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Beantrees Organic Coffee founder Barrie Gromala tells us about the coffee that has won over celebrities like Oprah's chef and Aerosmith, and announces a great deal for all of us and our planet: order coffee from Beantrees.com, and Beantrees will donate one dollar per bag to keep EcoTalk on the air!
LISTEN (9 min)
The city of Boston has cut its PC energy use by an astonishing 44 percent with the help of power management software company Verdiem. With power management something we need in every city, Verdiem Vice President of Business Development Dave Harvey tells Betsy what they can offer to any City or Company in the land. LISTEN (8 min)
PG&E Senior Vice President Nancy McFadden is the perfect candidate to serve as one of the new faces of energy giant PG&E-- now the type of energy giant that helps the San Francisco Giants go solar. Betsy remembers when PG&E wasn't exactly eager to do sustainable business, and thus she is thrilled to sit down with Nancy and talk about her background working for Vice President Al Gore and California Governors Davis and Schwarzenegger, and everything that PG&E is doing to run a business that internalizes its effects on the earth and its resources, and that now refuses to take its central position between citizens and resources for granted. LISTEN (11 min)
We've often highlighted Clif Bar as a company that defines values-driven business, but it must also be mentioned that if it isn't fun, they aren't doing it. LISTEN
Home Depot has really come along way since the late 90's: their latest in a determined push to operate more sustainably and help their customers do the same is their Eco Options program. Walk inside your local Home Depot, says vice president for environmental innovation Ron Jarvis, and you will find products with the Eco Options label given prominent shelf space, and accompanied by information on the impact (or lack thereof) of the product you're buying. Stop by April 22nd, and you may leave the store with one the 1 million CFL lightbulbs they're giving away for Earth Day. Thanks, Ron! LISTEN (8 min)
Fortune Magazine Assistant Managing Director Cait Murphy offers a broad view of how mainstream corporate businesses have warmed to the environment just in time to help us address climate change with ingenuity and capital investments. Their cover model? Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard. Nice choice!
LISTEN (12 min)
As Betsy says here, awareness is starting to take hold with regards to toxics in a wide range of our everyday household products, and while some companies have responded with healthier solutions, others, as the Rose Foundation's Tim Little tells us, may need to hear from their own investors. He's recently co-authored a report on Shareholder Activism at companies that are too toxic for your own good. LISTEN (8 min)
EcoBags founder Sharon Rowe joins Betsy to celebrate San Francisco's decision to ban plastic bags from all supermarkets, which I predict will come to be seen as a shining example of responsible governments (and local governments at that-- forget about Bush, contact City Hall!) setting the table for practical, innovative businesspeople to feast on the opportunity to make a sustainable living. Practical, innovative businesspeople like Ms. Rowe, who saw the writing on the wall (or the plastic bags in the trees) way back in 1989. LISTEN (11 min)
Bank of America's Director of Public Policy James Mahoney joins Betsy to break down the finer points of their just announced $20 billion investment in environmental sustainability. Among them are a green credit card, less paper used on a daily basis, green home loans, green business loans, credits for employees who buy hybrids, and increasing the percentage of green clients in their investment portfolios. Greener homes, greener businesses, more hybrids, and more green investment are exactly the type of things that corporations the size of Bank of America can put into motion. Some might question the inherent sustainability of such large corporations, but this might be a matter of going green with the businesses you have, and not the ones you'd like to have. LISTEN (10 min)
Jeff Cleary of Blue Water Laundry tells Betsy about the dirty business of dry cleaning, particularly the practice of using perchloroethylene (perc, for short), and the three alternative methods (GreenEarth, CO2, and Wet Cleaning) that do the job without harming groundwater, air, or your body. Ask your dry cleaner for one of these options, and if they respond with a quizzical look, send them our way. If they give you stubborn disdain, let them know what the market demands, and that you'll take your dollar to where you can find the supply. LISTEN (10 min)
At the recent Greentech Conference in San Francisco, Betsy had a buoyant chat with Silicon Valley mover and shaker Sunil Paul. Sunil is known for putting his money where his mouth is, and going by what he says here, the future for Green (energy!) technology is bright indeed. LISTEN (7 min)
Jonathan Lash of the World Resources Institute presents the San Francisco Clean Tech Forum.
LISTEN (11 min)
Ira Ehrenpreis is with Technology Partners a Venture Capital firm in Silicon Valley that focuses on clean tech. LISTEN (7 min)
Image: Green Progress
Do you go green with the company you'd like to have, or the company you've got? Wal-Mart Vice President of Sustainability Andy Ruben tells Betsy how Wal-Mart is attempting to accomplish its three ambitious and open-ended goals:
1. Be supplied by 100% renewable energy.
2. Create zero waste.
3. Sell products that sustain our resources and environment.
He explains how the Green Xanadu of Wal-Marts in Kansas City uses 20% less electricity to operate and how their customers' green living can begin with a lightbulb.
PART ONE (7 min) PART TWO (12 min)
Professor of Management and Engineering Systems John Sterman of MIT's Sloan School of Management tells Betsy why being a green MBA is less of a lonely pursuit than when he was at Sloan, and of the launch of their S-Lab, a way of harnessing students' demand to include sustainability in their bottom lines, and to begin working in the big leagues right away. LISTEN (8 min)
CEO of Natural Capitalism Solutions and co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, Hunter Lovins sits down with Betsy to talk about writing Climate Protection Manuals for cities, Richard Branson's $25 million challenge, and how the business case for climate change is simply a matter of supply and demand: "There's so much money to be made and saved through behaving responsibly towards the planet, that business is now one of the leading exponents of sustainability. This is no longer philanthropy, or environmental activism. This is good business."
PART ONE (11 min) PART TWO (7 min)
NFL Director of Environmental Programs (take a moment to let that sink in) Jack Groh tells Betsy how the league of grunts and gridiron are going to offset the carbon emissions of one of the biggest consumer spectacles in the world. Betsy wonders if mentioning that fact during the game might make a bigger difference than anything that they themselves might do. LISTEN (11 min)
Joel Makower of GreenBiz.com sits down with Betsy to chat about Michael Dell's emerging 'green gene', and the 'race to the top' that many of the world's largest computer companies are engaged in. He also champions the E-Peat Green Computer Standards. LISTEN (12 min)
Carbon Neutral was 2006's word of the year (no seriously, it was), and Joel Makower explains why carbon offsets are a good idea, and why simply reducing consumption probably trumps trading sins for halos. LISTEN (12 min)
When GreenBiz.com's Joel Makower is hot to talk about something, you know that you're about to hear a thoughtful analysis of global green business trends. When we invited Joel over to the studio last week, what did he tell us? "I've become fascinated with Wal-Mart. The conversations taking place in Bentonville, Arkansas right now are like none I've ever heard before." LISTEN (8 min)
Founder & CEO James Elsen discusses the web portal SustainLane's potential to truly integrate sustainable thinking so that one day sustainable living will eventually become an unconscious fact of everyday life. And what is 'LOHAS' anyway? LISTEN (12 min)
Founder Tamar Raphael explains how EcoExpress.com offers a great selection of organic and fair trade gifts.
LISTEN
Joel Makower of GreenBiz.com helps us navigate an widening variety of fuel-efficient, forward-thinking automobile technology. Joel says that sometimes the most surprising thing about a eco-friendly car is how normal it looks. LISTEN (12 min)
Joel Makower, founder of GreenBiz.com, gives us a rundown of the ads, statements, and actions that add up to a new era of green business.
LISTEN (12 min)
Change is good
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