Huddler: A Platform for Green Knowledge Sharing my Mom Could Use

At first glance, Huddler.com may seem to be just another social networking site, but I would contend that this is not the case.  Huddler is a well thought-out, elegantly integrated “social commerce” community platform for user-generated content, reviews, discussion forums, Wikis , videos and more.  I had a chance to sit down with Dan Gill, CEO and co-founder of the new site.  Dan and his brother founded Huddler on a cross-country trip in March 2007 as an advanced “old school discussion forum” that empowers knowledgeable, passionate, maven-types to share ideas and communicate with one another and the online community.   Their goal is to improve the user interface and make online content broadly available for distribution, “because my mom couldn’t use [a typical discussion forum] if her life depended on it.”

The platform was built flexible enough to engage any interest group, but Huddler has devoted most of its time and energy thus far to their Green Home Huddle, where users discuss sustainable products and lifestyle tips.   Dan explains that this is where “opportunity meets interest” for the Huddler team.   And with so many new products flooding the green space, Dan realized that building a space for those most knowledgeable about the topics to easily share their opinions and ideas would be an invaluable resource for people.  Because “ultimately what’s important is the educational aspect and distributing that information as broadly as we can.”  Dan cites that people prefer peer opinion and peer review over expert opinion and expert review six to one.  “We don’t have experts on the site. We have you, and your friends, and people like you.”

Huddler is a product focused review site.  Dan refers to related sites along a spectrum ranging from comparison shopping sites like shopping.com or Yahoo shopping, sites that make money for each purchase and guide users to the point of sale as fast as possible, on one end, to discussion forums where experts give opinions, but limited functionality leads to hard to find information, on the other end.   Huddler is right in the middle – providing and organizing in depth consumer education on focused topics, but stopping short of allowing purchases on the site.  Layer on top of that a set of capabilities that bestow users with profiles which display their Wikis edited, products reviewed, forum posts, etc, and which complements Facebook nicely.

“Don’t ever let anyone tell you that building something from nothing is easy, because it is most assuredly not,” Dan warned me.  He and his brother bootstrapped the company at the start, not paying themselves for 14 months.   Earlier this year they took on some angel investment from five different investors.  One mistake Dan made in getting the company started was ignoring the advice he heard on so many occasions – to release early and release often.  “We’re too much perfectionists to listen to that advice. We wouldn’t. We wanted to have a polished product ready to go.”

Like many start-ups, Dan has not spent a dollar on marketing – it’s all been by word of mouth to date. Huddler invests in search engine optimization to “insure that the all mighty Google can find our pages.”   One way that Huddler engages users is through their Action Team (or A-Team) which puts exciting new green products “in the hands of really passionate people” and solicits reviews and commentary from them.

On the topic of usership statistics, Dan noted they get about 150,000 unique visitors a month, but they are nowhere near satisfied.  Dan believes 5 million visitors per month is completely achievable in the coming years and is excited by that vision.  That would mean there are “five million out there using the resource we created and learning something from it and being able to make better sustainable decisions as a result of this distribution platform that we created…The real potential for impact is very exciting.”

Click here to listen to the audio or read the full transcript of our interview.

[Originally posted to JustMeans]

 

Interview with Jared Blumenfeld: Mobilizing San Francisco’s Sustainability Movement

Listen to my interview with Jared Blumenfeld, Director of San Francisco’s Department of the Environment.  You can listen to the podcast, read the transcript or just read the highlights on Green Business Innovators: http://www.greenbusinessinnovators.com/interview-jared-blumenfeld-san-francisco-department-of-environment

“Mobilizing San Francisco to be a More Sustainable City”

80% of the world’s CO2 comes from cities. So strong action by cities is required to reduce the carbon emissions that they produce.

In this interview, Jaren Blumenfeld, Director of the San Francisco Department of the Environment, explains some of the innovative legislation and actions that San Francisco is initiating as one of the world’s greenest cities.

INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS

• Why the biggest sustainability challenge is sustaining people’s attention
• How the SF Department of the Environment is encouraging more sustainable business
• San Francisco’s cutting edge “Eco Map” project
• How San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom contributes to the green agenda

[Interview on behalf of Green Business Innovators]

 

5 easy things we can do at home to waste less

This falls into the category of basic, common sense advice – but these are things that I think many people don’t even think to do that can have a significant impact on curbing household waste, energy use and water use.

1. Put recycle bins beside every trash can, especially in the bathroom: Seriously,  think about what you throw out in the bathroom – cardboard, bottles, tissues, all recyclable!  And in every room of the house, most trash produced is recyclable and most people (myself included at times) are not apt to walk to another room to recycle.  A simple paper bag will suffice to collect recyclables across your home.
2. Unplug your stuff: If you’ve never heard about vampire power use, wikipedia gives a good review.  But it is basically the power that our electronic devices suck up when we are not using them.  Scarily, every cell phone or laptop charger, every electric toothbrush along with the many other electronic devices that lack an off button suck up 8 to 13% of our total household energy use, depending on the estimate.  In any case, there is a lot to be saved by using a power strip and turning if off when not in use, or unplugging individual devices between use.  It’s a hassle, yes, but it’s worth it.
3. Install aerators on all sinks: According to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission “Installing aerators on bathroom and kitchen sinks can reduce indoor water use by about 4%.”  If you are a San Francisco resident, the SFPUC provides free faucet aerators. Pickup in person at 1155 Market Street, San Francisco, Monday – Friday, 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.   If you live elsewhere, look into similar programs in your area.  If they don’t exist, suggest them!
4. Compost!!!: If you live in San Francisco or another area that collects food scraps and yard waste, you have absolutely no excuse.  In San Francisco, if you don’t have a green bin, call your garbage man and request one – likely Sunset Scavenger or Golden Gate Disposal.  If you don’t live in an area with city composting, request it and if you can, do it on your own.  I’m not an expert here but there are very affordable and simple ways to set up your own back yard compost pile or worm bin.  HowToCompost.org is a great resource to get started.
5. Replace with green products: Whenever something needs to be replaced in the house, a light bulb, a washing machine, any consumer electronic, a window, the carpet or when you need to do a paint job – take advantage of the opportunity to choose a greener replacement.  For electronics look for Energy Star.  With carpet, Interface is a great brand of environmentally minded carpets.  With light bulbs, look for CFL’s or LED’s.  With house paint, go for no VOC.  Again, I’m not an expert but there are a plethora of online sources with advice on which device, appliance or home furnishing is greenest.  It doesn’t usually make sense to throw things out to get greener alternatives, so I recommend waiting for things to come to the end of their lifecycle and then seizing the opportunity to upgrade.

 

Green stories that caught my eye today (Sept 8th)

UCSD installs solar trees in parketing lots which will each generate 17K+ hours of energy per year (Environmetnal Leader)

AlwaysOn announces GoingGreen 100 – the top 100 private companies going green in 2008 (AlwaysOn)

Patagonia came out with the world’s first garments made of recyclable nylon (Treehugger)

GM plants going landfill-free, with goal of landfill-free for 80+ manufacturing plants around the world by 2010; unsurprisingly, sales of materials makes money for GM (GreenBiz.com)

Pedal powered pub spotted in Amdterdam allows folks to drink beer on the go (Treehugger)

Women and men in their 50s and 60s most likely to use environmentally friendly home products; younger demographic least likely (Environmental Leader)

Spurred by Wal-malt contest, HP reduces packaging by 97% using innovative recycled laptop bag and no foam (GreenBiz.com)

Google files patent for wave powered floating data center with sea-based electrical generator and sea-cooled servers (San Francisco Business Times)

 

Ladies who Launch live event review

I used to cringe at the thought of blogging and I rarely read blogs based on the erroneous idea that bloggers are looking for an audience to relay their personal narrative, rather than sharing valuable information.   I am a consultant by training and I don’t have the time or desire to read dull anecdotes or irrelevant rants.  I want to learn, grow and be entertained.  That said, the aim of this my own blog is to relay information, observations, and thoughts.   My focus is clearly on sustainability, but not all my posts will be about green.  For example, this one, which I hope you find valuable nonetheless.

