We have been fortunate to have clients in the candle manufacture business. As far as manufacturing, the actual carbon footprint is related to the energy used to heat the wax. Like many gift industry products, candle manufacturing sees most of its Life Cycle Carbon come from transportation.  The question has been raised about the environmental effect from the actual burning of the candle.

Interestingly, a new study on candle emissions has confirmed that candles made from paraffin, soy wax, stearin, palm wax and beeswax wax types exhibit the same “clean burning behavior, and pose no discernible risks to human health or indoor air quality.”

The three differentiators for “green” candles comes from their creation, ability to offset their emissions and/or where the manufacturing takes place. Local is better than foreign from a carbon intensity point of view. Soy and beeswax are better from a carbon-creation standpoint , but soy candles require a container. So, unless you reuse the container, beeswax candles have the lowest carbon footprint.

For the thirty-eighth year in a row, The Paideia School, a private school in Atlanta, GA, will hold its traditional Thanksgiving Feast this Thursday.  Four years ago, the school’s Green Team, a group of environmentally-conscious parents, decided that the 100 bags of garbage the event generated was not in keeping with the original Thanksgiving (try to imagine Pilgrims throwing bags of garbage into a landfill).  Since then, they have done everything they could think of to reduce the amount of waste the feast generated.  Last year, the event, which feeds over 700 people, produced one small zip-loc bag (20 oz) of trash bag. The goal for this year is ZERO WASTE.

Here are some tips on how you can also create a ZERO-WASTE Thanksgiving event.   Use aluminum trays and foil which are more efficient and effective for recycling (i.e., aluminum uses limited resources to recycle and is infinitely recyclable vs. plastic, which ultimately becomes an environmental issue.)  Avoid plastic bags, plastic wrap, tape, cupcake decorations and any products with a mixed composition.  You can recycle plastic containers, glass, and cardboard. Try to use as many reusable containers and utensils as you can.

If you can’t clean and reuse utensils and plates, make sure everything is either 100% compostable or recyclable.  It’s relatively easy to find plates, cups, napkins, and cutlery that are sustainably produced from sources like recycled paper, bagasse (sugarcane residual) or corn.  They can all be composted into a natural soil amendment by a local commercial composting facility, along with all the left over food scraps and turkey carcasses! Even milk cartons can be ground up and composted.  Any untouched, leftover food should be donated to a local organization that feeds the homeless.

Happy (sustainable) Thanksgiving!

A Couple of Sources:
Compostable Cutlery - www.ecoproducts.com
Compostable plates - www.BiopackUS.com

We saw Al Gore speak last night at Ahavath Achim Synagogue for the Eizenstat Family Memorial Lecture. The title was, “Solutions to the Climate Crisis”. The basis of his talk was his new book Our Choice: a Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.

The major focus was renewable energy. The arguments for renewable energy were framed as a case of US self-determination, job creation, national security and climate (in that order).  There were many interesting facts and I will include some.

First, I hadn’t realized that the US hit its own “peak oil” in 1971. Peak oil means we have seen domestic oil production drop every year since 1971. The global “peak oil” will be soon or has already occurred. This means that even if we wanted to remain an oil-based energy system, it is not realistic long term. Mr. Gore reminded us that following the US peak oil was the 1973 oil crisis - no coincidence there. We may be on the verge of another oil shock. Also, demand has been increasing from China, India and Indonesia. We are depending on a depleting commodity that will rise in cost.

Mr. Gore said that we can create 2.5 million jobs right now by retrofitting homes and buildings to be more energy efficient. Also, you can’t outsource those jobs - so they are a direct boon to the economy. This seems to be a way to help the economy and reduce our waste concurrently.

Al Gore reminded the audience that the US could create solar panels across 100 square miles and meet all our annual electricity needs. Then the energy is free forever.  Additionally, he predicted that with new demand for Solar Panels there would be increased drive for research and development. He equated it to a similar silicon based product, the computer chip. Mr. Gore then made reference to Moore’s law, in which the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit has doubled approximately every two years, could be replicated in solar panels.  As of January 1, 2010 there will be 1 billion transistors for every person.

Another fact is that wind power has seen the largest growth of any energy source over the last 2 years. But the current electricity grid doesn’t reach best solar or wind areas. We need a smart grid as we are wasting most of energy we make.

