In a press release, Ben & Jerry’s announced its commitment to go fully Fair Trade across its entire global flavor portfolio. From Cherry Garcia to Chocolate Fudge Brownie, all of the flavors in all of the countries where Ben & Jerry’s is sold will be converted to Fair Trade Certified™ ingredients by the end of 2013.
Ben & Jerry’s was the first ice cream company in the world to use Fair Trade Certified™ ingredients starting in 2005, and today it’s racing ahead as the first ice cream company to make such a significant commitment to Fair Trade across its global portfolio.
So what is Fair Trade? Fair Trade means that certified farmers are using environmentally sound practices to grow and harvest their crops in a sustainable way.
Future posts will focus on Sustainability Programs, Best Green Companies, Energy Innovations, Certified Organic Products, green jobs and more! - Stay Green....
I just did a post about Sustainability Programs and getting a Green Degree and I read about the new sustainability certificate program offered by the University of Colorado.
The program focuses on sustainability management for professionals to green their workplaces.
The University of Colorado's continuing education department is debuting the new "sustainability management certificate" in January to help professionals put a green edge on their existing expertise.
According to the Program Director Geoffrey Rubinstein, he said he expects the program to attract employees of mom-and-pop shops, larger companies, local government, nonprofit agencies and schools.
They also noted that the courses will be offered online in the near future to expand their reach nationwide as well as internationally. Mike, Guest Blogger for Green Energy TV.
There are a lot of new Sustainability Programs and green degrees you can get certification in an area of interest.
According to the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, there are now more than 100 majors, minors or certificates were created this year in energy and sustainability-focused programs at colleges big and small. And this is nationwide.
There has been a huge increase in the number of companies going green and the rise in green jobs. Academic institutions are offering Sustainability Programs, renewable energy-solar certificate programs, certified organic farming programs and more.
The people who are getting the certifications, experience and training in the green jobs sector are setting themselves up for being educated in the right place for a long time.
See if your local academic institution is offering a certification program in an area that interests you or check for a online class. Mike, Guest Blogger for Green Energy TV.
Green Energy TV has Awarded the Aspen Skiing Company with the Two Green Thumbs Up Award.
Here are just some of the things they are doing to be green and why we gave them the Two Green Thumbs Up:
1. Renewable Fuels - For seven years, they have used clean, renewable fuels such as Biodiesel in their snowcats.
2. Employee Commitment - Almost half of Aspen/Snowmass employees contribute a dollar a week to the Environment Foundation. Their contributions are matched by the Aspen Community Foundation and again by the Aspen Skiing Company Family Fund, and donations--$1.2 million to date, that go to local environmental causes like clean air and water, trail maintenance and energy efficiency. 3. ISO certified as a "Green" company - the first of only two ski resorts in the country to achieve this recognition. ISO 14001 certification is the most widely known and respected environmental stamp of approval, which demonstrates responsible management of our environmental impacts. 4. Leed Building - Aspen/Snowmass has the only green building policy in the snow sports industry. It has resulted in projects like the Snowmass Golf Clubhouse, which is LEED Silver Level certified by the U.S. Green Building Council, is heated and cooled using the pond on the 18th hole, and is one of the most energy efficient commercial buildings in the state.
Keep up the great work and continue to lead the way for companies going green in your industry!
A few of our readers sent us emails asking us to post the following ideas for some recommended Green New Year's resolutions for 2010.
Below are 7 of the 2010 Green New Year's Resolution Ideas:
Go on a Green Diet- In the New Year, many people go on a diet. This means, you can start eating certified organic foods that do not contain the food toxins or chemical toxins that are in most of our foods. You can also start to buy more of your food locally as well and get food that is fresh and support the local economy and help create more green jobs as a direct result of your purchases.
Do the Green Diet Exercise - One of our Guest Bloggers wrote about how he lost over 70 pounds by pedaling his bike to power his TV. Here's a link to that blog post if you are looking to power your TV while you watch it and save electricity and lose a lot of weight in the process blog.greenenergytv.com/blog/wind-power-technology/0/0/new-green-diet-pedal-and-watch
Say good-bye to Household Toxins - You can have an environment friendly home by eliminating the chemical toxins. Most of the store bought cleaners contain very harmful chemical toxins, however, you can switch to safer cleaners from companies such as Shaklee or Seventh Generation. There are many new green and safer cleaning products out there right now that do a great job without exposing your family to chemical toxins in your home.
