Hello Friends, I am writing to inform you of a few exciting announcements…
This week, Jude Kitchens and I launched 'Green Man Lawn Care - Organic Turf & Plant Health Care'. We offer ecological landscape maintenance services to our Charleston community.
This service is 100% Organic! It is based on an all natural, non-toxic, chemical free, child and pet safe, good for people and the environment, sustainable, biological approach to land and plant stewardship called the 'Soil Food Web'.
Please consider visiting our new website at: www.GreenManLawnCare.com to learn more about the Soil Food Web and the new exciting organic turf and plant health care services Green Man Lawn Care now offers.
These services include:
Green Man has been invited and will be present at the Charleston Battery Soccer Green Game this Friday, May 9 to meet with you and discuss organic lawn care. Check out: www.charlestonbattery.com for more details. Bring your friends and get there early to participate in the fun!
Remember to tune your radio to station WSC 94.3 FM at 8 AM on Sundays for 'Charleston Green' with John Tarkany, principle of Charleston's premier ecological landscape architecture firm DesignWorks, LLC. Hear the discussion about organic turf and plant health care using a biological approach with the Soil Food Web on Sunday, May 18, 8 AM.
Thank you for your time and consideration. Please feel free to circulate this news widely and contact us anytime. Get Healthy; get green and go organic! ~ Kevin
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Kevin John Richardson
Local Solutions
Sustainable Systems & Community Development
(240) 286-7624
Monday, May 12, 2008
New Local Green Business
One of the most recent attendees of the Green Business Networking event has just launched a new business. Here is his announcement:
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Go Green Night This Friday!
If you're looking for something to do and to meet like-minded people (business and otherwise) and you enjoy outdoors and/or soccer, then check out this month's Green Drinks event.
Green Drinks is proud to be a supporter of Go Green Night at Blackbaud Stadium! Please join us along with dozens of lowcountry green businesses at 6PM in the beer garden. We still have a limited quantity of $5 tickets for our patrons, so please shoot us an email if you are interested! The match is versus Miami FC and we expect very strong attendance. Here are directions to the stadium...
Will We See These Around Charleston Soon?
Cool 8-seat solar powered bike/car. This Flinstone-like car would be perfect for tours around town.
More on Apple
I previously posted about Apple being listed as a non-environmentally friendly company, in part for being one of the only computer companies to still use toxic materials. CNET now reports on a study by Climate Counts that puts Apple dead last in a list of electronics companies in terms of carbon footprints. They gave Apple a score of 11 out of 100 (which interestingly enough is up 9 from last year). It's amazing that a company that is so forward looking with designs is so backward in regards to the environment.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Greening Your Office
If you need to go out and get some new supplies for the office, look for the TerraCycle products coming to OfficeMax. According to GreenBiz.com, the office supply store will begin stocking some of TerraCycle's products, such as the pencil holders made from Capri Sun pouches. The neat thing about TerraCycle is that they are repurposing (reusing) products rather than recycling them in the more common sense of melting them down and turning them into something else, which uses plenty of energy. Of course looking at their products makes it easy for the crafty to make some of the stuff themselves, but I don't think the company would be too upset about that.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Supply Chain Footprint
Patagonia has a new, refreshingly honest feature on their site. It details the supply chain for several of their products. It maps the progression of the products from raw material to finished good. What makes me say "refreshingly honest" is that it's not just a highlight of what they do well. The do point out for example that the Synchilla vest, though it's made from recycled materials, travels a great distance throughout North America and much of that by truck. They even offer a total amount of carbon emitted to get the product from origin to distribution. Seeing how much traveling a product does should emphasize to everyone to buy locally produced products*, especially if reducing your own carbon footprint is a major emphasis.
* Note that I try to purchase as locally as possible for the Green Business Networking events. I'll take recommendations for good regional wine, since what I've been getting comes from California (even though it's essentially the store brand from Earth Fare.)
