environmental

Well, the last decade has seen a lot of predictions.  Many of them optimistically claimed that the world would be a very different place by 2010 and green tech would dominate the landscape.  We'd all be living in an environmentally-friendly utopia with everything but flying cars (those were a 1950s obsession).

Looking at those predictions for 2010 and where we are today, at the cusp of entering that new decade, it appears the predictions were off.  Here's my three favorite ones.

Well, that didn't work out.  Despite the Hydrogen Economy author, Jeremy Rifkin, prediction. Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are still a future tech with most not seeing them even entering the market for public consumption until 2015-20.  Sure, every major car maker on the planet is working on some kind of H2-driven machine, but most of them make a Bentley look cheap with their current price points.  So far, no major hydrogen fuel cell manufacturer has appeared to make FCs cheaply en masse.  So.. it'll still be a while.

Lately, I have done a lot of research.  That research is now culminating into a new white paper I'm penning titled The Sustainability Factor: What Sustainability Means and Why You Need to Know.  The following is the introductory chapter of that paper.  It lays out the gist of the piece and what it hopes to accomplish.

I'm including it here to show you this because this is the core issue behind this entire blog's existence.  When The Sustainability Factor is finished, I will be putting it up on the site for download, free of charge.  You'll note the addition of a "donate" button to the left.  Please go to my About Me page to find out what that's all about.

So, without further ado, here's the introduction to my new paper.  It should be complete and available here on the site in the next few days.  The paper itself will have sources and a bibliography, of course.

What Sustainability Really Is

The term “sustainability” or “sustainable” is used a lot these days, almost always in relation to something that's considered green (ecologically non-impacting, or at least more so than the alternative).  It's often used wrongly, especially when it's used to tout products or services.

The problem with the word “sustainable” is that while it's easily defined, it is hard to quantify with so many things in today's consumerist world.

In a true, grassroots, and fundamental way, this campaign aims to protest the federal government's forcing us to use compact fluorescent lights (CFL).  A federal law will ban the sale of traditional incandescent bulbs by 2012, effectively eliminating them from American use.

While I don't love the old, inefficient, more-heat-than-light incandescents, I also don't like government telling me what to do.  Especially when the alternative they're promoting (CFL) has some serious drawbacks of its own.

Although breaking a CFL in your home doesn't necessarily mean everyone who lives there will die from mercury poisoning, it's still a worry.  Any mercury is bad and a house full of it, thanks to bulbs, smoke detectors, thermostats, and more (that all contain it), can't be healthy.  Sending these items to the landfill is, often, technically illegal too.

Further, the law will effectively ban new technologies that could be safer, cheaper, and better alternatives as well, such as the laser breakthrough I talked about in a post not too long ago.

A couple of days ago, I talked about the Cradle to Cradle Certification program for products and processes to measure their impact on the environment.  Now I've found out that Wal-Mart is planning to do something somewhat similar for the products they sell.

Wal-Mart is currently working on the index for those ratings, but has let their suppliers know that they will be expected to produce information on each of their products for Wal-Mart to use in these ratings.  Being the largest retailer on the planet, I guess Wal-Mart can make demands like that.  They already do so with their supply line, shipping, and so forth.

A recent article in the Huffington Post made it clear that Monsanto is moving forward very quickly with their genetically modified organism (GMO) foods agenda.  They basically own all corn and soybean seeds in North America now.  In fact, their most well-distributed seed types are for HT-ready (herbicide tolerant) strains of corn and soy seeds, which are now the vast majority of those sold on the U.S. market:

Now they're working on wheat crops.  With the current scare in wheat fungus going on, they may be making huge strides very soon towards cornering that market as well.  The issue is coming to a head and needs our vocal efforts to stop it from getting to the point of no return.

Why are GMOs bad? What makes them different than regular crops?  Well, the main problem with them is that they are edging out heritage and traditional strains of crops.  The next problem is that Monsanto owns the patent on those seeds, so if you have any you didn't pay for them (even if they blew onto your property from a neighbor's), you could be taken to court.  It happens all the time to small farmers today.

You saw that in the movie The World According to Monsanto, which I posted here for you to watch not too long ago.

McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry has a new certification program called Cradle to Cradle Certification for materials and products.  The certification has four levels of achievement, similar to the LEED program for buildings: Basic, Silver, Gold, or Platinum.

A Cradle to Cradle Certified product is measured by several factors to achieve this certification.  The materials to make the product are gaged by their environmental impact, sustainability, etc. as well as how utilized/re-utilized they are (aka how much recycled material goes into making them and how recyclable they are after use).  The certification also tests the amount of energy used to produce the product (including its source: renewable or not), the efficiency of water use (if any) in making the product, and so forth.

The certification is meant to be a sort of United Laboratories (UL) listing for how "green" a product really is.

You know what the UL is, right?  Ya, it's that totally non-governmental agency that everyone trusts to certify that electrical products are safe for use.  I'm hoping something like this Cradle to Cradle idea catches on for green before some government bureaucrat decides it's his job to decide what's "green" and what's not.  Probably based on criteria that has little to do with the environment and everything to do with politics...