Green your Lawn - Most of the chemicals in fertilizers used on the lawns in the US are banned in Europe because of the dangerous chemical toxins they contain and they seep back into our drinking water and affect fish and other wildlife as well. There are more options for this year with chemical free lawn care and organic lawn care. You can use bone meal and other organic lawn care products that prevent weeds and still give you a green lawn without the chemicals. Check out your local nursery and read the labels!
Get Green Jobs& Get Certified- There is an increase in green jobs, whether you decide to become a solar installer, energy rater, get involved in Sustainability Programs, etc. We have green jobs posted on our main site, and there are many other major outlets advertising green jobs on Indeed.com and Monster.com
Get a Green Degree - There are more schools and independent organizations offering classes on Sustainability Programs, certifications for LEED, Energy Raters, Solar and Wind Installers and more. Many of the top green universities are also offering green educational classes and degrees now and this can help you land green jobs and prepare you for the future blog.greenenergytv.com/blog/green-jobs
Start a Green Business - There are many areas in green that are fast growing and opportunities increasing daily. We did a post a while back that talked about the growth areas of green and here's a link to some of the hottest and upcoming areas that deal with organic natural foods, eco friendly products, solar installation to geothermal energy, energy efficiency and green building.
If you have any Green New Year's Resolutions for 2010 that you would like to share, feel free to do so in the comments below. - Stay Green!
There's a lot of positive news of companies going green and the best green companies. One company that we believe is overlooked, is Facebook.
We consider Facebook to be Green for some of the following reasons:
Facebook has over 350 Million users and they connect without using paper, exchanging traditional mail, or people having to drive to get together.
Companies and organizations using Facebook are connecting with potential customers and eliminating paper advertisements, TV ads, etc. which all require lots of energy, ink, paper, etc.
Users write 1 message that can be shared and posted with numerous people so they don't have to call, email or try to get together with everyone at once.
All LEED Gold Data Centers - Each of the data centers hosting Facebook’s servers are on track for Gold certification under the LEED rating scale. All four of the leases are in facilities designed to attain the highest energy efficiency ratings under the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program operated by the U.S. Green Building Council.
There is a huge increase in the number of Entrepreneurship Programs in Colleges and High Schools across the country.
In addition to these Entrepreneurship Programs, you are seeing more Idea Fairs, Idea Contests and Business Idea Competitions. Students can enter these Business and Entrepreneur Competitions and win a lot of money too.
A Junior mechanical engineering major Mariano Mumpower, won first place and a $750 gift certificate to Amazon.com for winning November 19th's Idea Competition Finalists Review.
According to The Retriever Weekly's writer Chris Cook, Mariano Mumpower's winning idea is a traveling produce stand made from a refurbished and redesigned old school bus that would come to campus.
Very Cool Idea, Mariano! Good luck with the launch and hope to see one of you traveling produce stands in our area soon.
Pizza Fusion is a restaurant that is looking to save the environment, one pizza at a time.
Pizza Fusion was born in February of 2006, and founded by Michael Gordon and Vaughan Lazar and they now have locations in 11 states.
They are getting the Two Green Thumbs Up Award for being one of the Best Green Companies serving Pizza.
Here's some of cool green things about this company:
Serve certified organic products and organic natural foods
Their restaurants are Leed Building certified
Have 100% recyclable plates, recyclable napkins, pizza boxes, menu's
Deliveries are made using Totoya Prius Hybrid Cars
Offset their energy use with Wind and Solar Energy
Use biodegradable toilet paper and more!
If you would like to check out a video on this company, here's a link to it airing on our main site: http://greenenergytv.com/Watch.aspx?v=1378397358 - Keith E, Guest Blogger for GreenEnergyTV.com
I watched the Ted Talks video of Carolyn Steel and began to wonder if the world will eventually run out of food or if we will change our ways and solve this issue?
Carolyn talks about how every day, in a city the size of London, 30 million meals are served. So where does all the food come from? Architect Carolyn Steel discusses the daily miracle of feeding a city, and shows how ancient food routes shaped the modern world.
She breaks down many interesting facts and ideas that range from how many fossil fuels we use to make food, transport it and dispose of it. She talks about how a billion people in the world are obese and a billion starve.
Check out the video below and let us know your thoughts.
Upcoming Posts will cover Top green companies, benefits of organic natural foods, certified organic products, environmental education for children, organic farming, sustainability programs, green cities, green inventions, green jobs and more. Stay tune....
Green Energy TV Awarded Portland, Oregon with Two Green Thumbs Up for being one of best green cities.
Portland, OR is very focused on eco friendly living and Sustainability Programs. Half of the city's power comes from renewable energy sources, and 25% of the workforce commutes by bike, carpool or public transportation.
