Auggie V’s Green Blog

There have been several Connecticut based companies that have had recent green news that has gained these firms national exposure.  These companies are part of the growing number of Connecticut enterprises that are finding new markets in alternative energy, energy finance and green event coordination and logistics. 

Shelton based OPEL International and Sustainable Energy Technologies Ltd. have announced that they will partner to install and monitor a high concentration solar power system in Medicine Hat, Alberta.  OPEL has also been awarded a contract with Plainville High School to provide solar energy for 20 years. OPEL will own and operate the installation and sell clean electricity to the Town at rates below those currently being paid, with no capital costs incurred by the Town.

Soltage, a start-up founded by a group of Yale grads with offices in Hartford, CT are also part of a recent big solar deal announced for Pilgrim Furniture City in Milford.  They both recently announced the launch of the largest solar photovoltaic installation on a commercial showroom in New England.  Soltage is a full-service renewable energy company that develops and operates solar energy stations on client structures across the United States.

Rowland Technologies, Inc., located in Wallingford, Conn., and a manufacturer of high-quality plastic film and sheet has been selected by BioSolar, Inc. of Santa Clarita, Calif. for production of the company’s flagship BioBacksheet’ solar cell component. This breakthrough technology uses bio-based materials from renewable plant sources to reduce the cost of photovoltaic solar cells.

Global Executive, a conference and events logistics management company based in Ridgefield, has announced a partnership with BeGreen, the carbon offset division of Green Mountain Energy Company.  Global was also ranked number 992 on Inc. Magazine’s to 1,000 companies.  They were also the event coordinators for the recently held national conference, Greener by Design held in New Orleans earlier this month..

Starwood Energy Group Global has closed its first fund, Starwood Energy Infrastructure Fund, on $433m, exceeding its $400m target. Starwood Energy is an affiliate of Starwood Capital Group Global, a Greenwich, Connecticut-based real estate-focused private equity firm.

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Green residential construction is becoming more and more popular in Connecticut driven by rising energy costs, state and local incentives and the hope of gaining competitive advantage in a down real estate market. The other factor that is helping developers and builders embrace sustainable design is the increase in the number of affordable eco-friendly products that have entered the marketplace.  What was once thought of as a luxury for the rich and famouse has now become available to mid-upper income home owners.

According to an article by James Alexander this past week in the Hartford Courant, Beaudry Homes is among the first builders in the state to embrace the National Association of Home Builders’ green guidelines at Tunxis Heights in Bloomfield. “These homes are being built using green construction methods with an eye toward sustainability,” builder “Jr” Beaudry said. 
 
What makes the homes green?  Many of the building materials are local, which cuts down on shipping costs and gives work to area companies. The kitchen cabinets and countertops of man-made silica are from Bloomfield. The wood floors are bamboo or maple obtained from a company in Southwick, Mass.

Other green highlights include:

• Two 405-foot wells for the geothermal heat pumps are just outside the house and are capped below ground level.
• Bedroom carpeting that is made of 100 percent recycled material and the use of low-VOC finishes.
• “closed cell” foam insulation in the walls kept the house’s interior cool despite the 90-degree temperature outside.
• Underground water storage tank that captures rainwater that can then be used for irrigation.
• Grass seed from Connecticut that requires 60 percent less watering and no chemicals for fertilizer or bug control.

Beaudry Homes is offering five basic models at Tunxis Heights, each with an open floor plan and a first-floor master suite. Four of the models are ranches; the fifth is a two-story home. For buyers who like green options and more choices in two-story home designs, Beaudry Homes is also developing Heritage Farms in East Granby which also offers buyers green options.

Tunxis Heights, Bloomfield Builder: Beaudry Homes Price: Starting at $499,000 Style: Traditional country Rooms: 7 + Bedrooms: 2 or 3 Baths: 2 or 3 Size: 2,000 to 2,500 square feet Tax rate: 35.29 mills Best feature: Curb appeal and “green” building techniques. Want to find out more?  Contact Jr Beaudry at 860-653-7715 or visit www.beaudryhomes.com.
Source: Hartford Courant

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Our friends at the Center for Business and the Environment at Yale have developed and launched an innovative new online magazine, environment 360. The on-line publication is spearheaded by Roger Cohn, the award-winning former editor of Audubon and Mother Jones magazines. 

