COOL TECH OF BENZ!!

Check out this Fuel Cell car from Mercedes-Benz! It has no CO2 emission to the air and uses hydrogen energy. Here is a post of this kind of car.

Here is the dealerships and hydrogen fuel stations in LA area!

Where do you find the fuel for the next 125 years? The universe's single most abundant element is a good place to start. F-CELL drive converts compressed hydrogen—estimated to make up 74% of the known universe—into electricity. This electricity then powers an electric motor, delivering spirited performance and a range of around 190 miles, all while returning the equivalent of over 
50 highway mpg and emitting nothing but water vapor. More than just a new way of moving society forward, F-CELL is a preview of a future unconstrained by range anxiety, nonrenewable fuels and worrisome emissions.

For futher information, please go to http://www.mbusa.com/mercedes/benz/green/electric_car

http://www.mbusa.com/mercedes/benz/green

 (By the way, I highly recommend the ad of this car!)

Why Couldn't Plastic Bags Disappear in China?

   In 2007,Chinese Government banned plastic bags of the whole country. The state counsil released relative policies on banning plastic bags in China. In other words, plastic bags will never be offered for free in China anymore, including in markets, department stores, shopping malls, etc. However, if you want to get a plastic bag so badly because you aren't able to hold all the thing you buy, you will have to pay 0.1-0.5RMB to buy a bag. In addition, community workers offered residents cloth bags for free.

      In fact, I live in Shanghai, China. Soon after this policy was released, I quickly got interested in it and thought that it was a really cool idea. The government finanlly did something about the huge negative impact on the environment in China. 

      At first several month, I have to say that the policy worked  really well. Everything went exactly as it supposed to be. But however, several months later, plastic bags started to appear in markets and to be offered for free. What's worse, most of the plastic bags are extremely thin and I didn't know the ingredients inside.

       I didn't know what to do. It seems that writing to the local government isn't  as efficient as it suppose to be. Anyway, it is a servere issue that need more attention on it. 

The Company Born to Be 'Green'------Interface

    Have you ever heard of the company called interface?

    Well, probably you haven't heard of anything of this company,but maybe you can see its products everywhere in your office, classroom, or even museums! What can that name remind you of? An IT company? Something to do with Internet? Well, the answer is NO!

    Interface is the world's largest manufacturer of modular carpet. Their carpet tiles are very flexible, which means that you can cut them into any shapes without loosening the fibers of the carpet tiles. They released several collections in different themes. All of them are really finely designed and are made of recyclable materials. Actually, last week, my classmates and I just went to Interface and had a lecture about Interface's suatainable strategy. All of us were deeply impressed by Interface's remarkable approach to sustainability. Interface is not only the one of the companies that applied sustainable strategy into their current and future plans, but also is the only company which was founded because of sustainability. That means the product of Interface,A.K.A, the carpet tiles are only the intermediary of this company in order to promote their ideas of how to make the business case for sustainability.

    The speaker showed us different samples in the manufacturing of carpet tiles, including the fibers in the carpets, the polymers, etc. These substances gave us the intuitive overview of the life cycle assessment of Interface. Statistics showed that Interface could recycle 80% of their carpet tiles, and what's more gratifying is that Interface was moving towards the recycle rate to 100%! Who would ever noticed that a single piece of carpet tile may make a dramatic progress in being net positive to the environment!

     One of the programs that are on track is that the employees of Interface have created a technology to convert plastic fishing nets into the polymers and make the polymers into carpet tiles! They have released the particular program which calls for the villagers living in areas, where there are tons of broken fishing nets, to gather the wasted nets together so that they could process them easily.

      I don't know if there are still other companies that are as committed as Interface. At least Interface is a perfect example of combining sustainability and business together. No matter what reason for a company to apply sustainable strategy, this is undoubtly a global tendency that could be soon spread around all over the world. Anyway, I am looking forward to seeing the big transformation of the enterprises in the near future!

