As companies make philanthropic efforts many are looked at as trying to make themselves look more ethical than they actually are. We have heard terms like ‘green wash‘ which is where a business presents themselves as eco-friendly when they are actually not. Well, I am quite fond of Google’s efforts in the philanthropic area and here are some examples why:

Google.org has announced five core initiatives that will be the focus of its philanthropic efforts over the next five to ten years. The philanthropic arm of Google announced $25 million in new grants and investments to initial partners as the part of the core initiative roll out.

Google.org’s five initiatives and partners include:

Predict and Prevent: supporting “efforts to empower communities to predict and prevent events before they become local, regional, or global crises, by identifying “hot spots” and enabling a rapid response.” Grants as follows:

• $5 million to InSTEDD (Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disasters) to improve early detection, preparedness, and response capabilities for global health threats and humanitarian crises.
• $2.5 million to the Global Health and Security Initiative (GHSI), established by the Nuclear Threat Initiative to prevent, detect, and respond to biological threats.
• $600,000 to Clark University, with equal funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, for Clark Labs to develop a system to improve monitoring, analysis and prediction of the impacts of climate variability and change on ecosystems, food and health in Africa and the Amazon.

This information was excerpted from TechCrunch (as usual) so if you would like to read it in its entirety, go here.

I remember reading, some time ago about the $3000 car. The notion behind it was to make four-wheels accessible to India’s fast-growing middle class. Some may ask how producing a vehicle at such a price can be sustainable. Well, profit-margins are thin but by shifting sheer numbers - numbers that are adequately supported by Indian’s population, it is quite a sustainable move; well according to the media reports by these car producers.

The way I see it is India has a demand for this car but I don’t know if they have the infrastructure to support it. How do people currently get around in India? Scooters and motorcycles are very popular due to their fuel efficiency and maneuverability in traffic. I would think they are pretty easy to park and store, also. So how will the country cope with a car that is set to ‘revolutionise the market of 1.1 billion people‘? To me, it seems like a situation of buying the vase first and table later.

Where are these cars meant to be parked? How will the roads cope in terms of both congestion and wear? How will the current refueling stations cope? How will the ports cope with bringing in fuel? Are there adequate service centres? I really could go on…

If the nation has, for so long counted on two-wheels as a primary mode of transport how do they all of a sudden cater for four? This is not to mention the already burgeoning environmental aspects.

[Side Note] It’s interesting what people have to say in the comments of the article, ‘$A2800: World’s Cheapest Car’ over at News.com.au. Concerns of how safe the Tata Nano is seems to be the general consensus. Doesn’t seem to be much thought into the safety of a moped though. Additionally, people seem to be critical of the cars chances in making it to Australian roads. Well that’s ok, as I don’t believe there are intentions. It’s built with a purpose and meeting Australia standards is not one of them.

I like this comment; it sums it all up:

“You nitwits are missing the entire point of the car. It is not meant for Aussies or any other western market. It is meant for third world markets where entire families manage to ride a 2 wheel scooter together. For them it is a step up. Safety wise also, it is far better than the scooter though very poor compared to a standard western auto. THINK, RELATE and stop being so ethnocentric. I can’t but shake my head at those who feel that third world populations should be denied products because they pollute. Why don’t you lot sell your cars and trash your air conditioning before you pass judgment?” - Thanks Andy of the USA…

I am not a great fan of regurgitating other peoples information but David Sag over at Carbon Planet had some interesting news over at his blog today:

Social network sites have traditionally been seen as either playthings for bored office workers, dating site equivalents for lusty students, helper kits internet-stalkers or fronts for the CIA, but today I think I actually found something useful in facebook. Carpooling.

Previously, online ride-sharing was a risky and difficult endeavour for any user. Finding a ride on a website like Craigslist (currently the most popular ride-sharing site) would be fraught with uncertainty and hazard. There was simply no way to find out about a potential ride-sharing partner - your driver could be your real-estate agent or a newly released axe-murderer. He (or she?) could come pick you up on time, or leave you hanging. There was no accountability, no trust and consequently no real step-change in the culture of ride-sharing in the real world. Car owners still prefer to drive empty cars over long distances, paying hefty gas costs, and passengers still have to desperately beg for rides, rent cars or suffer a long, expensive bus/train ride. Everyone still loses.

