The winner of this year’s Brit Insurance Design Award is British designer Samuel Wilkinson along with Hulger, a product design company. The designer has conceived Plumen light bulb that could light up your space with its sleek and trendy looks. This eye appealing product will brighten up your dwellings sans any additions to the electricity bill because of its low energy consumption. These unique twisted compact fluorescent bulbs consume 80% less energy and lasts 8 times longer than incandescent bulbs.

 

The bulb will dangle from the roof giving illuminating homes and offices a whole new meaning. The ‘Pulmen’ emerged as a clear winner among 90 participants.

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November 15, 2010 – As part of their “Mission Zero” commitment to eliminate all negative environmental impacts from company operations by 2020, Interface, Inc. is pledging to obtain third-party certified environmental product declarations (EPD) on all InterfaceFLOR products by 2012.

The goals were announced as part of the company’s latest report, the “2010 Mission Zero Milestones.” The report outlines progress Interface has made over the last 16 years, such as reducing GHG emissions by 94% since 1996, avoiding $433 million in waste costs and diverting over 100,000 tons of material from landfills through its reEntry program, which recycles old carpet into new.

The company believes that the new EPD’s will be critical in jump-starting product innovation in the coming years. Dan Hendrix, president and CEO of Interface, said: “With the multitude of environmental labels in the marketplace, adoption of EPDs is the right thing to do and Interface’s way forward. Environmental Product Declarations require full transparency, create new standards of accountability, and will ultimately spur new levels of innovation as customers begin to understand the impacts of their purchasing decisions and demand more from business and industry.”

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November 1, 2010 – 3M has introduced a new polymer film to the photovoltaic industry that they believe will replace the need for rigid glass used on conventional solar panels and opens the door for more flexible, lightweight and weather resistant photovoltaic panels in the future.

3M’s Ultrabarrier polymer film is a transparent and durable material, designed to keep the elements off of solar panels. Conventional panels use glass as a protective layer from the elements because it is cheap, transparent and durable. But by laminating a panel with this new innovative material, manufacturers can design products for new applications and potentially make bulky glass panel obsolete.

The company claims that their new film makes the entire photovoltaic module cheaper to produce as well. Because there is no glass used, the need for large metal racks and frames are eliminated, and the labor costs associated with installation are reduced. Manufacturing will also see efficiency gains, as the film can be made in a continuous process.

3M will begin manufacturing in earnest in 2011.

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November 2, 2010 – The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) yesterday announced the launch of the new CDP Cities program, which will provide a system for cities worldwide to report on their greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related strategies and replicates for city governments what the CDP has done for corporate carbon reporting.

In tandem with the release of CDP Cities, the organization partnered with the Clinton Climate Initiative in asking the world’s largest cities committed to tackling climate change to voluntarily measure and report their emissions under the program. The two organizations say that the 40 member cities and 19 affiliates will be better able to proactively manage risks, reduce carbon footprints and adopt smarter strategies by joining the program.

This same CDP disclosure process was used successfully in a 2008 pilot of 18 cities in the United States. This pilot highlighted how action on climate change is, in most cases, at an early stage and so the opportunities ahead to reduce emissions and seize future opportunities are considerable.

To date, London, Toronto and New York have already agreed to report their carbon emissions data to CDP.

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October 29, 2010 – On Monday, Kimberly-Clark will unveil their new tube-free line of toilet paper at Wal-Mart and Sam’s club stores throughout the Northeast of the U.S., eliminating the cardboard frame that the paper is traditionally wrapped on, saving millions of pounds of paper waste annually.

The company expects the new line, which will be released under theScott Naturals brand, will save a significant amount of resources. Kimberly-Clark estimates that the 17 billion toilet paper tubes produced per year in the U.S. alone generate 160 million pounds of waste.

While the company’s Scott Naturals line features paper containing 40% or more recycled material, the new Tube-Free roll will be the brands exception, at least for the near future.

Editor’s Note: We are interested to learn what led Kimberly Clark to trade off the recycled content in their paper for this innovation which we applaud.

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October 8, 2010 – The Glass Packaging Institute has coordinated the industry’s first complete cradle-to-cradle life cycle assessment which concludes that given glass’s endless recyclability, the use of recycled glass in manufacturing results in a decreased primary energy demand and reduces carbon emissions.

Groups representing other industries have claimed that the cost and environmental impact of transporting glass to be recycled offset any benefits the act of recycling would have otherwise provided. This LCA calculates the energy impact of recycled glass transportation at only 4-5% of the total energy used in glass production.