Yesterday I attended an all day extravaganza celebrating women entrepreneurs.  In blogging about this, I want to share the key take-aways I learned from each of the inspirational and accomplished speakers as well as share some of my overall thoughts coming out of the event.  I attended the the San Francisco live event with Green Zebra, who donated books for the gift bags.  Ladies who Launch is a “multiplatform lifestyle company” that defines itself as “THE source for women who want to live their dreams and love their lives.”

I had two overall impressions coming out of the event:

1. Women can do incredible things BUT most companies on my radar are founded and run by men: The goal of the event was to empower women to take control and run their own businesses and lives, but I couldn’t help but notice that men really dominate major companies. The women in attendance tended to be small business owners and entrepreneurs, and even the successful speakers were running smaller companies. Ebay and VMware are the few examples of large women-run companies that come quickly to mind.  I think part of this also has to do with lifestyle.  According to LWL, women are launching their own businesses twice as often as men, mainly for greater freedom and control to shape their own lives.  I don’t imagine there’s too much of that in the CEO role of a Fortune 500 company. 
2. Ladies who Launch doesn’t strike me as particularly green: My two cents about the environmental impact of this event is that the hosts were not thinking about the environment. Lunch was organic, which was nice, but in this setting it came off as more of a choice of healthy food. Especially since each and every lunch was individually packaged in supposedly compostable packaging and outright plastic cutlery. My top issue was the lack of recycle and compost bins for our plastic bottles and compostable lunch packaging. Compostable ware does no good in the landfill as far as I know (correct me if I’m wrong here as I’d love to be wrong on this one). My second concern was the many water bottles available. And thirdly was the preponderance of free stuff.  The first 350 to arrive received a gift bag loaded with a few decent gifts – which included the Green Zebra guide, the canvas gift bag itself, and a free pair of tiger print panties – as well as a bunch of paper offers and plastic gadgets I would not have chosen to own and may end up in the landfill including $75 off your first botox treatment.  Sweet!
   

The bulk of the event was interviews with successful women entrepreneurs.  The very first featured speaker cancelled and was replaced by a man, who was possibly making more money than any of the following presenters.  Here is what I learned from each:

Zach Nelson, CEO and President of NetSuite, 2nd fastest growing company in Silicon Valley

Its easier to run a billion dollar company than a small business for two reasons:

1. In a large company a mistake teaches you something and can even get you promoted, in a small company the same mistake can cause the company to fold.
2. Larger enterprises have many more staff, so leaders are less bogged down with doing everything that needs to be done.

Ann Crady, SVP Consumer Experience, Babycenter and previously founder of Maya’s Mom, which got bought by Babycenter 18 months after its inception

1. Don’t keep your idea to yourself – talk about it and get feedback from trusted friends.  An idea is nothing until it has been vetted and executed upon.
   
2. f you can, put your own money into your company.  This will speak volumes to investors and prove that you believe in your idea and are willing to invest it in yourself.
3. When trying to get funding, you need a presentation that proves the following points: Your product addresses a large market, Customers need it, The product is unique, and You are in the best position to make it successful.

Daryn Kagan, founder darynkagan.com and former CNN news anchor; Daryn was fired after 12 years on CNN working her dream job and was a reluctant entrepreneur but has never been happier now that she started her own media company focusing on the inspirational news stories she most enjoyed covering

1. Starting your own company means you get to pick yourself.
2. Build a profitable media company by creating good content and then using tools on your website like Google ads, Amazon Associates, Cafepress.com and Voxant.

Arcadia Maximo, founder Maximo Construction, “the only solely woman owned and operated General Contractor in San Francisco”

1. Maintain 100% ownership of your company so you call all the shots.
2. Grow slowly and thoughtfully; rapid growth can spiral out of control.

