sustainable

The Honda Civic GX is the greenest car of 2011, according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.

The nonprofit organization released its 14th annual environmental ratings list yesterday with the Honda Civic GX, which runs on compressed natural gas, once again winning first place. The ACEEE ranked the all-electric Nissan Leaf second, with the Smart Fortwo in third, and the Toyota Prius in fourth. The Chevy Volt was ranked last at No. 12.

However, topping the ACEEE's list doesn't necessarily mean the Honda Civic GX is the most consumer-friendly green car available. The car, which has … Read more

editor's notebook SAN FRANCISCO--I had the good fortune this past weekend of attending Compostmodern, a two-day conference here devoted to exploring different ways in which designers can help create a sustainable future. And I'd like to mention a few of the tech- and Internet-related highlights--some of which are new, some of which you, like me, may have missed the first time around. There's a variety of supercool stuff here, so read on.

Organized by the San Francisco chapter of AIGA (one of the country's premier professional groups for designers)--and sponsored by Adobe and other companies, … Read more

Silicon Valley corporations are known for touting their arrays of environmentally friendly internal initiatives, but eBay is taking it a step further by sponsoring a report that explains how its entire business model may promote sustainability and energy efficiency.

The report, which CEO John Donahoe will present Tuesday at a Washington, D.C., event, was conducted in partnership with a company called Cooler. The report found that "without the need for an actual store--or chains of them--the peer-to-peer retailer saves everything from the carbon cost of making bricks and other building materials to the ongoing costs of heating, lighting, … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--So a British billionaire, a Hollywood action hero, and an unusually good-looking city politician walk into an airport terminal.

That would be Virgin Group CEO Sir Richard Branson, California governor (and erstwhile Terminator) Arnold Schwarzenegger, and San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, who were all on hand at San Francisco International Airport on Tuesday morning to kick off Virgin America's inaugural flight from San Francisco to Toronto. It's the three-year-old Burlingame, Calif.-based airline's first international route.

"To get Virgin America established, we had many battles," Branson said in the press conference, sounding more like … Read more

It turns out that the winner of the Starbucks-sponsored Betacup Challenge, a design competition aiming to solve the problem of the billions of disposable coffee cups discarded annually, isn't a cup at all. Rather, it's a chalkboard.

Called "Karma Cup," the jury-selected winning concept envisions a chalkboard at the counter of every Starbucks. Bring a reusable cup for your coffee, and you get to put a check mark on the chalkboard. Every 10 check marks, the next person to come in with a reusable cup gets his or her coffee on the house. "Think of … Read more

Water is not only the next big environmental issue, but also the next savings opportunity, according to several companies.

A survey conducted by research analyst Ethical Corporation in May 2010 found that 99 percent of corporate sustainability managers saw water becoming a top priority for businesses in the next 5 to 10 years. The report "Unlocking the Profit in Water Savings" found that 52 percent of sustainability managers ranked "water stewardship" within the top five most important issues they now deal with.

But more interesting is the hard data supporting the trend. Companies have found that … Read more

Ford Motor announced Thursday it will use its influence to reduce the carbon footprints of its suppliers.

In partnership with the Carbon Disclosure Project , the World Resources Institute, and World Business Council for Sustainable Development, Ford plans to survey 35 of its top suppliers worldwide with regard to their sustainability practices. Ford said this is just the initial phase of a long-term plan to eventually have all suppliers institute better sustainability practices. The suppliers chosen for this round include those who make tires, metal components, seats, and steering systems. 

Based on the collected data and using modeling software from … Read more

BP Agrawal, founder of Sustainable Innovations, has won the $100,000 Lemelson-MIT Award for Sustainability.

The award goes to an individual's overall achievement in improving the lives of others through science or engineering innovation, not for one particular invention.

Agrawal has achievements in several areas. He started out in the corporate world working for big names like Hughes, ITT, GTE, General Dynamics, and Vecna Technologies bringing patented technologies to market. During his corporate stint, he patented a single-bit voice-processing technology that enabled voice over satellite, and a "self-healing" modem. He was also the associate editor of IEEE … Read more

I recently saw the film "2012," where Earth appears to finally tire of the human race and decides to get rid of us. That, coupled with what seems to be an increasing number of natural disasters, makes me think that maybe it's time we take this green-tech thing seriously.

Apparently I'm not alone. Last week in New York, eco-minded thinkers gathered for Greener Gadgets, a conference aimed at sharing ideas for environmentally friendly gizmos. One stand-out event was the Green Gadgets Design Competition, where concepts from around the world were voted on by the public, then assessed by a panel of judges, as well as audience members.

First place went to a concept app using an iPhone as a demo. The Augmented Living Goods project, invented by a student in the U.S., uses your smartphone's camera to scan the bar code on produce. It then consults a database and, after fixing your position with GPS, tells you how far your potential food has traveled and if it's currently in season locally, as well as historical pricing among other data that's useful for helping consumers make more informed, sustainable choices in what they purchase and eat.

Second place went to something I'd actually like to see in every apartment in the near future. It's a solar panel with two integrated USB chargers. As more and more gadgets (cell phones, iPods, digital cameras, etc.) start adopting USB "trickle" charging, the demand for USB power goes up. This Illumi-Charger by U.S.-based GreenWaves.org stores power when it's not charging your devices in integrated batteries. That way the bottleneck is in the USB interface, not the amount of light it's absorbing. Pretty smart. … Read more