Incredible facts:

• The internal combustion engine uses less than 10% of energy created to actually move a car.
• Coal generating electricity plant uses less than 33% of created energy for electricity. Two-thirds goes to waste heat.

We produce our electricity to peak need. Over a year there are only 400 hours of peak need. We use standby generators when peak occurs. The analogy he used is that our electricity grid drives at max speed then slams on brakes for off-peak. This puts the efficiency of the grid in perspective. That would ruin your MPG in a car and it does the same in the grid.

Mr. Gore discussed enhanced geothermal energy, “think of warm springs”. If we dig 200 feet down, the temperature is 55 degrees - most of the way to either heating or cooling our homes to a comfortable temperature.  If we drill 2 km down in the Midwest, or 4 km down anywhere else in the country, we can tap into a 35,000 degree supply of heat energy to create steam and spin turbines.

Mr. Gore said, admittedly, biomass energy from corn was disappointing. He is optimistic about new forms of biomass 2^nd (cellulosic) and 3^rd generation (algae). Also he is excited about electric cars (as we all are).

Two technologies that were not high on his list were CO₂ sequestration and nuclear power.

A coal-fired power plant would use one-third of the electricity made to sequester the CO₂ it created. Then you have to consider the huge volume of CO₂ needing to be sequestered.   Our daily CO₂ emissions from power generation is three times the volume of our daily oil imports.

Al Gore was very clear that nuclear waste and nuclear safety were not his issues with the use of Nuclear power.  The biggest issue was cost.  He said that no engineering firm in the world will give a confident estimate about how much a nuclear power plant will cost or how long it will take to build. Uncertainty of cost and time can be demonstrated in the fact that the costs have increased at least 15% a year every year for the last 15 years. No reasonable utility could be expected to make a decision without those two facts.

Further, nuclear power cannot be disconnected from Nuclear weapons. This makes it a hard sell as a global solution.

He also made the case that China’s commitment to reducing their GHG emissions is sincere. Despite being the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, China has begun to focus on the issue. China will soon be number one in the world in terms of solar and wind generating capacity.  They are also investing heavily in electric cars. They have put Carbon Emissions targets into their scorecard for officials who run provinces and cities and they have been planting 2.5 times more trees a year than the rest of the world combined (especially important as 20% of global warming comes from burning of forests). According, to Al Gore, the Chinese government has promised to follow the rules set in the next global emissions treaty. Unfortunately, the US cannot say the same.

The speech came to the end with a call to action. We have to act in order to stop the threat of climate change. We need a mandated price on Carbon Emissions to come from the government. But then again, he was preaching to the choir.

The Hamptons Green Alliance (HGA) is building a net-zero energy, carbon-neutral house. We at Verus are proud to be a part of this amazing project and to be working with, Certified Carbon Neutral custom home building firm, Telemark, who is the general contractor.

Telemark President, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Frank Dalene, is an environmentalist who builds quality custom homes and founded the Hamptons Green Alliance. It makes sense that he invented what he calls the International Carbon Equivalent Mechanism Attributed to Neutrality (ICEMAN™) to calculate and index the carbon neutrality associated with the production of materials and products using guidelines established as a result of the Kyoto Protocol, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, and other similar efforts.

The market for green-built homes is growing especially as energy costs rise. We are seeing a move past LEED and into Carbon Neutral. According to a University of Michigan study, the building of homes represents 9% of the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of a home. Living in the home represents the other 91% of the greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, building energy-efficiency into your home makes a tremendous difference in your annual footprint.

Housing represents 31% of the Greenhouse Gas emissions in the US each year. Of these emissions, 90% come from natural gas and grid electricity. Basically, if you can be energy efficient you can make an important reduction in global climate change!

Light from the sun passes through the atmosphere and is absorbed by the surface of the earth. The absorbed energy radiates back out from the earth’s surface as longer-wavelength, thermal (or infrared) energy. 

Greenhouse gases (GHGs) have molecular properties that allow the bonds between their atoms to rotate, vibrate, or bend (but not break), in response to thermal energy. In this way, rather than bonding with other other chemicals, the GHG becomes agitated and holds the energy in the atmosphere. In balance, this “Greenhouse Effect” is what keeps our atmosphere warm enough to sustain life. 