Kathy Preston, best-selling author

1. Don’t stop trying.
2. Listen to yourself.
   

 

Jared Blumenfeld, Director of SF Dept of the Environment, aims to apply city’s learnings across the globe

Jared Blumenfeld has one of the most important environmental leadership roles in San Francisco, a city which he says is “in the top 10 on the planet that have thought about how to become more sustainable and started actually doing it.” Blumenfeld is Director of San Francisco’s Department of the Environment, which provides environmental policy guidance to the Mayor and Board of Supervisors as well as creates innovative programs to educate and serve San Francisco’s citizens. He was appointed to his role 6 years ago by Mayor Willie Brown and reappointed twice by Mayor Gavin Newsom, to whom he reports directly. I was lucky enough to speak with him last week and get the inside scoop on Blumenfeld’s vision for San Francisco, some exciting projects that are underway in the city, what it’s like to work for Gavin Newsom, and his own career path and environmental practices.

Blumenfeld, a true to the core environmentalist, rides his bike to work every day, is a huge fan of Energy Star appliances, CFLs, and replacing broken things in his Twin Peaks home with energy efficient alternatives. “It’s relatively easy to be green and it saves you a lot of money, so even if you don’t care about the environment it makes sense.” According to Blumenfeld, his biggest success in office has been “getting the urban environmental agenda to be more mainstream… People are starting to think of San Francisco as the environment they need to protect” whereas saving the environment used to conjure up images of endangered lands like Yosemite and Muir Woods. He views success in terms of human engagement and hard figures. In just six years in office, he has expanded his department from 14 to 70 people. And the recycling rate has taken off – growing from 46% when he got the job to 70% today. He is committed to leveraging the $600M that the city has to buy goods and services, using that money to both reward and incentivize environmentally progressive products.

“Climate change is here for a long time, it’s not a two month campaign,” Blumenfeld noted. The Department of the Environment runs many long-term projects that rely on civic engagement to succeed. One of Blumenfeld’s largest challenges in this position has been getting and keeping the public’s attention. “Keeping it relevant and impactful is difficult.”

Blumenfeld’s vision is for San Francisco to be a place people want to visit for its progressive environmental position. Cities produce 75% of our CO2 and luckily they are rather similar; since San Francisco got a head start over other cities working on sustainability, learnings from San Francisco can be applied all over the world. “We have an incredibly affluent city, an incredibly environmentally aware city with a progressive set of politicians and innovation all around us. There are more Nobel laureates in the Bay Area than anywhere else… We’ve got some pretty amazing urban growth boundaries on three sides– the Bay and the ocean – and clearly defined on the south, so we’re not dealing with sprawl. We were founded before the automobile.” Needless to say, San Francisco is well-positioned to lead in this field.

Some of San Francisco’s environmental goals are to reach zero waste by 2020, to reduce CO2 emissions significantly below 1990 levels, to remove all toxic chemicals in our parks, to impost stringent green building standards for new buildings and renovations, and much more. Had I gotten details on all the projects Blumenfeld has in the works, I would have been in his office all day. But I’ll mention a few:

San Francisco is currently working on a project with Cisco to understand how computer technology can be used to save the planet. Cisco chose three cities, Seoul, Amsterdam and San Francisco, as target cities for this eco-mapping project. The maps will allow neighborhoods to see where they stand environmentally and also understand results of individual action. The idea is that while we tend to focus on individual action, we never aggregate it to understand the higher level impacts. “So we want to show in real time how individual actions impact numbers.”

The first layer of the eco-map is a solar map, which lets people know they have a resource above them (their roof}. “We digitized every rooftop and looked at sloping, shading and the solar capacity and [the solar map] comes out with a number of how many kilowatts you get out of your roof and how much CO2 you can save as well as how much money you would save on your PG&E bill” by going solar. My small home could apparently support a 1-3 KW system, saving me $300-$900/year in electricity bills! The project is also about understanding which messages are most effective in motivating action.

