Link: Search Engines, Directories & Guides

sprig - A super-hip and fashionable resource for your green lifestyle, including food, fashion, beauty and home.

The Nature Conservancy Nature Preserve Map - A Google Maps mashup featuring nature preserves across the U.S.

EcoSeek - A search engine for green stuff.

Greener - An environmental search engine.

GuideMeGreen.com - A resource of green companies and brands for environmentally conscious shoppers.

Green Maven - A search engine and green directory powered by Google search.

Evolvist - A directory of eco-friendly & socially responsible business that will be released soon. They also have a blog and a Facebook app.

Holistic Local - A resource to find local conscious businesses, local events and courses, and articles & e-books, as well as a marketplace to buy and sell conscious products.

Sustainable Travel International - A sustainable travel guide that also offers carbon offsets for your travel.

Green Building Blocks - A green building product & service directory that also features information on green building techniques and ways to promote your green business.

Lime - Lime is a complete green living guide with online TV, radio, mobile, podcasts, shopping and more.

GoodSearch - A search engine that donates 50% of it’s proceeds to the charity of your choice (over 40,000 are currently participating).

Green Building Studio - Online tools for green builders, engineers, building products manufacturers and architects.

Yahoo! Green - Yahoo!’s green information site that includes a pledge to help reduce your environmental impact.

50 Ways to Green Your Business - Part IV

31 One initial problem with Staples' new emphasis on recycled paper: less durable products. The solution? Reinvent paper. The company's hanging file folders now include 50% regenerated cotton (aka "denim"), and its "carbon neutral" notebook paper is 90% bagasse, a sugarcane by-product the company buys from Argentine farmers who would otherwise burn the spent cane, polluting their own communities.

32 Talk about turning garbage into a useful resource: The University of New Hampshire signed a deal this year with Waste Management Inc. to get 80% to 85% of the power and heat for its 14,000-student campus, using methane piped in from a nearby landfill. UNH must build a 12.7-mile pipeline to carry the gas, but the $45 million project is expected to save enough to pay for itself in 10 years.

33 Take the foodie trend of consuming only locally grown products and apply it to sportswear: That's what Nike (NYSE:NKE) has done with its Considered line. The company has committed to sourcing as much of the products' raw materials as possible--recycled polyester and rubber, organic cotton, hemp--from within 200 miles of the factory, cutting the environmental and financial costs of transportation. Of course, the finished goods still have a long trip to market; the Considered line is made in China and Thailand.

34 If flying is the new smoking, fractional jet companies are the eco-equivalent of Philip Morris. But this fall, Warren Buffett's NetJets begins hitting its clients with a healthy dose of guilt serum: $5,000 extra a year, to pay for carbon offsets.

35 Surfers are generally pro-environment; their petrochemical-based gear is not. Patagonia is looking to change that. Its latest wet suit is made of Japanese neoprene, unbleached New Zealand merino wool, and PVC-free kneepads; and it uses 80% less petroleum than its competitors. Better yet (for surfers), at 3 millimeters thick, it produces the same warmth typically associated with 5 millimeters.

36 Emissions aren't the only enviro-scourge of the air-travel industry. U.S. airlines throw away enough aluminum cans every year to build 58 new 747s. At the urging of its own flight attendants, Delta Air Lines (NYSE:DAL) launched an on-board recycling program this past summer in a few of its hubs. In the first three months, flight attendants, who sorted cans, newspapers, and plastic, collected 60 tons of recyclables. The program will expand to all domestic flights by the end of 2008.

37 Not content to confine its green efforts to recycling, Delta has also become the first U.S. airline to offer its passengers carbon offsets for their trips at the same time that they buy their tickets. The offsets--available only at Delta.com--cost $5.50 per roundtrip domestic ticket, and the money goes to the Conservation Fund's Go Zero program.

