In partnership with the Daylife people (who we've written about here), we've created the first "green index". It works a bit like a stock market index, except that instead of tracking stocks, it tracks mentions of certain key green phrases in the media. It's a way to gauge how much mindshare certain concepts have and see if they are gaining or losing ground compared to last week. Not very scientific, but lots of fun!
New keywords can be added to it and if you click on an entry, you can see more details and read recent new stories on that particular topic.
Next is what we call the TreeHugger Green Index "badge". It shows the direction the index is moving this week and will link back to the permanent home of the TreeHugger Green Index. We'll make code available that you can cut & paste in your blog if you want to show the badge and have an easy way to keep track of the green index.
Also, if you have any suggestions, please contact us. Thank you.
Recent Business Related Posts
A Picture is Worth... Northern California's Wildfires
Image from ESA
There is still no light at the end of the tunnel for fire-besieged Northern California. According to some reports, there are still over 1,000 wildfires burning in the region with little hope for improvement in the near future. Over 1,400 square kilometers of land have already been burnt, and there are more than 19,000 firefighters on hand, many from around the country, helping to put out the blazes.
The image was captured by the European Space Agency's Envisat satellite on June 25. ...
New and Improved 2015 EU Biofuel Target in the Works?
Image from petrr
Given all the recent backlash, it seemed inevitable that the EU would be forced to revise its misguided biofuel targets. The final push may very well have been provided by a World Bank report concluding that biofuels may have caused global food prices to rise by up to 75 percent.
Four percent from renewable sources by 2015
In light of this, Claude Turmes, a EU lawmaker, has proposed changing the EU's target so that only 4 percent of vehicle fuels be derived from renewable sources by 2015, reports Reuters' Pete Harrison. Claiming broad parliamentary backing, Turmes said there would be a review in 2015 to decide whether to keep the 10 percent target for 2020....
Zeppelins Rise Again, The Upside of $200 Oil
Why Fly When You Can Float? It has been more than 70 years since the giant Hindenburg zeppelin exploded in a spectacular fireball over Lakehurst, N.J., killing 36 crew members and passengers, abruptly ending an earlier age of airships. But because of new materials and sophisticated means of propulsion, a diverse cast of entrepreneurs is taking another look at the behemoths of the air. ::New York Times
See also Zeppelins are Back, Too
Earthquake and Fire Proof Floating Houses Coming to Los Angeles ...
The upside of $200 oil: Rising oil prices don't have to mean an economic apocalypse; it might reinvigorate our cities, and reward entrepreneurship. And it could make us a little skinnier, too. ::National Post
See also: What Happens When Gasoline Exceeds US$7.00 Per Gallon?
Stop Whining About Gas Prices
High Gas Prices Changing Society
...
Wal-Mart Now US' Largest Buyer Of Locally Grown Produce
We know it sounds like putting a square watermelon in a round hole: but Wal-Mart claims it is the nation's largest buyer of locally grown produce. The scaling of centrally managed industrial agriculture in the USA will be transformed. More changes are coming. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. plans to buy and sell $400 million worth of produce grown by local farmers within its state stores this year, an effort the company says will only grow.One obvious upshot is diversification of the supply chain. Smaller contracts with more farmers & distributors. ...
To Cut or Not to Cut? That's the G8 Question..
Penguins A Threatened Ecotourism Treasure
Penguin life has gotten more precarious since this 1913 NOAA photo.
Penguin populations have been declining and shifting globally as a result of oil pollution, overfishing, guano mining (!) and increased coastal development, according to research by Dee Boersma from the University of Washington, published in the July-August edition of the journal BioScience.
Climate changes cause dramatic shifts
Boersma sees penguins as marine sentinels of the Southern Hemisphere. They depend on predictable climate for their breeding cycles and need high ocean productivity for the krill and fish they survive on. A warming Antarctic is causing varying changes - for some ice-requiring penguins like the Adelie it is detrimental, while for ice-intolerant species such as the gentoo and chinstrap it could be beneficial.