* Note that I try to purchase as locally as possible for the Green Business Networking events. I'll take recommendations for good regional wine, since what I've been getting comes from California (even though it's essentially the store brand from Earth Fare.)
Thursday, April 24, 2008
More on Greening Supply Chain
We're back from another trip to Chicago where we saw a few Prius taxis, which is an idea that just simply makes financial sense given how much taxis stop and go. What also seems to be making sense for large companies like Clorox is introducing green products, like Green Works. I don't know how truly green it is given that it's a product made by Clorox, but people are buying it. In reading an article this morning about Clorox and their supply chain issues, this quote shows a good reason for the increase in green products: "From internal surveys, the company knows its customers will pay 10 to 15 percent more for greener products." Clearly it makes financial sense to sell a product that is more green. However, the article makes a point that getting the supplies to make the green products is a challenge. Clorox bought Burt's Bees not too long ago, and it has been having problems scaling up the business, which traditionally used many small suppliers. What this tells me is that there is plenty of opportunity for start ups to produce the raw and component materials for this boom in green products. Large consumer product companies like Clorox, GE, etc. need to get materials in large quantities in order to get their products to market. This means that either companies producing the raw materials now need to scale up (hopefully in a sustainable manner) or other start ups can enter the market and help fulfill the large companies' demand.
Friday, April 18, 2008
526 Extension Alternative
We were at the Charleston Green Drinks event last week where we saw a presentation by the Coastal Conservation League on an alternative to the 526 extension. I thought what they presented was a great example of the need to provide an alternative to the undesirable action. They clearly understood that 526 was intended to solve a problem, but that it was an inefficient solution - not just undesirable environmentally. If we're going to convince businesses and governments not to do thing that destroy the environment we have to have better alternatives for them to consider.
Do check out the website and see the designs they have. They are very aesthetically pleasing. But more importantly and more relevant to this blog, is that I think the redesign, particularly the one for Savannah Highway, would be good for business. The redesign would create back roads off of Savannah Highway to allow local residents to get to and from local businesses without ever having to enter Savannah Highway. That should improve traffic flow to these business and thus would hopefully improve patronage of them.
Do check out the website and see the designs they have. They are very aesthetically pleasing. But more importantly and more relevant to this blog, is that I think the redesign, particularly the one for Savannah Highway, would be good for business. The redesign would create back roads off of Savannah Highway to allow local residents to get to and from local businesses without ever having to enter Savannah Highway. That should improve traffic flow to these business and thus would hopefully improve patronage of them.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Sustainable Business Venturing Class
This may be a little late, but if you're a student at the College of Charleston (or know one) and you're still looking for classes for fall, consider the new class I'm teaching. Here is a course description and list of learning objectives:
MGMT 360-002: Sustainable Business (Venturing)
Fall-12358 – Hansen, T/H 1:40
- Understanding of the importance of sustainability/ impact of business on the environment
- Understanding of consideration of value creation for all stakeholders
- Knowledge of locally-represented sectors of sustainable business
- Ability to recognize sustainable business opportunities
- Development of a well-defined sustainable new business concept
- Four written reports, with accompanying presentations: sector report, market research, existing sustainable business, team final business concepts (will include updates of first two)
- Graduate students will conduct a review of the sustainable entrepreneurship literature
Monday, April 14, 2008
Investment in Green Tech
I've been reading a few articles lately about the increasing volumes of venture capital money flowing into green tech ventures. John Doerr has been the central character in just about everyone one of them. This morning I read about a speech he gave this weekend at MIT. One quote I found interesting is "There's too much money chasing too few good ventures, despite the size of this problem." In that speech and other articles, like this one in Fast Company, Doerr describes the green tech sector as bigger than the Internet. The problem is that while the problems being addressed by green tech are considerably large and have enormous market potential, they will take considerably longer to materialize compared to Internet companies. Hopefully investors will have the stomachs to hold on long enough to see the returns and we won't experience a collapse similar to the dot-com bubble.
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