When looked at it in its entirety, the study finds that the environmental benefits stemming from the recycling of glass containers more than offset any increased impact generated by slightly heavier containers and other shipping impacts. Other factors impacting the LCA include the fact that glass is endlessly recyclable, made only from ingredients found in the natural world (sand, soda ash, limestone), and is the only packaging material accepted as “GRAS” (generally recognized as safe) by the FDA for food and beverage contact. This means glass requires no additives or additional materials to meet regulatory guidelines for use in the food industry.

The study was conducted by PE Americas and examined each step of the production process from raw material extraction to end-use. The closed-looped cradle-to-cradle LCA collected data from 105 furnaces representing 75 percent of North American glass container production.

For the complete report and more information on the North American glass container industry LCA, please visit http://www.gpi.org/.

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With the dropout economy fueling food entrepreneurship, and backyard farming (and even slaughter) taking off around the world, it makes sense to develop new and innovative ways for micro-growers to get their products to market. A New Zealand start up is hoping to unite farmers, micro-farmers and gardeners, and offer their produce through one easy to use site.

At first glance Ooooby looks a little like the Veggie Trader site that Jasmin reported on a little while back. But Ooooby seems to take the concept a little further. The group is already selling produce from gardeners and backyard growers at a regular farmers market stand, and it is enabling barter and swapping among grower members. Now a small proportion of the backyard produce is also making it into the group’s veggie box deliveries, which also feature produce from local and organic farmers—as well as some produce, like bananas, from further away.

Of course CSAs and veggie box delivery schemes are nothing new. But it is very cool to see a group specifically working to harness the growing power of backyard farmers. The short video below gives a taste of how the group has evolved.

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September 27, 2010 –ecoincorporated has given a much needed re-design to a product almost as basic as the mousetrap – the pizza box. The company’s new rendering of the classic cardboard square allows the container to become 4 plates as well as a conveniently sized storage container that holds only half of a pizza.

The product is manufactured from 100% recycled corrugated cardboard, and is 100% recyclable. The new design allows the top of the pizza box to be removed and broken into 4 plates, while the bottom is perforated to fold in half, essentially creating a “half-size” storage container. The design also allows for much easier disposal in residential recycling bins.

The Vancouver Sun reports that some chains are paying up to 45 cents per box – more than double what most chains pay for boxes made in China and India. Earlier this month Whole Foods announced that they will begin using the boxes across 30 stores in the Rocky Mountain territory as a pilot.

The demonstration video of the new box on YouTube has gathered almost 900,000 views. Watch it below.

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September 23, 2010 – Jerry Lynch, who was appointed as General Mills new Chief Sustainability Officer last week, made his first official act in his new executive role – General Mills has announced that it will strive to source 100 percent of palm oil from responsible and sustainable sources by 2015.

The stated company objective with this new policy is “to help ensure our purchases are not associated in any way with deforestation of the world’s rainforests – and to further reinforce the development of certified sustainable palm oil production practices.”

This objective outlines several issues that surround the global palm oil trade, and how they relate to sustainability commitments that General Mills has made. The company expressed concern about the role of palm oil expansion in the deforestation of the world’s rainforests, for example, and about the impact of deforestation on biodiversity, endangered species, greenhouse gas emissions and indigenous peoples.

As part of its commitment, General Mills has integrated environmentally and socially responsible palm oil production into its assessment of suppliers, including direct review of their palm oil production and sourcing practices. They also said that if a supplier is in violation of these guidelines and does not immediately remedy the situation, they awill “suspend or eliminate all oil purchases from said supplier.”

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September 17, 2010 – Walmart Centroamerica, in partnership with The World Environment Center (WEC), released the results of an 18-month supply chain project aimed at implementing sustainability at 19 of the organizations key suppliers through the Cleaner Production Private Sector Partnership.

he Cleaner Production Private Sector Partnership is run by WEC, and funded by the U.S. Department of State. The program promotes best practices and technologies among Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in El Salvador and Guatemala by creating partnerships with multinational companies and industrial sector associations. Walmart Centroamérica incorporated its suppliers’ participation in the CPP project through its “Una Mano para Crecer” (A Hand to Grow) supplier development program.

Through the CPP activities, Walmart Centroamérica’s SME suppliers developed the ability to improve their production processes both in terms of sustainability and efficiency, which produced a total of $US 426,123 in savings (from investments totaling $US 222,785) over the term of the program.

Key results of the program include:

Energy savings: 52.6 megawatt hours;
Fuel oil savings: 80,937 gallons;
Product recovery: 1,159 tons;
Water savings: 3,222 cubic meters;
CO2 emissions reduction: 988 tons; and
Waste water reduction: 4,758 tons.

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