They are focused on environmental education for children, LEED Building for companies and LEED homes. Many of the restaurants and local markets focus on the use of certified organic products and using local produce.
The City of Portland has a section of their website that has valuable resources and topics of how to's that range from how people can learn green Business Tips, how to green your home, tax incentives for going green, organic lawn care, renewable fuels, alternative energy and more. The link is: http://www.portlandonline.com/index.cfm?c=43046
Portand is a great model for green cities and sustainability programs throughout the country.
Keep up the great work Portland!
Are you or your company doing something to be Green?
Green Energy TV awarded Frog's Leap with the Two Green Thumbs Up! Award for being one of the best companies going green.
If you have not heard of Frog's Leap, well they produces as many as 60,000 cases of wine a year using organically grown grapes and a water-saving dry-farming technique.
In addition to offering eco friendly products and certified organic products (their wine), Frog's Leap is 100% powered by solar energy.
Here are some Fun Facts About Frog's Leap Sustainability Programs and why they are one of the best green companies:
1020 photovoltaic panels on 1/2 acre of vineyard space.
Output from Solar Energy- Their panels output is 168 kw/day and the vineyard only uses 65 kw/day to meet 100% of their electricity needs. The rest is fed back to the grid and their solar panels produce enough energy to power 150 homes during peak hours.
Cost of Solar Installation - $1.2 million minus the PG&E rebate of 50% or $600,000 so the system will pay for itself in 6 years.
LEED Building - Frog's Leap Hospitality Center and Administrative Office were built to LEED Building standards.
They also installed Geothermal in their Leed Building to meet their heating and cooling needs. Payback for this system is 6 years.
Dry Farming - Frog's Leap believes in deep roots and dry farming. They currently dry farm over 200 acres of organic vineyards which saves a lot of precious water.
I am going to head out of work early today and pick up a bottle of Frog's Leap wine. I will let you know what I think. Keep up the great work Frog's Leap, and here's your Two Green Thumbs Up! Award
Green Energy TV has given Clif Bar the Two Green Thumbs up! Award for being one of the Best Green Companies.
Clif Bar, is a company that makes certified organic products that are portable, nutritious foods. Clif Bar & Company has developed many other great tasting, all-natural products, including LUNA®, The Whole Nutrition Bar for Women®, which in 2006 became the first nutrition bar for women to be certified organic
Here's a few reasons why they received Two Green Thumbs Up:
Clif Bar & Company’s use of organic ingredients not only provides consumers with better products, but also represents a major step toward safeguarding the nation’s soil and water.
They are working to reduce their ecological footprint by supporting construction of wind farms to offset its carbon dioxide emissions.
Use non-toxic inks and recycled paper for its print
Using recycled paperboard for the cartons that hold the bars on store shelves
In-house recycling and compost programs.
The company continues to be on a journey toward long-term sustainability and exploring ways to keep people, the planet, environment and local communities healthy.
We gave the #1 natural nutrition company in the US Two Green Thumbs Up! Shaklee is one of the best green companies in the US and they have been green when green was just a color and biodegradable was barely a word.
In fact, almost 50 years ago, Shaklee Corporation made one of the first biodegradable household cleaners ever. And they were the first company in the world to obtain Climate Neutral™ certification and totally offset our CO2 emissions, resulting in a net zero impact on the environment.
Shaklee sells chemical free cleaning products, that do not have the chemical toxins that many leading brands have. The range of products they offer are from vitamins, cleaners, healthy weight products, healthy home, nutritional, beauty products as well as many other eco friendly products.
You may have seen or also heard about Shaklee on Oprah or by people like Dr. Oz as well as many other major TV networks and health magazines & journals.
These guys are very green from their products all the way down to the boxes and the soy printing that goes on the boxes that are delivered to your door.
A reader asked us if we thought Google would be considered a green and eco friendly company?
We have followed many of Google's green initiatives in the past on what Google is doing to be green and how the are working to benefit the environment.
Green Energy TV has awarded Google Two Thumbs Up! for one of the top companies going green and here are a just a few reasons why:
Clean Energy - Since 2007, Google has been working on creating utility-scale renewable electricity that is cheaper than coal. In addition to this, they have also come up with the Google PowerMeter for homeowners to measure their energy usage and Google has a 2030 Plan that their energy team is working to generate billions of dollars in savings and help create millions of green jobs.
Reducing their Carbon Footprint: There are millions of Google users and their platform requires a lot of electricity. Google uses solar and also off-sets their carbon footprint by investing in projects that reduce carbon.