38 Paper or plastic? The unsatisfying answer is neither. Retailers including Ikea and Trader Joe's sell heavy-duty polypropylene sacks designed to be reused. But how do you get convenience-obsessed American shoppers actually to use them again? Timberland's (NYSE:TBL) "Trash Is My Bag" totes (made from recycled plastic bottles) cost $5.50 each or come free with a $100 purchase; to encourage reuse--and more shopping at Timberland--each bag doubles as a 10%-off coupon through the end of 2008.

39 Speaking of reuse, Target (NYSE:TGT) has slashed its waste by 70%. The company has applied its signature craftiness to taking advantage of every opportunity to recycle. Last year, it recycled or refurbished 47,600 broken shopping carts, 2.1 million pounds of broken plastic hangers, 4.3 million pounds of shrink-wrap from distribution centers, and more than 10,000 pounds of rechargeable batteries.

40 Knocking down drywall and rebuilding the office every time your workforce shifts doesn't exactly square with running a sustainable business. Enter Steelcase's (NYSE:SCS) new Pathways Privacy Wall, a 10-foot-high steel-frame reconfigurable wall that also happens to be the first of its kind that's "cradle-to-cradle" certified--meaning the entire structure can be economically (and easily) disassembled into component materials for recycling. What's more, it contains 30% recycled materials to begin with.

From: Fast Company

50 Ways to Green Your Business - Part III

21 Casual Friday might not resonate with natty Italians, but when the country's largest power company, Eni, wanted to save some energy (and money), it asked its workers to embrace "lighter and cooler" attire and raised the thermostats at HQ one degree Celsius. The summer's savings: 217,000 kilowatts and CO2 emissions equivalent to 140 employees taking public transport for a year.

22 The much-hyped Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) Tower, which will be the second-tallest building in New York when it's finished next year, is the first skyscraper in America to pursue LEED Platinum certification. Our favorite innovation: a geothermal heat-exchange system that's the first of its kind in a high-rise. In the winter, pumps will draw heat from groundwater to help warm the building; in the summer, the process will work in reverse, pumping excess heat into the bedrock beneath the tower. The system will contribute to the building's goal of using just half the electricity of a conventional building its size.

23 Meeting LEED standards isn't the only way to green a building. Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ:JAVA) likes to nix office space entirely. Its Open Work program, 10 years and 20,000 participants strong (that's 56% of Sun's workforce), gives employees the option to work from home. Talk about a triple bottom line: In 2006, Sun saved $67.8 million in real-estate costs, prevented nearly 29,000 tons of CO2 emissions, and increased worker productivity by 34%. The master of the virtual workspace now has a consulting practice to help other companies do the same.

24 Timberland awards its employees who buy hybrids not only with a primo parking spot but also with $3,000 toward the car's purchase. Bank of America has a similar program. Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) is one-upping both with a $5,000 incentive.

25 At Enterprise Rent-A-Car, about half the fleet--more than 334,000 vehicles--gets more than 28 mpg (nearly 10 times the number of fuel-efficient vehicles offered by its closest competitor, Enterprise boasts). The company is adding thousands of hybrids and FlexFuel cars.

26 At its Manhattan headquarters, JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) is starting renovations at the top--on the roof, 53 stories up, where the bank is building what is essentially a giant pan to collect rainwater. The water will be funneled into a 55,000-gallon tank in the basement, filtered, and then piped up for toilet flushing. Coupled with new low-flush urinals and toilets, this system will cut the building's water use--and cost--by 30%.

27 The corporate restroom isn't fully green without Dyson's new Airblade hand dryer, which does its job in half the time (12 seconds) and with half the energy (1,400 watts) of conventional dryers. It costs four times as much up front, but the energy savings can pay you back in three years. AMC Theatres is testing the units now.

28 California-based managed-care provider Kaiser Permanente knew that its vinyl floors weren't doing Mother Nature (or patients or employees) any favors: PVC in the vinyl releases dioxin when it's created, and it lets loose other harmful particulates when buffed, to say nothing of the harsh chemicals used in cleaning it. Kaiser started replacing the floors in 2005 with PVC-free recycled rubber, which costs more to install but pays for itself in five years by slashing maintenance costs by as much as 80%. A side benefit: fewer slips and falls (and calmer actuaries as a result).