Penguins an ecotourism favorite
But Boersma contends that demonstrated declines in penguin populations overall show that humans aren't managing their ocean resources and habitats well enough. Penguins are a huge ecotourism draw - for example, as many as half a million people visit just one of the many penguin species, the blue penguin, on Phillip Island in Australia. But there is only sporadic, uncoordinated monitoring of the 43 different penguin colonies that make up most of the global penguin population....
The TH Interview: Ray Anderson—The Man with a Spear in his Chest (Part One)

Ray Anderson started his company, Interface, back in the 1970s to make carpet. Like any business man, he wanted to shake up the market and make a healthy profit, which he’s done, and Interface now has 17 manufacturing locations on four continents. But this is not business as usual. Not anymore. Since having a sustainability epiphany, as he calls it, Ray has starting steering Interface toward one hell of a goal: zero negative effects on the planetary ecosystem by the year 2020, a goal he admits no corporation has yet reached. TreeHugger has long found inspiration in Interface’s elegant design solutions—products like modular carpet and FLOR—and in Anderson’s own sagely words. ::TreeHugger Radio Listen to the podcast of this interview via iTunes, or just click here to listen, right-click to download. Special thanks go to CraigMichaels, the organizer of the Sustainable Operations Summit, for arranging this interview. (Full text after the jump)...
Growkids Means Smart Green Fundraising for Schools
School may be out for the summer, but the truth is that many PTA’s and school organizations start planning for next year’s fundraisers a good deal in advance. And there’s an eco-minded fundraising company called Growkids that’s offering 50% of the proceeds to your school or organization, a vast improvement over some of the organizations offering much, much less that we told you about in a post called “Green Fundraising with One Big Caveat” not so very long ago....
Massachusetts Unveils Ambitious Renewables and Energy Efficiency Bill
Stealing some of California's thunder, which itself outlined a new plan to significantly reduce its carbon emissions, Massachusetts' governor, Deval Patrick, unveiled the Green Communities Act a few days ago to great fanfare. The bill's primary aims are to encourage businesses and homes to become more energy efficient and to stimulate clean energy development in the state.
The Green Community Act's major provisions
Some of the provisions detailed in the legislation, as reported by the Boston Globe's Beth Daley, include providing rebates to pay for energy efficiency measures, allowing homeowners and businesses to rent solar panels from utilities and easing consumers' ability to sell surplus energy from renewable sources to the grid. ...
New Infrastructure Woes: Gas Tax Bringing In Less Money
Because of the price of gas, Americans drove 1.4 billion fewer miles in April then they did in the same period a year earlier. Nearly 20 billion fewer miles have been driven this year than last. That is a problem for Mary Peters, the Secretary of Transportation, who is getting less gas tax money and complains "We're burning less fuel as energy costs change driving patterns, steer people toward more fuel efficient vehicles, and encourage more to use transit. Which is exactly why we need a more effective funding source than the gas tax."
What, change the fixed gas tax of 24.4 cents a gallon? How about making it proportional so that it goes up with the price of gas? How about cranking it up so that enough revenue comes in to actually fix the collapsing infrastructure? Isn't steering people to more fuel efficient vehicles and transit exactly what we should be doing? Not in America. She is probably planning to tax bicycles. Or maybe transit. ::Environmental protection...
G8 Summit: Send Your Virtual Tanzaku Message
Volkswagen to Make Limited Edition of 1-Liter Car (282 MPG!) in 2010
VW's 282 MPG Super Fuel Efficient Car
The 1-Liter car has been around in prototype form since 2002 and greens everywhere have been drooling at its 282 miles per gallon fuel economy (or 1 liter of gasoline per 100 kilometers, hence the name). VW has finally decided to make more and sell them, and a limited edition (estimated in the thousands) should start selling in 2010.
1-Liter Car Technical Specs
The One-Liter car (or 1-Litre, over in Europe) weights only 660 pounds. The body is made from carbon composites and it is shaped to be extremely slippery, giving it a coefficient of drag of only 0.16 ("the average car comes in around 0.30 and the Honda Insight had a Cd of 0.25"). The prototype was powered by a 1-cylinder diesel engine, but the production model should have a 2-cylinder diesel (which means it could be powered by algae-biodiesel!), and maybe even a stop-start anti-idling feature (to cut the engine when the car is stopped)....