Another current project of the department is the Urban Wind Task Force, which is working on understanding the potential for urban and residential wind power in San Francisco. In some cases people can procure up to 1KW of energy from a single wind turbine.

“We certainly don’t think that governments can solve all problems. The role of business is very important.” As such, San Francisco’s Green Business Program, acknowledges businesses that have passed strict guidelines for greening their operations. San Francisco tries to promote its green businesses and reward them with increased traffic. The program has thus far been a free city program, but “we have become a victim of our own success” and the city needs to start charging larger businesses to go through the process due to time demands. In the meantime, auditing and support to become a green business will remain free for small businesses.

Before leaving Blumenfeld’s office, I could not help but inquire about working for Mayor Newsom. “He has a passion and a great interest in environmental issues…every trip he goes on he comes back with thousands of ideas and we sit down and sort through them and try and prioritize and see what makes sense. [Newsom] is incredibly supportive. Without him, programs would not happen. You can have a great Department of the Environment with 70 people, but without a liberal champion nothing would happen. He knows what he doesn’t know when it comes to the environment and he actually knows a lot.”

Blumenfeld’s background is in international environmental law. He previously worked for the organizations including the NRDC and the International Fund for Animal Welfare, where he helped protect 4 million acres of land while bringing lawsuits against corporations like Airbus and Mitsubishi. Looking forward, Blumenfeld acknowledges that while he loves non-profit work, the environmental movement is progressing rapidly and has almost eclipsed non-profits, with governments and businesses taking up the issue. Blumenfeld wants to be in a place “where there’s impact. If I’m doing this job in 15 years, the planet will be in trouble because that will mean the rest of the movement hasn’t progressed.”

[Originally published on Just Means' All Things Reconsidered on September 3, 2008]

 

Equal and opposite reactions to global warming

The majority of us know we have a big fat problem on our hands, a climate crisis if you will. Many of us doubt that we will be able to dig ourselves out of this messy grave we’ve dug, however thankfully many of us are also all about trying. It seems to me there are two categories of global warming responses. High tech and low tech. Given our societal situation, the high tech solution is more likely to succeed whereas the low tech route makes much more intuitive sense. Living in San Francisco, I see the best of both sets of solutions.

High tech: High tech solutions to global warming are designed such that we can continue to live excessive lifestyles but emit fewer GHG’s. Examples include electric, hybrid, fuel cell and other low-carbon vehicles so that we can continue to eschew public transit and drive cars; photo-voltaic and other renewable energy technologies so that we can continue to use as much energy as we want on a daily basis; cloud-seeding to clear pollution instead of reducing pollution in the first place, and so on. (There are many many blogs only devoted to such things, so I’ll stop here). These solutions do not address the fact that our excessive lifestyles got us here in the first place and technology was often an enabler of our polluting ways. That said we have gotten used to a certain way of life and now people expect to live a that way. There may be no turning back and technology can help ease the outcome of our ways.

Low tech: On the opposite end of the spectrum are those people and techniques that address climate change by eliminating the sources of the problem altogether. This generally involves adopting practices long since given up by mainstream Americans.

Example 1) Eating homegrown or otherwise local food. A recent New York Times article picked up on a trend of outsourcing the gardening of one’s back yard to grow food for one’s family. (Interestingly, this trend has roots in my employer’s back yard with MyFarm, and you can see a small sliver of my face in the background of the above NYT article photo – probably the only time I will ever make the front page ). Local, organic, sustainable (however you define it) food is in, and there is a shift backwards to the days when we used to grow our own food, even if we may end up paying someone else to do so for us.

Example 2) Off the grid living. It has become increasingly popular to take your house off the grid, which means relying on renewable energy in one form or another. Interestingly this can sometimes be very high tech.