However, the big difference is that a real greenhouse traps warm air behind glass, whereas greenhouse gases store energy. The higher the concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere, the greater the potential to store energy. It is like the difference between putting a frog in a terrarium, and boiling the frog. 

The abundance of CO2 gives it heavy weight as a greenhouse gas, but many other GHGs have a stronger effect at lower concentrations, and their atmospheric concentrations are also increasing with continued industrial emission.  

If your business is carbon intensive, beginning calendar-year 2010, chances are you will have to measure and report your greenhouse gas emissions to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). There are a number of rules that apply, the most important being that if your company emits at least 25,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalents annually. The new law, which is called the Mandatory Reporting Rule (MRR), will require more than 13,000 businesses to report their carbon emissions by March 2011. However, you must start collecting information starting January 2010.

So, how do you know if you meet this threshold?

If you generate any of your own power, are in metals production or utilize boilers, you’ll most likely be affected by the law. In total, there are 26 different source categories—mostly manufacturing or production companies.

The bad news is that if you don’t report or don’t report correctly, MRR falls under the Clean Air Act and you may be subject to administrative, civil and criminal penalties. That means jail time and five-figure daily fines. The good news is there are consultants already in place to make sure you are prepared and all of your paperwork is in order.

For a small fee you can hire Atlanta-based Verus Carbon Neutral to tell you if you’ll need to report or not. Verus can help you measure and begin reporting. Click on this link or call 800-275-1847, for free, to see if your business falls into one of the 26 categories.

The big question: Why is the EPA requiring companies to report their emissions? It all has to do with the government wanting short and long-term greenhouse gas reductions. The Obama Administration is using a “carrot and stick” approach. The “carrot” is cap and trade and the “stick” is the EPA. So if a cap- and-trade bill doesn’t get passed it’s very likely that greenhouse gases will be regulated by the EPA as part of the Clean Air Act. Then companies will face heavy fines for non-compliance.

The Obama Administration has already issued Executive Order 13514, which requires the entire the federal government to measure and reduce its carbon footprint. Even parts of the military are affected by this order. So it’s clear that President Obama is serious about reducing the county’s carbon footprint. You probably already know that the U.S. House has passed the Waxman-Markey Bill, but the Kerry-Boxer Bill, in the Senate, is still being considered. Reliable resources indicate that there are 24 Senators that are “on the fence,” and if 11 of them vote “yes” on the bill it will pass. Both cap-and-trade bills will ease CO2 emitters into reductions the first few years with the use of allowances, which will be, at first, given away and then sold to companies that can’t make reductions. Companies that can make significant reductions will be in the catbird seat, and will be able to sell their reductions as offsets.

I was speaking at an event recently and was amazed at what the other members of the panel were saying about how they look at waste. Here are a few facts:

In Georgia, the landfill fee per ton is $25-$30.  In the Northeast landfill fee per ton $100+ per ton. Economics show that it pays to send your waste south. Think about that, we are importing waste.  Is that where you want to be?

If you live in Georgia you’ve probably seen the Georgia Natural Gas ads that promote the fact that they are using “natural” gas from landfills. Funny, we call it methane. We applaud the fact that they are destroying methane and producing power, but the fact remains that Georgia puts 17 million tons into landfills per year. The worst part is that 16% is plastic, 36% is paper and 27% organics. So 79% of the waste could be recycled or composted by Greenco.  We have 16 paper mills in Georgia and only 9 recycle their waste

The Doubletree Hotel did an amazing thing; amazing, because it was such a simple and cost-effective idea. They recycled their water in their freezers, instead of having it go down the drain. This change cost less than $25,000. Water costs $0.023 per gallon. It turns out that they are now saving over $500,000 a month in water bills.

The Atlanta midtown restaurant Ecco is a zero waste restaurant - it recycles 100-120 95 Gallon bins  a month, 24 yards of cardboard boxes a month, and four tons a month composted. This not only SAVED them money, it also makes them a no-waste restaurant.

Obviously sending organic and recyclable materials to a landfill is not sustainable. Do we have to tie a price tag to encourage sustainable behavior?  We welcome your suggestions.