Something to keep an eye on: Masdar City in Abu Dhabi strives to be the world’s first zero-carbon, zero-waste, car-free city powered 100% by renewable energy. (Masdar website and PR)
Eco-friendly resorts seem to be all the rage – developers plan to turn Star Island in the Bahamas into a carbon-neutral resort. (New York Times)
Burt’s Bees and other companies are making money by examining and minimizing their trash. (GreenBiz)
Landsharing gains popularity – organizations created to connect landowners with people who wish to cultivate their land. (TreeHugger)
Incredible Edible Todmorden in Yorkshire, UK aims to increase the amount of foods eaten from local gardens, with a goal of food self-sufficiency by 2018. (TreeHugger)
Another example of sharing: Library use is up! (TreeHugger/Boston Globe)
A new project called Climate Central aims to provide unbiased environmental journalism coverage. (Grist)
Community investment banks, such as ShoreBank Pacific, are on the rise. (Sustainable Industries)
CleanTech blogger Willie Brent predicts 2009 media trends based on Facebook survey. (Mr CleanTech.com)
Preserve launches Gimme 5 program which collects and recycles #5 plastics, which are not recyclable in all communities, at select Whole Foods for use in creating new Preserve products. (Recycline Press Release)
Green America offers six green-economy solutions to the current mess of an economy, which include community investing and local foods.
Gavin Newsom, inspired by Paris’ successful program, announced a bike sharing pilot program to launch in San Francisco in 2009. The pilot will involve 50 bikes in 5 locations. (San Francisco Press Room)
Tesla Motors to make batteries for electric version of Smart Car. (SF Business Times)
Columbia scientist is developing fake plastic tree that can sequester CO2. (Ecolocalizer.com)
California saw doubling of solar power installations in 2008.
Engineering professor uses bio-mimicry to develop small boats and robots which move through the water like wiggling baby beetles. (GreenerDesign.com)
Alarming study finds that as farm yields have risen, nutritional content of vegetables and fruits have declined along with taste. (Grist)
New York’s MTA may offer Green MetroCard, which would cost extra and allow consumers to make contributions towards sustainability efforts. (Environmental Leader)
Clorox’s GreenWorks line brings in an estimated $200M annually, and takes 42% of natural cleaners market, after launching recently in Dec 2007. (Environmental Leader)
Coca-Cola opens world’s largest PET plastic bottle to bottle recycling plant in South Carolina. (GreenBiz) I see this as am improvement on a fundamentally flawed system (i.e why are we drinking out of single use plastic bottles?)
Financial Times wonders if Silicon Valley is up to the task of solving our climate crisis through cleantech innovation.
Hotwire teams up with TerraPass to pay for half of customers’ carbon offsets (if they choose to offset). (MSN Money)
