Sustainable Development

Means getting past our global growing pains

Green Business Ideas August 20, 2009

Filed under: Uncategorized — wpconservation @ 11:47 am

While the sites listed below are certainly full of great green business ideas (Kickstart, for example, is a great one), I have to thank Meredith over at the Long Beach Green Business Association for referring me to her list of 200 green business ideas – this is a fantastic resource for those looking to start a green business, and her site Green Biz Plan is full of such things.

Another great resource on the “green economy” was just forwarded to me by a friend of mine, Sara Day, who specializes in bringing Sustainable Development to North Carolina’s most under-served economies. This site, the North Carolina Green Resource Directory, is a great place for information and examples in that particular state (my current home), as well as ideas for other spots looking to bring green resources and development to their areas.


There are a lot of folks out there looking to green their business, or start a new one. These sites have not just ideas, but suggestions on funding them as well, not to mention agencies working to help make it happen. In the next week, I will be posting up some business related links of my own, and will be continuing to learn a great deal more about this in the coming months (and years). If anyone else has good sites of this sort, please post a comment here letting us know!

 

Sustainability Links August 11, 2009

Filed under: Uncategorized — wpconservation @ 1:17 am

The following is a list of sites and resources, gathered over the past few years (and especially this summer), regarding sustainability and sustainable business. This is a TON of information. consume responsibly. The technology section is way incomplete – but that’s a whole other evening, and it’s already past 1:00 a.m., so it’ll have to wait. otherwise, enjoy!

Organizations

Smaller Organizations
Center for Neighborhood Technology
Catalytic Communities – Solutions
Practica Foundation » Homepage
Engineers Without Borders USA > Home
Building Materials Reuse Association
Appropriate Technology
Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group
webring.com – a portal for all kinds of sustainability links
Scenarios for Sustainability – A great site talking about possible situations & solutions
Government Agencies
4th Annual P3 Awards | Funding Opportunities | NCER | ORD | US EPA
NREL: Technology Transfer Home Page
HUD-DOT-EPA Interagency Partnership for Sustainable Communities | Smart Growth | US EPA
NGO’s
NRDC
Switchboard, from NRDC › Andy Stevenson’s Blog
Switchboard, from NRDC :: Blogs
Environmental Defense Fund – Finding the Ways That Work
Accelerating Innovation for Development
Schools & Departments
Stanford Institute of Design | Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability
The Cloud Instititute for Sustainability Education
The Sustainability Initiative » Sustainability: Not What You Think It Is « MIT Sloan Management Review
Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
Design for the Other 90%: Jaipur foot and below-knee prosthesis
Business Associations
IETA – International Emissions Trading Association
BALLE – Business Alliance for Local Living Economies
World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD)
US Business Council for Sustainable Development (USBCSD)
The International Solar Energy Society (ISES)

Businesses

hyphae1 design lab
Nikebiz : Nike Responsibility : Considered Design : The Considered Index
KickStart :: Products :: Pumps
The Natural Step: Guidelines for Sustainable Business
TerraCycle Inc: Taking Recycling beyond the bin
Proteus Environmental Technologies – About Us
Sustainability Marketing – ecoAmerica
Idealab – Careers in Sustainable Thinking
AMEX Members Project – Funding for Innovation
IDE – Enabling Prosperity
community based social marketing – an awesome website

Books (an initial list of books for this fall’s Sustainable Business class at Warren Wilson college, which I’m helping put together.)

Individual Resources
Contents of Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization
Cradle To Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability (9780887307041): Paul Hawken: Books
Customer Reviews: Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future
Mid-Course Correction: Toward a Sustainable Enterprise: The Interface Model (9780964595354): Ray Anderson: Books
common resources
Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (Global Century Series)
The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany (9780393329995): David Blackbourn: Books
Sustainable Industrialization by David Wallace
Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage (9780470393741): Daniel Esty, Andrew Winston: Books
Customer Reviews: Earth: The Sequel: The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming
Ecological Anthropology – a free site, for students, by students
Customer Reviews: The Triple Bottom Line: How Today’s Best-Run Companies Are Achieving Economic, Social and Environmental Success — and How You Can Too
Customer Reviews: A New Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations
Customer Reviews: Earth: The Sequel: The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming

Blogs

My “Daily Green Blogroll” (not each one, every day, but all great sites)
TreeHugger
Energy and Green Business – Green Inc. Blog – NYTimes.com
Worldchanging: Bright Green
Grist
Earthly Comics
OnEarth Magazine, from NRDC
Group: Developing Beyond Sustainability – WiserEarth
Solar Thermal Innovation
Environmental Capital – WSJ
Yale Environment 360
— ClimateWire — The Politics and Business of Climate Change
Strategies for Sustainability

Earth2Tech

GreenBiz.com – Daily News on Green Business, Business and Climate Change and Sustainable Business Practices

Technology

Electricity
Renewable Energy : TreeHugger
The Product « WindLift Power
Water
Drinking Water From Air Humidity
Water for America Initiative
Water & Energy Efficiency by Sectors: Industry | Region 9: Sustainable Water Infrastructure | US EPA
Solar Thermal
Innothermal – 3 months of solar thermal and renewable energy research, including info on GHG trading, solar cooling and the congressional energy bills, rolled into one mighty little blog.

Biomass
Philips – Sustainable future – Chulha stove
Food
Biochar Fund Project Gets Big Financial Boost from Congo Basin Forest Fund : TreeHugger
 

Site Navigation June 26, 2009

Filed under: Uncategorized — wpconservation @ 11:47 am

So, I’m still figuring out how best to set up navigation for this site, but the current version goes as follows:

Information will be posted by topic, as comments in the “pages” seen above the title bar (top of the page).

The “comment” system (as opposed to posts) is still a little clunky – if it proves cumbersome, we’ll have to find some other way to get all this done.

In the meantime, that’s how things are organized.  Any big news/general info will go up as posts on this main page – other than that, here you go!

-Noah

 

What this blog’s about…

Filed under: Uncategorized — wpconservation @ 10:35 am

This is a new blog created to catalog my growing list of interesting info and links regarding sustainability, renewable energy, and our globally interwoven lives.

Much of this blog in the next few months will be populated by posts that stem from my research as an intern in the Solar Thermal field in Asheville, North Carolina; I do a lot of internet trawling in this position, and I was getting tired of not knowing what to do with the “bycatch”, much less the stuff I was after in the first place.

So there will be a period of almost unavoidable disorganization at first, as I struggle to figure out categorizing, good titling practices, etc.

If you have any suggestions, then by all means, fire away!  My hope is that this blog can become a resource and sharing space for others navigating the frontiers of sustainability as it crosses the borders of technology, economics, politics, particle physics, conservation biology, and fields yet unknown.

Cheers, and happy reading!

-Noah Wilson