Green Chemicals

I'll soon be posting some green chemistry news from the specialty chemical company Lanxess.

But while I'm working on it (and sipping my green tea frapp from a nearby Starbucks here in Pittsburgh, Pa), here's a cool game to ease your pain in waiting for my next post [with bated breath I assume].

Presenting Treewala, a vocabulary game that not only will make you learn more about the environment, it will also let you help contribute in saving a South American rainforest, according to this green social media company Greenwala Inc.

The company said Treewala tests a player's vocabulary skills and adapts the level of difficulty based on the number of correct answers. Players earn one leaf for every word they define correctly. Every leaf generates revenue, which Greenwala uses to buy trees to plant as part of the Marion Institute Los Gaviotas project.

When you get 20 leaves, you get to save one whole tree! Have fun planting!

I am off to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for two days attending a US bash given by the Germany-based specialty chemicals company Lanxess. The company is also celebrating their recent quarterly profit.

In case I'll be too muddled with their champagne and wine to be able to concentrate on posting any witty green news comments, I'll leave you today with this interesting video by ZDNet.com about Pittsburgh trying to shed its image of a gritty, grimy steel town starting with the construction of their new convention center, which is said to be one of the most environment-friendly buildings of its size in the US.

The building was awarded gold-level certification on the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design ratings scale set up by the U.S. Green Building Council.

[Thanks to GreenTechnoLog for the video tip]

Here's more bad news for plastic producers but good news for the environment.

According to ConAgra Foods, a major US packaged food manufacturer, they are planning to recycle 8 million pounds of plastic waste into new frozen meal trays for their brands Healthy Choice^®,Banquet^®, Kid Cuisine^® and Marie Callender's^® products.

I hate thinking of recycled plastics in contact with the food I eat but one must sacrifice for the sake of Mother Earth. I just hope these post consumer plastic producers do a damn good job in de-contaminating their products.

One assurance, according to ConAgra, is that the Food and Drug Administration approved the post-recycled trays as direct food contact materials. I wonder how the FDA's guidelines in recycled plastics for food packaging compare to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)?

Back to the ConAgra news, the company said their post-recycled food trays are on store shelves this summer.

Here's a nice cool story from the New York Times about a certain Nebraska town and its growing pride in their windy condition.

Ainsworth, Nebraska, according to the article, became the state's first major wind farm with 36 wind turbines erected in late 2005. Nebraska Public Power District, the state's largest utility, hopes that within a decade or so, 10 percent of its energy will be produced by clean, free, plentiful wind.

Here in the US, the wind energy sector is certainly keeping score and could even be ahead of the solar sector in terms of investments.

In the American Wind Energy Association's (AWEA) second quarter report, the US installed a total capacity of over 2,700 megawatts in the year and over 19,500 MW overall. AWEA said over 8,000 MW more are under construction for completion this year or early next year. Over 7,500 MW is likely to be installed in 2008.

Here are some of the projects recently announced in the past few weeks:

• Hydro Green Energy and the Wind Energy Systems Technology Group (W.E.S.T.) will explore the potential to develop the world's first hybrid offshore wind-hydrokinetic ocean current power projects that will utilize the Gulf of Mexico's wind and water currents to generate nearly 5,000 megawatts of clean, renewable electricity.

• IBERDROLA RENEWABLES today announced it has sold the output of a commercial-scale wind power project that is expected to be the first wind project constructed in Arizona.

• GE is partnering with ACCIONA and is investing $141 million in the Tatanka Wind Farm on the North Dakota-South Dakota border.
  

• American Electric Power signed a long-term power purchase agreement for renewable wind energy with Beech Ridge Energy LLC, a subsidiary of Invenergy Wind LLC. Beech's wind project currently under development in Greenbrier County, W.Va., is expected to be on line by March 31, 2010.

• Southern California Edison signed a 20-year contract with DCE, an affiliate of Caithness Energy, which will provide up to 909 megawatts of wind power. The Caithness project will reportedly be one of the world's largest fully permitted wind farms.

But they shouldn't celebrate as of yet, because according to AWEA, the expiration of the federal production tax credit less than five months from now threatens the wind energy sector's spectacular progress in the US.

AWEA said the pipeline of investment for 2009 has been on hold for months, with escalating risks and costs for the industry, because of the uncertainty about the production tax credit.

Step aside Whole Foods!

This up and coming organic retail chain store from Washington metro area, MOM's (which stands for My Organic Market) is taking its green initiative to the next level by phasing out all imported bottled water from their shelves.