The inaugural issue features articles by Bill McKibben, Elizabeth Kolbert, Richard C.J. Somerville, Carl Safina, Fred Pierce, and a special interview with Nobel Prize-winner Rajendra K. Pachauri, Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 

I didn’t read all the articles but I did skim through a few and topics covered included climate change, biodiversity and water and they seemed very well written and thought provoking.  I liked the layout and the design work .  Simple and straight forward. To see it for yourself, visit e360’s Web site.

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As the green world turns, more and more green products enter the marketplace and many claim they’re green and of course if it says “all natural” the uneducated consumer, looking for greener products, will never really know whether it is or is not.  Labels are good but again, the general public has no clue about what they really mean.   The tremendous influx of green products and an increase in greenwashing has pushed the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to review its “Green Guides” a year earlier than planned. One industry that will be looked at very closely by the FTC will be cosmetics.   It’s not only about the product but it’s about the packaging and the “other” category, or as I like to say - the green business wild card. 

Earlier this week I visited Mod.Skin Labs, in Granby, CT which produces an affordable eco-friendly line of facial products for men and women. As you know, I am really fascinated with manufacturing and I’ve visited well over 400 facilities in Connecticut over the last twenty years but I have to admit I was not to familiar with skin care let alone the nuances of producing eco-friendly product.  Well I got schooled very quickly by Mod.Skin founder Raffaele Ruberto, a former chemist and style consultant and Mod.Skin’s Jessica McNabola .  They discussed with me how many skin care products claim to be “all natural” but some are not what they claim. Rafaelle emphasized that there’s several areas that need to be looked at when choosing eco-friendly skin products.  The first is that products have to be paraben-free.  What’s a paraben?  It’s a group of chemicals used as preservatives in cosmetics.  Raffaelle also explained that skin products that are natural are synthetic fragrance-free.  The other areas that need to be addressed include animal cruelty-free and dye free.

On the packaging side, Raffaele explained that mod.skin eliminates excess packaging and that he prefers using glass over plastic for its recyclability.  Raffaelle also stated that they don’t use boxes and they try to encourage customers to use their Web site rather then printed materials.  When they do print, they use recycled paper that’s printed with 100% soy ink. 

So what is Mod.Skin’s green wild card?  They have started Project (RE) Tree which plants one tree for every item sold. The firm has planted saplings starting in November of 2006 through last month to repopulate trees in Indonesia which lost a ton of trees due to the tsunami.

To find out more about all of mod.skin’s products, visit their Web site.

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A new report released last week by friends of buildingctgreen.com, Javelin Strategy & Research, reviews green banking trends including consumer habits, green banking behaviors and recommendations for financial institutions seeking to attract environmentally conscious consumers.Researchers found that although most consumers expressed an interest in adopting green banking behaviors, three out of four consumers still receive paper statements. According to Javelin, if every U.S. household stopped receiving paper bills and statements, 687,000 tons of paper would be saved every year – enough to circle the Earth 239 times.

“Green banking clearly has a direct, positive effect on the environment, but the benefits go much further, reaching into security and cost,” said Jim Van Dyke, president of Javelin Strategy & Research. “Banks will save money every time a customer switches to electronic statements and transactions, and consumers significantly reduce their risk of becoming a victim of identity fraud by going paperless and using online banking services – everybody wins.”

The report said that while consumers do care about the enviornment, that’s not the case when it comes to banking habits.  The report suggests that most banking customers are not aware of how they can make a difference and that financial institutions have not given good enough incentives to do so. The report is mainly based on data collected from a random-sample panel of 2,350 respondents targeting representative proportions of gender, age and income as compared to the overall US online population. 

