce a good housekeeping seal on the bottom of all iPods, cell phones, TVs and all such electronics big and small, with a date stamp spelling when the safety of chemicals contained therein might start to seep outward, said Mark Schapiro of the Center for Investigative Reporting during another panel. He's working on a book to detail that and much more about how the U.S. is no longer the standard bearer for environmental, chemical, product safety (although Californians are fighting the powers that be, as usual).

The European Union and China are going much further to take precautions to protect people and ecosystems from potential hazards. Their new laws will change global industries, so we'll see the effects trickling down, but still the lower standards Stateside could mean more poisonous products for Americans. Just as China is shipping formaldehyde-laced lumber banned there to our shores, so we'll probably see an influx of junky, expired electronics shipped here, oozing chemicals that can cause cancer and monkey with our reproductive systems.

Fight pollution with a better map

Summer's over and the hope-inspiring greenery outside is shriveling up to make way for a barren, icy winter, so let's check out some ultra-blighted parts of the world, just for fun. A new list of the world's 10 most polluted places completely skips over the United States. Chernobyl speaks for itself, for instance. Have a strong argument for your own backyard? Go ahead, nominate your own site. The Blacksmith Institute, a collaboration between governments and nonprofits around the globe that put together the list, will hear your plea.

This reminds me of Google Maps' virtual tour guide of eco-friendly U.S. vacation spots this summer. Google should help the Blacksmith Institute with its maps. Look at how empty their map looks (above) next to the satellite views you can grab for free at Google Maps and its rival sites.

Google's polishing its "do no evil" green credentials lately. The Googleplex is going solar, becoming the world's biggest office to run on sunshine (catch a glimpse here). In an example of Google tech used for good, iLoveMountains.org makes use of Google Earth software to take you on a dizzying tour of decapitated mountains throughout Appalachia.

When people talk about clean coal, don't believe the doublespeak. Mountaintop mining has already decimated some 800 square miles, according to the site, burying 1,000 miles of streams and just generally depressing people who used to have a nice view from their windows. Install Google Earth for 3-D proof. On a brighter note, Blacksmith does detail progress in cleaning up radiation as well as cancerous contamination of groundwater and air around Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa.

The green secret of NiMH batteries

It's a pain to pack for a trip when you're grappling with a tangle of cords and accessories. But as long as you're toting a laptop, USB Cell batteries let you ditch battery chargers. Just pop off the green cap on one of these puppies and plug it into a USB port on your PC. USB Cells come in AA, AAA, 9V versions, with flavors for iPods, digital cameras and smart phones. These Nickel Metal Hyrdide (NiMH) batteries lack the toxic ingredients that muck up alkalines and NiCads, and they last longer. You just slide off the cover of a compatible phone or camera to charge without having to remove the battery. I was all set to place an order, but you can't buy these outside the United Kingdom at the moment. Instead, I joined the wait list at maker Moixa Energy's Web site (via The Green Guy).

Chew on green, gritty reporting

Who said reporters just sit at their desks rewording press releases? Check out the finalists in the Society of Environmental Journalists 5th annual awards.

Oops, I forgot; "mainstream media" I mean like, MSM, is so 1972. Isn't it our duty to cheer up? It's the dawn of the postpostmodern, postindustrial, post-oil century, which is a new beginning, which must be positive! We wouldn't want to turn off any jetsetting ecorazzi with ugh, more unglossy headlines about the downtrodden state of nature. C'mon, let's say Yippie (no Hoffman/Rubin overtones, for Gwyneth's sake) for our bright, clean, green energy future--for amber waves of organic quinoa, for fleets of veggie oil Mercedes road-tripping from sea to sea, for backyard wind turbines rustling the leaves of native prairie plants that we put up where parking lots used to be!

Y'all couldn't feel any more numb being reminded about the toxic stew that sank the third-world, subtropical boot-toe of this number-one nation, could you? Say one more word about how our citizens stewed and stank and starved last year because of criminal ecological neglect or whatever, and it'll spoil my salad. Who wants to lose an appetite about how many other waters flow with poisons, and why "wars over wetlands" has such a nice ring to it? Can't we go without the gloomcasts about how shifting weather patterns will doom our shivering offspring to relentless wars over resources? So what if there aren't any fish left in the sea, or if teflon and flame retardants float in baby's bloodstream. Wouldn't you rather subscribe to happygrams about shopping in an ecologically-correct fashion, so you can make those little green choices mean a lot, day after day?

If so, nevertheless, let's salute those scandalously underfunded investigative journalists who chase the depressing subjects. Without them, we'd have no motivation to shop at Whole Foods or to rendezvous over fair trade coffee with with fellow "conscious" souls.