Social-networking has changed the game. This disruptive technology has made it possible for people to establish trust in an online environment, thereby shattering the bottleneck for online-ridesharing. And Facebook Carpool, the new ride-sharing application that is embedded into the Facebook interface, is the first sophisticated utility to take advantage.

Resource use optimisation is the name of the game here. If I can find someone already going past my house to the airport (tomorrow afternoon say) then, by sharing a ride with them I will save both money and CO2, and, to be honest, might even make a new friend to play facebook scrabble with too. — DS

Thanks David. Cool post; cool find.

San Franciscan Pacific Gas and Electric, California, has just installed the first solar powered billboard in the world.

The billboard actually draws power from the grid, but the power output of its 20 PV panels is higher than what the billboard demands from the grid, keeping the balance positive. This is also possible due to the high efficiency LEDs the billboard uses for lighting.

Ranging from 2.5 to 3.4 kWh electricity produced during the day are actually close to what is necessary to power one family house.

Is this another great idea or is it just not worth the investment?

I don’t mean to turn this into a music fan blog but I’ve just started to read a report of academic interest, Ecological Footprint & Carbon Audit of Radiohead North America Tours, 2003 & 2006. This report looks at the carbon footprint of Radiohead’s 2003 and 2006 US tours. One surprising find is that fans traveling to the gigs accounted for the largest percentage of emissions.

Update: I have now added the link to the .zip file that holds the PDF of the report. Now you can enjoy this report wholly.

“Mapping out routes for its drivers, drastically reducing the number of left-hand turns they make helped the company shave 28.5 million miles off its delivery routes, which has resulted in savings of roughly three million gallons of gas and has reduced CO2 emissions by 31,000 metric tons”. - According to the NY Times…

Cari Spivek thought it was wasteful that so many employees like her were driving to work in different cars. Her idea became the Google Shuttle, a private transit network made of biodiesel-powered, wi-fi-enabled, air-conditioned buses transporting employees from around the Bay Area to Google headquarters in Mountain View, south of San Francisco.At first it was used by a hundred employees from the entire area. But Google has been growing and now shuttles more than 1,200 Googlers every day, many from the Mission District, which has recently added a second bus.

Anyone who has ever taken a population class knows that every migration has a countermigration. In addition to all of the Google employees already living in the city and doing less environmental damage by taking the shuttle, many employees are choosing to move to the city because there is now a comfortable shuttle to take them to work.

Read the rest of this article here.

Well today, Kevin Rudd did as he promised in signing the Kyoto Protocol. What great news for Australia and the World.

According to SMH “‘This is the first official act of the new Australian Government, demonstrating my Government’s commitment to tackling climate change’, Mr Rudd said”.

BusinessGreen is a website of news, advice, reviews and blogs to help UK companies reduce their carbon footprint. As much as this is a UK site it is still absolutely applicable to the rest of the world.

The site contains news, in-depth essays, a regularly updated blog, audio/video, a user forum and links to many useful resources.

If you have an interest for the environment which, as you can tell by this blog, I do, I recommend checking this great site out. I hope soon the forum will become more active as I’d certainly like to contribute my thoughts on all things ‘green’.

Long has there been a romance of going to the bottle shop; picking out a bottle of wine with some fancifully designed label; consuming its content; and putting out the bottle with the recycling or worse, straight into the trash. These aesthetically pleasing glass bottles were recently challenged by the cleanskin brigade, great, because they do away with all the unnecessary labels and marketing expenditure and carry over a lower price to the consumer.

Other innovations in the wine industry include, of course, the invention of screw-top bottles and synthetic corks. All of this considered, we are still drinking from the bottle. Heavy glass bottles that sure, can be recycled but still require a lot of energy in their production and recycling. There has to be a better, more environmentally friendly way, right?

Tetrapak, the same Swedish company that revolutionised the fruit juice market, have done just that. They have invented a design called tetraprisma which is a multi-layer carton with a screw cap.

An early-adopter of this technology in the Australian wine industry is Andrew Pease Wines which reported the following to SMH about the logistical efficiency of the tetraprisma design:

“A standard six-metre container holds 1176 cases of wine, including 10,584kg of wine and weighing 18,816kg overall. With tetraprisma that same container holds 1575 twelve packs holding 18,900kg of wine for a total overall weight of 19,530k”. “That is substantially more wine for virtually the same weight,” Andrew Peace said to SMH.

To read the entire article, check out this link.