Some key findings from the report include 34% of consumers said they switched to electronic statements to reduce their impact on the environment and 43% of consumers said they are more likely to do business with companies they perceive to be green. One out of five consumers (22%) said green initiatives cement the bond they have with their bank. And one interesting fact, 60% of “green bankers,” or consumers who say environmental impact is “extremely important” in purchasing and banking decisions, are women and 64% of “skeptics,” or consumers who say they are “very less likely” to be more loyal to their bank because of its environmental activities, are men.

Javelin researchers believe availability, accessibility and complexity are the central challenges stalling the adoption of green banking behavior. Financial institutions must focus on products and promotions that speak directly to environmentally conscious consumers, including “green audit” calculators to help consumers compute the environmental impact of their banking behavior, a one-stop paper statement shut-off option for all accounts and green banking marketing campaigns that reward customers for eco-friendly practices.

For consumers seeking to make their banking habits greener, Javelin Strategy & Research offers the following five recommendations:

1. Turn off paper statements. This is the easiest and most widely available way to make an immediate, substantial impact on your carbon footprint and lower your risk of identity fraud.

2. Switch to direct deposit. Cut off the paper trail that goes along with depositing paychecks. Bonus: In most cases, your money is deposited into your account earlier through direct deposit.  

3. Start using online banking. Checking your accounts online is not only convenient, but you can also significantly reduce waste by managing and paying bills online. Bonus: Save money on postage and reduce the possibility of identity fraud.

4. Skip the receipt and deposit envelope. Don’t take a receipt and instead, check your accounts online later or make a note of it immediately in your checkbook.  Recently, many banks have installed ATMs that don’t require envelopes for deposits. 

5. Try mobile banking. By signing up for mobile banking, you’re likely to cut down on trips to the ATM or local branch, which reduces pollution and saves you money on gas.

The companies that are mentioned in Javelin’s Green Banking Report include: Bank of America, Barclays Bank, Credit Union One of Oklahoma, GE Money, MasterCard, New Resource Bank, Sound Credit Union, Star One Credit Union, Technology Credit Union, Vancouver City Savings Credit Union, VISA, Washington Mutual, Wells Fargo.
 

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By Stephen Del Percio, greenbuildingsNYC.com

There’s a bit of a LEED-driven controversy that’s currently playing out at the Norwalk Community College in Connecticut. Students are alleging that the design by Upper West Side-based Mitchell-Giurgola Architects for a new $40 million, 3-story laboratory building “isn’t green enough.” Last year, architecture professor John Sneider’s Environmental Systems class critiqued the 55,000-square-foot project, with students suggesting a building smaller in scale and the installation of a geothermal system. They contacted university officials last year and say they’ve been given the runaround; the school has spent $3 million on the design to date and finalized drawings for bidding back in January. Still, students circulated a petition and met yesterday with the design team, who explained the project’s sustainable features notwithstanding its lack of LEED registration with USGBC.

The architects emphasized that the building will have extensive insulation, low-e windows with sunscreens, and incorporate recycled-content materials and perhaps a low-flow plumbing system. The team has not performed a full analysis, but “think” that the project would be close to a LEED Certified level. College president David Levinson said that he attempted to secure funding for a LEED application at the start of the project in 2004 but was unable to because of budget conditions. “We really have designed something that is sustainable,” he told the Stamford Advocate. “I feel convinced that we have done the best we have under the current constraints.” The university hopes to break ground in the fall and have the facility open by 2010.

What’s most interesting to me is how those quoted in the Advocate Article as pushing for the project to pursue a LEED rating are immediately correlating LEED itself with energy efficiency; it’s possible to earn the designation with a design aiming for no better than Energy Star 67. (Recall that the Energy Star designation itself goes to buildings that achieve a minimum of 75). While the students make the good point that Connecticut now requires large publicly-funded buildings to earn a LEED Silver rating (this particular project was approved before that legislation took effect), they should also review other recent green building legislation in other jurisdictions (Dallas, Boston) that introduces the concept of “LEED Certifiable.” The tension between time, money, and sustainability is a constant battle that we see playing out in the green/LEED context, and the NCC lab project could be a good paradigm for how stakeholders might arrive at some common ground in trying to juggle those competing interests.

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