29 It was 1853 when Otis introduced the first safety elevator and forever changed the urban landscape. With the introduction of the company's Gen2 lift, the company has re-imagined what has largely been unchanged for more than 150 years. Replacing steel cables with a flat, polyurethane-coated steel belt, Otis was able to eliminate a bulky machine room and create a lubrication-free system. The result is not only a quieter and smoother ride, but combined with "regenerative drive" technology that returns electricity to the building grid, the new elevators are 75% more efficient than conventional drive systems. Gen2 lifts are becoming de rigueur in the slickest, greenest new towers, including Fast Company's new home, 7 World Trade Center.

30 Unlike most big-box retailers that are debuting discrete green product lines, Staples (NASDAQ:SPLS) has eco-modified a whopping 3,000 of its mainstream private-label products to include at least 30% post-consumer waste. From sticky notes to shipping boxes, nearly all of the new offerings do not have a nonrecycled alternative in the product line. The end goal: to pressure the entire industry to follow suit.


From: Fast Company

50 Ways to Green Your Business - Part I

Imagine asking today how the Internet affects business. It's an absurd question, like asking how electricity changed business. Asking the same about sustainability, it turns out, is equally absurd. Like the Internet, sustainability spurs innovation in everything, from how you see your business model to whether you see your employees (why not let them work at home more?). Here are our favorite ways companies today are greening up--and saving money and making better widgets in the process.

1 At $100 a ton, feeding a landfill is pricey. But in the past two years, General Mills (NYSE:GIS) has turned its solid waste into profits. Take its oat hulls, a Cheerios by-product. The company used to pay to have them hauled off, but realized they could be burned as fuel. Now customers compete to buy the stuff. In 2006, General Mills recycled 86% of its solid waste, earning more from that than it spent on disposal.

2 Moore's Law is great for producing speedier devices, but it's hell on the environment. According to Greenpeace, demand for new technology creates 4,000 tons of e-waste an hour, which often ends up on dead-hardware mountains in India, Africa, and China. Enter take-back programs, in which customers return spent technology to manufacturers, who recycle the parts for new gadgets. The United States has long lagged behind many European nations, which mandate the programs, but that's finally changing. Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) is leading the way. Last year, the PC maker recovered 40,000 tons of unwanted equipment for recycling, up 93% from 2005.

3 Trains were already the cleanest way to move massive amounts of freight long distances, but General Electric (NYSE:GE) raised the game with its Evolution locomotives, diesel engines launched in 2005 that cut fuel consumption by 5% and emissions by 40% compared to locomotives built just a year earlier. Up next, a triumph of sheer coolness: a GE hybrid diesel-electric locomotive that, just like your Prius, captures energy from braking and will improve mileage another 10%. According to GE, the energy dissipated in braking a 207-ton locomotive during the course of a year is enough to power 160 homes for the same period.

4 Not to be outdone in the freight game, Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) is providing funding to the biggest truck manufacturers--ArvinMeritor, Eaton, International, and Peterbilt--to develop the first heavy-duty diesel-hybrid 18-wheeler. Wal-Mart, which operates the second-largest truck fleet in the country, will test the prototypes next year.

5 Austin-based concert promoter C3 Presents made news when it banned Styrofoam cups from the sixth annual Austin City Limits Music Festival this year. Beneath the quick-hit media pop was a deeper story: Following the model the company created for Lollapalooza, C3 took a holistic approach to greening nearly every aspect of ACL, from bamboo-based concert T-shirts to gel sanitizer in the bathrooms to bio-diesel power generators.

6 It's not just hippies making the special-events world eco-friendly. The Philadelphia Eagles claim to be the greenest team in the NFL--and not just because of the color of its jerseys. Starting this season, the team's "Go Green" environmental campaign has its stadium cleaning crew making two full sweeps after each game--one to pick up recyclables and another for trash.

