Blog
Sustainable Industries Daily Update
- Call out the food police. An attempt by Baltimore Public Schools to have Meatless Mondays because of the health benefits is being attacked by the American Meat Institute as indoctrination, according to Lou Dobbs who calls the program, "A political firestorm in the making."
- Burrito chain Chipotle Mexican Grill has contracted Standard Renewable Energy to install solar panels on 75 restaurants over the next year. The panels are expected to produce about 500 kilowatt hours of electricity, which Chipotle says will make it the largest direct producer of solar energy in the entire restaurant industry. Chipotle was the first restaurant to receive Platinum level LEED certification for a location in Illinois that is equipped with an on-site wind turbine and an underground cistern to harvest rainwater for irrigation.
- The Environmental Protection Agency will issue its first WaterSense label to flushing urinals that use 50 percent less water than standard models under the WaterSense Program. The WaterSense program is the equivalent to the Energy Star rating system for energy efficiency. The new units could save about 4,000 gallons of water per year.
- The “zero-waste” recycling strategy is gaining momentum in restaurants, schools, corporations and even entire communities. The New York Times highlights some of these places, including Nantucket, a resort community that instituted strict recycling practices after it ran out of landfill space.
- California’s last pulp mill and the only chlorine-free/dioxin-free mill in the United States, Freshwater Tissue, will permanently close because the owners were unable to obtain federal stimulus funds to convert the Samoa, CA mill into an integrated tissue plant.
- Now that Xcel Energy's SmartGrid City in Boulder, Colo. is getting underway, there's an interesting look at how it could work and why it may fail. (subscription)
Comments
There are currently no comments.
Leave a comment