      For futher information, please go to http://www.interfaceglobal.com/default.aspx 

Still don't know what can each one of you do to stay 'green' ?

    Are you tired of hearing from the negative news about climate change? Do you feel that the natural disasters are too big for you to make some changes? Well, at least I am. Soon, I realized that thes e news can't help encourage people to take action against climate change. The only thing that they can do is to discourage people that how powerful nature is and how weak human beings are. Then I found an excellent blog called MY ZERO WASTE. It gives me plent of specific illustrations about things that individuals can do to protest food waste and pollution. I'm going to share this green blog with you.

        The blog is witten by a family living in the UK (I think...). There are four members in this family. They call themselves the Greens. They are trying to educate people to join them by their personal experiences. For instance, they stop using any plastic products every July  (including stop using plastic bags when buying vegetables and fruits, which I think is very difficult to accomplish that!) After that, they write about that in their blog and tell people that it's actually very easy to boycutt plastic bags in their life.

        In their blogs, besides their personal experiences, you can also find posts about their arguments on some social issues, for instance, excess packaging in supermarkets. Their opinions are really convicing since they always use photos and videos to illustrate their views. It's the same thing that happens to the STORY OF STUFF project. They make fantastic videos in order to arouse people to argue about the problems in their political, social and commercial systems.

        I made a comment about the article 'Is this the answer to reducing food waste?'.(http://myzerowaste.com/2014/06/is-this-the-answer-to-reducing-food-waste/) In this article, they said that many of the fruits and vegetables are thrown away only because that they have abnormal physical appearance. People prefer the ones that look good and ignore the ones that look ugly. They investigated a French supermarket brand and learnt that this brand is promote the concept that these vegetables and fruits have the same nutrition as the one with normal appearance. This brand actually started to sell 'inglorious' vegetables and fruits in supermarkets and make them into juice and other products. They let people taste them for free! Surprising, the brand received plenty of positive feedback from people and saved a lot of money since they didn't have to throw these 'inglorious' vegetables away.

       So, would you join us and apply these suggestion into your life? Stop complaining about the weather and start to take action! Just believe you can do more!

        For further information, please go to http://myzerowaste.com 

  

Wanna invest in a green mutual fund? Try it!

Don't know what you can do to save this planet? Think your - only a person's ability is too weak to shift the businesses' future sustainability plans? It's time for me to tell you that all these thoughts are completely wrong! Investing a green mutual fund could be your prefect choice to contribute to saving the planet and earning more money at the same time! In this post, I'm going to recommend a green mutual fund called The Brown Advisory Sustainable Growth Fund to you.   

The fund is owned by Brown Advisory, an  independently-owned investment firm. Their goal is to provide clients the highest level of investment and strategic advice, service and individualized attention. Brown Advisory is not a lending institution or an investment bank. They do not trade for their own account, underwrite securities or carry credit exposure of any kind on their balance sheet. Their firm capital consists almost entirely of shareholders equity.

The Brown Advisory Sustainable Growth Fund (BIAWX) seeks for long-term capital appreciation by investing in a concentrated portfolio of companies that effciently inplement environmantally sustainable business strategies to drive their prospects for future earnings growth.The Fund's investing approach are generating tangible business results, in the forms of revenue growth, cost improvement, or enhanced franchise value.

The particular sector that they are paying the most attention to is industrials, which accounts for 34% of their total sector exposure. Also, information technology occupies 30% and consumer discretionary occupies 18%. The rest of the sectors they expose are materials, healthcare and consumer staples.

The fund has returned 22.51 percent over the past year. In the past 5 years,  the performance of this fund was rather positive. Its stock price kept increasing from below $10 to above $14. Although it's not a large scale of increase, as I mentioned before, it's a long-term investment. Besides, it has very little risk. So, in summery, it's still a mutual fund that is worth investing in. 

For further information, please go to http://money.usnews.com/funds/mutual-funds/large-growth/brown-advisory-sustainable-growth-fund/bafwx and http://www.brownadvisoryfunds.com/biawx.html