7 First we counted calories, then carbs. Now it's carbon, as retailers introduce product labels that encourage customers to weigh their eco-sins. The most ambitious: British grocery giant Tesco, which has a program to label all 70,000 of its products with carbon breakdowns.

8 Hamburger Helper helps your hamburger … save the planet? This year, General Mills redesigned the packaging of Mom's old standby, shaving off 20% of the paperboard box without shrinking its tasty contents. The astounding result: 500 fewer distribution trucks on the road each year.

9 Another recent player in the un-supersize movement, Unilever (NYSE:UL), reconfigured the plastic bottles for its billion-dollar Suave shampoo brand, saving plastic equivalent to some 15 million bottles a year.

10 Taking the packaging revolution a step further, the liquid-laundry-detergent industry, goaded by Wal-Mart, has cut the size of its bottles by 50% or more by concentrating the liquid to two and sometimes three degrees of magnitude. Unilever's triple-concentrated All Small & Mighty detergent has saved 1.3 million gallons of diesel fuel, 10 million pounds of plastic resin, and 80 million square feet of cardboard since 2005. This fall, Procter & Gamble (NYSE:PG) is converting its entire collection of liquids to double concentration.

Internet Marketing Goes Green

While issues like global warming dominate discussions in governments worldwide, internet marketing is also heading to the same direction.

This year, green marketing seems to be the major byword in internet advertising campaigns. As countries, environmentalist groups, and concerned sectors talk about environmental problems, digital media coverage of such issues seem to heighten the need to articulate such views even in ads.

Also called eco-marketing, green marketing is not really something new. One instance of this is GE’s famous Ecomagination effort, Philips “A Simple Switch” campaign and Michelin’s “A Greener World.” Others may follow their trails as well: there is Organic Valley, Method, Seventh Generation, to name a few.

John Rooks, president of Dwell Creative, an agency that specializes in organizing campaigns based on social issues, said online media appeals to their clients are issue-based, the latest being a transition from demographic to psychographic marketing. “If we have a client that is interested in land conservation, we can pinpoint the psychographic that cares about that issue,” he adds.

With a balanced combination of around 30 percent government contracts and 30 percent non-profits add to that profit-driven businesses looking for grassroots-style, cause-oriented marketing strategies, Dwell Creative is beginning to look into the prospects of online advertising campaigns.

As building relationships with clients are crucial for a company’s growth, Dwell looks into creating opportunities for dialogue rather than one-way broadcast ads. Rooks believes that this shall yield great potentials for web user participation seeking a “greener” market media. This would later make way for consolidations in online green market media.

Discovery Communications’ purchase of TreeHugger.com and Gaiam.com’s acquisition of eco-lifestyles media firm Lime Media and Zaadz are tow recent developments in these area. The move for going online by most companies may come from the fact that more media users are online rather than the boob tube. As Rooks puts it, “Online offers that (dialogue opportunities about brands) to a much greater degree than other media.”

With TreeHugger.com having visitors reaching up to 2 million in June of this year, the website provides a great venue for massive internet campaigns.

President of TreeHugger.com, Ken Rother hits the point better when he said, “When a large organization has made a conscious decision to have a greener footprint or greener products, that’s a good way (online) to tell the audience, because the audience may not be available in other media.”

He adds that it takes trusts to establish a sustained dialogue between client and internet user, believing that advertising must have “similar conceptual values to the content.”

The idealizations of the green media movement have also tapped into websites like Yahoo, Newsweek, and the Washington Post. Just recently, Yahoo introduced Yahoo Green, a campaign that carried the message for consumers to change their electric lights to Energy Star CFL Bulbs.
Other environmental-themed ads include Tom’s, a toothpaste manufacturer and Hewlett-Packard, a respected in computer products and essentials. Going beyond selling, Yahoo spokesperson, Dina Freeman said that there is not one person responsible for selling green on the sales team. “The entire sales team is tasked to meet clients’ standards,” she adds.


From:comcorp