I don’t have a remarkable conclusion to this split in the green movement. But I do know that like all things, the workable solution to our environmental woes will come from a combination of high and low tech solutions. We are not about to go back to the farm en masse, however I think people can be nudged stepwise towards a less polluting lifestyle. And I doubt we’ll invent a silver bullet high tech solution, though our technologies will continue to make going green more fun and easy.

 

Realization: I am an eco-snob

By no means am I as green as I can be in every aspect of my life. Convenience and lower prices will often derail my green intentions. But that does not keep me from being a massive eco-snob at times. This dawned on me today as I biked home from a visit to the Slow Foods Victory Garden in San Francisco’s Civic Center and was forced to battle for pavement with a massive double-tired, extended-cab, extra-wide shiny black truck. I don’t have as much control over my facial expressions as I sometimes wish I do and I was taken back to a moment not too long ago when I grimaced uncontrollably at the sight of one of my closest girlfriends being approached by a skeezy guy in a club. I didn’t mean for my face to reveal my repulsion, but the skeez himself saw me cringe and backed off! Whoops. Well, in a very similar manner, I made an involuntary expression of disgust as I passed this very large truck in pristine condition occupied by one lone man with no cargo. That’s when I realized I had done it several times on just one bike ride. I turn my nose at large carbon footprints!

While I thought I had invented this term on my own, a quick Google search taught me I am by no means alone in looking down upon poor environmental habits.

A February 2007 LA Times article, Confessions of an eco-snob, reveals a strikingly similar feeling:

At a gas station one afternoon, I felt perfectly comfortable leveling a death-ray glare at the soccer mom behind me. I hated her simply for her passenger-free, fuel-sucking Land Rover – which was certainly canceling out all my hybrid’s hard eco-work. As she nervously studied the interior of her designer purse to avoid eye contract with the clearly psychotic woman facing her (me), I felt no guilt in wishing an eco-karma death for her. (Choking on her own fumes would be ironic, but swallowed whole by polar bears worked too.)

Eco-snobbery has been acknowledged in Britain as well, as a February 2008 Telegraph article describes:

What was it, this frisson that passed between the young woman behind the counter at Pret A Manger and me? It wasn’t flirtation, exactly. It was more conspiratorial than that. A knowing look. A social judgment shared.

As she asked me if I wanted a plastic bag for my two items – a (wild) salmon sandwich and a banana – the man at the head of the queue next to mine was asked the same question by another assistant. He had a sandwich and an apple. The point is, I said no. He said yes. That was when the look was exchanged…

The eco-snobs are the worst. It is not enough they get to feel better about themselves for doing the right thing environmentally; they have to make someone else feel worse. Make them feel small, vulgar, immoral. I caught myself doing it in that queue the other day. And shame on me for that.

Yes, eco-snobbery can’t be a good thing. Why should I be scowling at fellow human beings? To some extent we all pay for our carbon footprint in the form of sky high gas prices and rising airline ticket costs among other things. But there must be a better way than condescension to encourage others to “consider the environment” before doing any number of things. For now I’m just going to do my best by trying not to scowl at SUV owners and leading by example where I can.

For more on this check out: Are you an eco-snob? 10 sure signs you’ve gone too green

 

The Plastic Bag Conundrum (And Marry Local!!)

In describing San Francisco’s admirable determination to go green, Amie notes how unusual it is for a municipality to ban plastic bags. But there’s at least one good reason for it to remain unusual: It turns out plastic bags are actually better for the environment than paper ones, in terms of carbon emissions, energy use, and deforestation.

I don’t bring this up in order to make some broad point about unintended consequences—nor to cast into question the effectiveness of government regulation. San Francisco is bound to make some mistakes on its road to eco-friendliness, and as Amie’s list shows, it’s far ahead of most cities.

However, the plastic bags issue does underscore two broad points that greens should keep in mind:

1) Our ingrained sense of “what’s green” may need tweaking.

Culturally, a lot of our perceptions about eco-friendliness are actually legacies from the 1970s and 1980s, when stopping the hole in the ozone layer, ending nuclear power, and preventing sea animals from stray six-packs and plastic bags was synonymous with saving the environment.

