Aug 21 2009

The Green Seen

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

I was scanning the pre-season college football polls when some new rankings came in for a different kind of game -- the "greenest" universities. The Princeton Review test-preparation company recently issued it second "Green Rating Honor Roll" of 15 schools, including UC-Berkeley, Arizona State, Harvard, Yale, and my favorite just because of its name -- Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash. Ratings cover energy use, recycling, food, buildings and so on. Other groups also grade colleges, including the Sierra Club, which rated the University of Colorado at Boulder No. 1 among "eco-enlightened" schools. Oh yes, the University of Florida Gators are No. 1 in the USA Today football poll.

Seattle voters have rejected a proposed 20-cent charge for disposable paper and plastic shopping bags, with supporters blaming economic conditions and a $1.4 million anti-fee campaign by the plastics industry. The City Council adopted a bag charge ordinance last year but opponents got enough signatures to put it on the ballot. Despite the opposition in Seattle, bag bans are expected to grow. Here in San Francisco, City Hall briefly considered a bag fee before banning non-biodegradable plastic bags in 2007 without much fuss. Stores now offer reusable paper bags, and many businesses and groceries are slapping their names and logos on cloth bags and selling them for a dollar or giving them away.

San Francisco is pedaling a little closer to a citywide bicycle sharing program. With only two bike rental locations in a city with a population of more than 800,000, the Recreation and Park Department hopes to add more rental kiosks for residents and tourists as early as January. Officials from Montreal's new Bixi (bike+taxi) share system recently visited Golden Gate Park to show off their bikes and a portable pay station powered by solar panels. Montreal launched Bixi a few months ago with 3,000 bikes and 300 stations in the city's downtown core.

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