"Once we thought about the amount of energy, oil, and water that go into producing, shipping, and disposing of a product that is readily available by simply turning on your faucet, we knew it was the right decision." said Lisa de Lima, the Vice President of Grocery at MOM's.

Another great green initiative of theirs, according to the store official, is that they are accepting used fluorescent light bulbs, old batteries, and plastic bags in any of its stores for recycling.

It seems congratulations are in order to more than 1,000 US builders, remodelers and other members of the home building industry who just got their green certification from the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB).

If you want to be green certified, the association said all you need to do is complete 24 hours of classroom training including 16 hours of green building instruction; must have two years' industry experience, must sign a code of ethics and must commit to fulfilling continuing education requirements to qualify for the designation.

With the US housing market not doing good, builders might as well get this to give them a slight edge among their competitors.

In another green building news, the US Department of Energy (DOE) launched its Zero-Net Energy Commercial Building Initiative (CBI) with the establishment of the National Laboratory Collaborative on Building Technologies Collaborative (NLCBT).

The Zero-Net Energy CBI will make new commercial buildings capable of generating as much energy as they consume available by 2025 through advanced energy efficiency technologies and on-site renewable energy generation systems, such as solar power and geothermal energy.

After being dismissed in California's legislation floor last year, the bill AB 706 was again revived although slightly amended in August 4 by its sponsor, Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco).

This time, AB 706 does not outrightly proposed a ban on brominated (BFRs) and chlorinated fire retardants (CFRs) but instead laid the banning discretion to California's Department of Toxic Substances Control.

The bill, however, will require the agency to look more closely into BFRs and CFRs. The bill will also require products containing 1% of more of the flame retardants to include a label that says they contain halogenated fire retardants.

In the end, the rewritten bill will probably arrive at the same conclusion as the original bill - banning halogenated flame retardants in California's furniture and bedding products.

According to the advocacy group Citizens for Fire Safety (CFFSI), the amended bill also calls for the elimination of California's current open flame standard testing in furnitures to be replaced with a yet to be developed standard that has no set date for adoption by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Who would want their furnitures and beddings without flame retardants? Sure they could look for healthier alternatives but until they find one or two that are proven effective, I'm sticking to the current versions and I don't need the local government taking away my "safety blanket". Good thing I don't live in California!

By the way, I was unable to upload a video on a recent flammability test conducted by Southwest Research Institute (paid for by CFFSI) comparing a sofa with fire retardant and one without. I searched You Tube and found a similar test instead.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a report last week Thursday stating that there is no health risk in the use of bisphenol-A in food containers for infants and adults.

The FDA is still proposing more testing strategy to erase the uncertainties surrounding BPA's use in food contact materials but for now the agency has concluded that based on their tests and calculations, an adequate margin of safety exists for BPA at current levels of exposure in food containers.

The American Chemistry Council released a statement saying the FDA's assessment is the most up-to-date analysis on the safety of bisphenol A in the world.

"The FDA's conclusions are supported by reviews recently conducted by the European Food Safety Authority and the Japanese National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, which point to an international consensus on the safety of bisphenol A in food-contact products," the ACC said.

The ACC needs to address and communicate quickly and efficiently that there is nothing to worry about BPA use to consumers, retailers and mass media or it won't matter whether scientific studies deem the chemical safe as long as green hysteria continues to reign.

[Photo from WashingtonPost.com]

Companies nowadays have to be careful in using green words when it comes to advertising, as government agencies are getting complaints from green groups...especially maybe if the advertiser is a big oil firm??

Read this new national advertising in the UK from Shell and let me know which word/s or sentence/s gave a greenwash flag. You get a prize of free subscription of Green Chemicals Blog if you find the correct answer!

After receiving the complaint about Shell's advertising from the World WildLife Fund (WWF), UK's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) advised Shell to pull the ad out because certain terms in the ad was misleading. Shell explained their side of the story but agreed to pull it when ASA was not swayed.

Shell said it was also just a one-time advertising.

You can read ASA's ruling on this link.

Why is California always seem to be ahead when it comes to ginormous green projects?

In the solar sector, Pacific Gas and Electric Company will soon be able to supply enough clean energy to 239,000 homes in California with its recent solar power contracts for a total of 800 megawatts with Topaz Solar Farms and High Plains Ranch II.

Topaz Solar's project would deliver 1.1m megawatt-hours annually of renewable electricity and is expected to begin power delivery in 2011 and be fully operational by 2013.

High Plains Ranch will deliver an average of 550,000 megawatt-hours of clean electricity annually and is expected to begin power delivery in 2010 and be fully operational in 2012.