Now, as we’ve pivoted toward a massive effort to reduce carbon emissions, we’re finding that some things we previously scorned may not be so bad. It’s something to keep in mind as we design green policies for the future.

2) Sometimes, a bigger carbon footprint may be justified.

This item contradicts what I said above, but each point is worth digesting independently. Plastic bags are better from the standpoint of carbon emissions, but we shouldn’t let an obsession with carbon blind us to other important aspects of the environment.

Hands down, paper bags are better at protecting wildlife than plastic bags—and safeguarding San Francisco’s unique fauna is probably more valuable, on the margin, than keeping a few tons of CO2 out of the air. In that sense, the city may have a real interest in banning plastic to protect its own fragile ecosystem. To get the biggest benefit, Mayor Newsom should probably ban plastic bags and pursue extra carbon reductions elsewhere (like cutting down on transcontinental flights by divorcing his East Coast wife and marrying local … oh wait, he’s already done that).

So where does that leave us? Not too bewildered, I hope. If you want assurance about the green impact of your actions, just remember: marry local and use cloth bags.

Barron YoungSmith writes for Slate and The New Republic.

 

San Francisco lights my fire, leads the way

My current home of San Francisco is also home to some of the country’s most aggressive and progressive environmental tactics. I am continually impressed and inspired by the forward-thinking innovative ordinances and other decrees that are set forward and taken seriously; I mean where else could the mayor ban an integral part of most Americans’ every day life – plastic bags?! While I realize that we could do a lot more (and I think we’re headed in the right direction) and I know not all San Franciscans care as much as I do about sustainability, I think I’m pretty darned lucky to be living here. I’m a small but proud part of a city that is setting a ‘get-up-and-do-something-about-climate-change’ example for the rest of the world. That said, I wanted to dedicate my first substantial post to acknowledging the setting in which we San Franciscans find ourselves and reviewing some of the heartening happenings and initiatives that make this city an environmental leader.

• June 2007: ban on Styrofoam takeout containers enforces use of compostable or recyclable to-go containers (check it out)
• July 2007: Executive order bans plastic water bottles for city departments (details)
• November 2007: Entire diesel fleet of 1,500 converted to run on B20 biodiesel; “Largest city fleet implementation of biodiesel anywhere in the nation” (read more)
• November 2007: Ban on petroleum-based plastic bags for grocery stores and 6 months later for large pharmacies (ordinance info)
• January 2008: City Government pledged to reach carbon neutrality by 2020 via SForward campaign (more)
• April 2008: Highest in the nation recycling rate of 70% announced, with aim of zero-waste and commitment to 75% diversion by 2010 (more on this)
• July 2008: Largest solar incentive program in US launched; program to provide generous solar rebates for anyone on the grid, both commercial and residential. Rebates range from $3,000 to $10,000 ($3-6,000 residential, $10,000 commercial) with additional $5,000 available for low-income residents. In a city where fewer than 1,000 roofs are home to solar panels, this should make a big difference (more here)
• August 2008: Green Building Ordinance makes “San Francisco the city with the most stringent green building requirements in the nation”; all new and renovated buildings must meet minimum green requirements by 2009 and maximum green requirements by 2010 (press release)
• August 2008: Greenhouse gas emissions announced to be ~8% lower than 2000 levels and 5% lower than 1990 levels (Kyoto targets a 7% decline in emissions by 2012 based on 1990 levels) (read up)

Add to all this an urban composting program and state of the art recycling capabilities, a fertile climate perfect for eating locally, proximity to Silicon Valley and its inventive tech-geniuses, consumers and businesses demanding green and energy efficient products and services, an entrepreneurial spirit and it’s clear that San Francisco is poised to push the sustainability agenda forward on many fronts.

I’m sure this list is nowhere near complete, which is why I welcome any and all comments. I will also update this as I learn of noteworthy environmental ordinances, mandates, bills and so on.