Efficient Data Centers - Google-designed data centers use about half the energy of a typical data center and they continue to work towards reducing their energy.
Google also uses Solar energy to power 30% of their buildings, invests in Geothermal Energy, Wind power technology and serve certified organic products to their employees as well as many other green initiatives. For more information on Going Green at Google, check out their site http://www.google.com/corporate/green/index.html Keep up the great work!
The Mwanza Rural Housing Programme in Africa (MRHP) won an Ashden Award for Sustainable Energy.
It trained villagers in northern Tanzania to set up enterprises making high-quality bricks from local clay, fired with agricultural residues rather than wood.
These enterprises have made sufficient bricks to construct over 100,000 homes with greatly improved comfort and durability, in 70 villages. MRHP also runs a tree planting programme and trains entrepreneurs to make and sell efficient stoves.
In the US, we have Leed Homes and Leed Building as well as other certifications, but in other places around the world, they have other green ways to build that we can also learn from as well.
If you are tired of bad news and all the doom and gloom reported on mainstream media, then turn it off and click on the news section on our main site.
We have news releases that are positive, fresh and inspiring to see areas of growth for green jobs, solar energy, wind power technology, certified organic products, alternative and renewable energy and more.
There are a lot of new green jobs and green careers people are choosing to pursue. One area that continues to grow year after year for the last several years is certified organic products. When it comes to food, many people are becoming more knowledgeable about the chemical toxins in our foods and they are making a switch to eating organic natural foods.
In their effort to supporting eco friendly products and eco friendly living, these certified organic products and organic natural foods are hitting the local stores shelves and expanding rapidly.
Many stores including large chains such as Wal-mart, support local farmers and especially purchase their organic natural foods from local farmers. In the video below, see how this pioneer organic farmer set up his business in Atlanta and is creating green jobs, supplying certified organic products and green jobs to residents and businesses in his local community.
Right now, at 11:32 am on June 3, 2009, there are 306,577,240 people living in the US.
If the US population is going to increase by adding 94 more million people within 30 years, where are we going to put everybody?
PBS has an e2 series and the video below tackles the subject.
The solution they proposed is in Affordable Green Housing. Check out the video
You can watch more green and alternative energy videos on subjects ranging from solar energy, wind power technology, hybrid vehicles, alternative fuel ideas, certified organic products, green inventions, companies going green and more at www.GreenEnergyTV.com -Stay Green!
Vegawatt is one the newest and coolest green inventions that transforms Waste Vegetable Oil Into Electricity & Hot Water.
According to the company, a Vegawatt system contains more than just power generation equipment. It includes a turn-key waste vegetable oil (WVO) refinery, automatically transforming the darkest, nastiest used cooking oil into fuel appropriate for power generation.
How does it work? The unit, which is about the size of a refrigerator, is placed outside the building the same way central air conditioning units often are. It hooks up through one electrical cable to the electric system. There is also a hot water feed and return system. Your hot water heater won't have to work as hard now because the water has already been partially heated by the system.
Vegawatt claims that their Made in the USA system can save your restaurant in the following ways:
Save over $800 every month off your utility bills
Produce Free electricity onsite
Produce Free hot water onsite
Save on Waste Vegetable Oil disposal fees
Reduce your Electricity Demand charges
Produce Renewable Energy Certificates (REC's)
Produce Carbon Credits
Produce Income Tax Credits
Reduce the CO2 emissions of your restaurant
Reduce the dependence on fossil fuels
Save the Planet
For more information on their eco friendly inventions, check out their site http://www.vegawatt.com/
Let us know if you have any green inventions, eco friendly inventions, energy innovations or and new eco friendly products and we will feature you on GreenEnergyTV.com
So what is Fair Trade? Fair Trade means that certified farmers are using environmentally sound practices to grow and harvest their crops in a sustainable way.
3. ISO certified as a "Green" company - the first of only two ski resorts in the country to achieve this recognition. ISO 14001 certification is the most widely known and respected environmental stamp of approval, which demonstrates responsible management of our environmental impacts.
If you would like to check out a video on this company, here's a link to it airing on our main site: 
Portand is a great model for green cities and sustainability programs throughout the country. 
Here are some Fun Facts About Frog's Leap Sustainability Programs and why they are one of the best green companies:
The company continues to be on a journey toward long-term sustainability and exploring ways to keep people, the planet, environment and local communities healthy. 
Vegawatt claims that their Made in the USA system can save your restaurant in the following ways: 
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