every step counts

The 2012 ban on incandescent bulbs will have many Ontarians checking out what else is on the market. Take the CFL, for example - for all its energy-efficient benefits, it has more than one downside.

WWF Canada has a new television commercial that will hopefully turn more attention to the manufacturing-to-shelf process of these bulbs, and all other products for that matter.

The manufacturing process of a product is just as important as how green or energy-efficient the item claims to be.

Check the ad out!

a web of pollution?

Metro News reports on an unreleased study that links web use and global warming.

Harvard physicist Alex Wissner-Gross studied the environmental impact of internet use, and found that about 20 milligrams of CO2 are released into the atmosphere for every second that an average website is viewed. That includes the energy used both on the surfer and hoster's end.

“At an individual surfer scale, the impact is not that large — about 50 per cent larger than a human exhaling,” Wissner-Gross said recently. “But in aggregate, for websites that get a lot of traffic, it can be substantial and it can be thousands of pounds of CO2 per month.”

His report has generated a lot of talk, most notably from Google after a British newspaper singled out the search engine giant as a key offender, mainly because it directs individuals to multiple servers simultaneously to generate speedier responses.

Google responded with the claim that it would take more than 1,000 queries on its search engine to equal the greenhouse gas emissions generated by an average car driving one kilometre.

Sounds innocent enough...but judging by the number of Google searches (according to Search Engine Watch), that's 91,000 kilometres a day!

Editors note: Thanks to Jimmy Guy for passing this along.

use less ink the easy way

Thanks to my favourite American-living-in-Switzerland blogger Jessica, we now know about the EcoFont, an incredibly cool idea that goes beyond double-sided printing. Here's the article from Springwise:

Eco-minded consumers are already well-acquainted with the impact of printing and copying on the world's supply of trees. What's less widely considered, however, is the ink that's typically used.

Looking beyond paper, Dutch creative agency Spranq has developed a new font called the Ecofont that's designed to extend the life of ink cartridges and toner.

Setting out to explore how much of a letter could be removed while maintaining readability, the group found that the best results were achieved using a font in which tiny circles were intentionally left blank in the middle of each line, much like Swiss cheese. The result is based on the Vera Sans, an open source letter, and uses up to 20 percent less ink than traditional fonts, Spranq says.

Available for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux, it's also free to download and use. The Ecofont works best in OpenOffice, AppleWorks and MS Office 2007 at the 9- or 10-point size, says Spranq, which invites designers from around the world to participate in its further development.

protesters buy up heathrow land

Protesters make their views on proposed expansion at Heathrow clear to anyone landing at the London airport. Land close to the village of Sipson, earmarked for the construction of a controversial third runway, has been bought by a Greenpeace coalition of green campaigners, celebrities, scientists and politicians to frustrate developers.

Check out the video at BBC News>>

greenworks is top cleaner...and sounds better than clorox

From an article in Marketing Magazine:

Clorox has announced that its line of 'Greenworks' cleaners has reached the top of the market one year after its launch.

The cleaners, made without bleach, have become the top-sellers among natural cleaners in North America according to Information Resources, Inc.

Clorox now has 42% of the total market, estimated to generate more than $200 million in revenue per year. It has used its distribution network and lower prices to attract shoppers away from its [smaller, more original] competitors such as Method and Seventh Generation.

The kicker: “I think Greenworks has done a good job getting into the mass trade,” said Jefferies & Co. analyst Douglas Lane. “Before, you had to go to a specialty store. Now you can get it at Wal-Mart and Kroger’s... That’s the beauty of Clorox, that they have the big footprint in the food, drug and mass channels.”

Ironic, the use of the word footprint. But don't start thinking they specialize in green - they also sell Hidden Valley salad dressing and Brita water filters.

slap 'green' on it and go

If you're like us, you've probably noticed that every company seems to be promoting their wares as green these days, from water bottles that 'help save the planet' to disposable household cleaning cloths that 'save water.'

You're right to question these claims, and look behind the ad-speak to ask what's really going on. TerraChoice, a reputable environmental marketing agency, has long been warned consumers against 'greenwashing'.

We've talked about their 'six sins' before, but given the amount of green-s^%t out there, we thought it was worth a repeat:

Sin of the Hidden Trade-Off
e.g. paper (including household tissue, paper towel and copy paper)“Okay, this product comes from a sustainably harvested forest, but what are the impacts of its milling and transportation? Is the manufacturer also trying to reduce those impacts?”

Emphasizing one environmental issue isn’t a problem (indeed, it often makes for better communications). The problem arises when hiding a trade-off between environmental issues.

Sin of No Proof
e.g. Personal care products (such as shampoos and conditioners) that claim not to have been tested on animals, but offer no evidence or certification of this claim. Company websites, third-party certifiers, and toll-free phone numbers are easy and effective means of delivering proof.

Sin of Vagueness
e.g. Garden insecticides promoted as “chemical-free.” In fact, nothing is free of chemicals. Water is a chemical. All plants, animals, and humans are made of chemicals as are all of our products. If the marketing claim doesn’t explain itself (“here’s what we mean by ‘eco’ …”), the claim is vague and meaningless.

Similarly, watch for other popular vague green terms: “non-toxic”, “all-natural”, “environmentally-friendly”, and “earth-friendly.”

Sin of Irrelevance
e.g. CFC-free oven cleaners, CFC free shaving gels, CFC-free window cleaners, CFC-disinfectants. Could all of the other products in this category make the same claim?

The most common example is easy to detect: Don’t be impressed by CFC-free! Ask if the claim is important and relevant to the product. (If a light bulb claimed water efficiency benefits you should be suspicious.) Comparison-shop (and ask the competitive vendors

Sin of Fibbing
e.g. Shampoos that claims to be “certified organic”, but for which our research could find no such certification. When I check up on it, is the claim true? The most frequent examples in this study were false uses of third-party certifications. Thankfully, these are easy to confirm.

Legitimate third-party certifiers – EcoLogoCM, Chlorine Free Products Association (CFPA), Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), Green Guard, Green Seal (for example) – all maintain publicly available lists of certified products. Some even maintain fraud advisories for products that are falsely claiming certification.

Sin of the Lesser of Two Evils
e.g. Organic tobacco. “Green” insecticides and herbicides. Is the claim trying to make consumers feel ‘green’ about a product category that is of questionable environmental benefit? Consumers concerned about the pollution associated with cigarettes would be better served by quitting smoking than by buying organic cigarettes.

Similarly, consumers concerned about the human health and environmental risks of excessive use of lawn chemicals might create a bigger environmental benefit by reducing their use than by looking for greener alternatives.

TerraChoice's BLOG.

For more brain food, check out WWF's new video: “How many resources and pollutants does it take to make a light bulb?”

how old is that apple core?

One of our favourite sites - Ideal Bite - has a tip on taking a load off our landfills.

Did you know that regular plastic bags not only take ages to decompose, but that they actually PRESERVE what's inside?

Ideal Bite advocates the switch to biodegradable bags, which cost a little more, but are just as strong, and biodegrade in as little as 10 days -- finally allowing those food scraps to decompose!

For all you Canadians, Grassroots sells BioBag kitchen bags on their site, which are certified 100% biodegradable and 100% compostable bags made from corn.