Science & Technology

We first heard about SHE: Sustainable Health Enterprises at the Feast Conference when Elisabeth Scharpf told her amazing story about how she set up this social and sustainable franchise scheme that provides women in developing countries with what should be a basic right: affordable sanitary pads, as well as a sustainable business. The Huffington Post titled their article about her work "When a Period Ends More Than A Sentence". Until Scharpf stepped into the spotlight at the Feast, we had very little idea that for millions of women around the world, having their period is a significant handicap, to their health, their income and their quality of life. And we love what Scharpf came up with to solve this problem in a way that it works so brilliantly for people, planet and profit.

Science & Technology

Photo via Jaymi Heimbuch

Energy dashboards were a big subject at West Coast Green this year. But the buzz wasn't as much around new devices on the market as it was pondering how energy dashboards - and the simple fact of making energy consumption data available to consumers - can change our habits for the better, for good. Not just a novelty anymore but something making their way into our daily life, energy monitoring dashboards have a big role to fill, but still have room for improvement. From panels with key players like Google PowerMeter, PG&E and IBM to un-panels made up of smart meter enthusiasts, there were some big ideas about how energy dashboards will revise the way we interact with our homes and energy sources.

Science & Technology

Photo via Daquella manera

Social networking and social media are proving to be among our most powerful tools for mobilizing people to action. Twitter has helped groups engage followers for good causes, such as charity: water's twestival, and there are even social networks created specifically for green causes like WiserEarth and MakeMeSustainable. A new group of people are looking to make social networking key for stopping Amazonian deforestation - Team Earth.

Science & Technology

In college I scored quite a bit of extra pocket change by collecting bottles and cans found on my way to and from classes and my apartment, and submitting them for recycling. I usually earned enough each month to buy about a week's worth of groceries (admittedly, college kid groceries, which means pasta, cheap bread, and not the most organic of veggies...). e-Cycler could have come in handy back then; it is a new website that makes the process of collecting - and having collected - recyclables look much more like a part time job than a random act of frugal greenness. It connects people who have recyclables but no recycling service with people who want to collect recyclables for profit.

Science & Technology

Image via AppShopper

Soleil Organics has put out a new iPhone app that tells you when you should dole out the extra dollars for organic foods, and when to skip it and go for the cheaper stuff. When it comes to buying organic, even if you can see a reason skip it, should you?

Science & Technology

Photo: FLickr, CC

Investing in Mass Transit Pays
Mass transit is a great way for people to reduce their transportation footprint, especially city dwellers. But bad quality transit systems can drive people back to their cars (literally), and once a subway or bus system has acquired the reputation of being unreliable/dirty/dangerous/etc, it can take a while to change that reputation. That's why it's good news to learn that the New York City subway has been getting more reliable.

Science & Technology

What? from dot eco on Vimeo.

Back in March we wrote very briefly about Al Gore and other big names backing the idea of a .eco domain registration for the web. Gore and cohorts are supporting Dot Eco Ltd, an organization that wants to make .eco a domain name where companies and people can put their green info. However, they aren't the only ones applying to ICANN for the .eco top level domain. Big Room hopes to get ahold of .eco, and has some big ideas about what to with it, like, oh, change the world.

Science & Technology

Image via Planet Metrics

Back in January we saw a company called Planet Metrics at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. They've created a software that allows companies like retailers, product manufacturers, and consumer packaging manufacturers to see their supply chain carbon emissions and easily identify ways to reduce the footprint of their products or services. The software has finally just launched and companies like Method are already taking advantage.

But in the bigger picture, is software like this still too simplified to help make the complicated decisions around sourcing goods? While companies get a helping hand with software like this, two big issues arise. One is that the information is still not detailed enough to be the be-all-end-all for supply chain decisions for the lightest footprint. And the second is, how will consumers know?