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Looks like hip new disrupter of motor vehicles, Tesla, is running into a few problems selling those silent vehicles of tomorrow. You would swear they are silent killers the way the motor vehicle dealers are complaining and moaning about Tesla selling their cars directly to those who want to bypass the good old carbon-coughing combustion engine. Five states have banned Tesla selling directly to the consumer – New Jersey being the latest. Christie decided to stop Tesla like traffic trying to cross a bridge…

But I’m not here to talk about Tesla. I want one but can’t afford one even though the company has a location literally just down the road from where I live, and no, they are not a client so I have no skin in this game. But I am having issues with the fake free market advocates.

The myth of the “free market”… So often business and its sidekick the business association use the free market as their defense against any threat of government regulations or anyone talking about the need for companies to focus a wee bit on sustainability or CSR or, the hot new favorite, shared value. Please, the concept of the “free market” is as big a lie as the urban myth that Mr. Rogers was a Navy Seal. Or that the check is in the mail. Or the Cubs winning the World Series next year. Or any year.

Companies use this idea of the free market when it suits them. But it is nothing but a nice idea that doesn’t exist in the real world. If markets were truly free we wouldn’t have all the subsidies, incentives, trade protection etc that so many companies benefit from or lobby for in some way.

Oil companies get subsidies. Agricultural companies get subsidies. Almost everything over in the U.S. is paid for by the consumer – twice. First some of their taxes go to those companies who then charge them for those same products that they helped subsidize. A bit of a swindle if you ask me as it creates the idea that goods are cheaper than what they really are. No they are not. They are damn expensive because you pay twice.

Do companies seriously want to hide behind the free market? Then give back your subsidy. Drop the demands for more favorable trade rules. Or be honest and transparent and accept that your business is about making money within a set of rules. Live with it even when all those rules don’t slap you on the back and give you money.

Or own up and let’s compete on a level playing field. Then Tesla will kick your butt. African farmers will dance circles around you. And everyone else will point and laugh at your attempt to play it straight.

But if you want to go down the road of asking for protection and subsidies, then live with the fact that we will ask you to be responsible and sustainable because we pay for you – twice. We own a little bit of you. And because we know so many of you speak in tongues we don’t understand, we will polity ask and then demand before we force regulations on you to be honest, open and transparent about what you do and how you spend all that money that comes from us to you – twice. So put up those GMO labels. Control your emissions. Pay fair wages. And don’t try to sell us snake oil.

So the next time you see businesses cry foul about the “free market” – please think again. It’s a myth and an excuse. Own up or else let Tesla sell to whoever the hell they want. Or maybe it is time for Mr. Rogers, the Navy SEAL, to come visit you. If he was still around. But he is missing. Like the free market.

Image credit: Flickr/Kevin Copps

The highly anticipated  BMW i8 plug-in hybrid electric car is entering production in April, with customer deliveries beginning in June. It will be available on the European market first and is sure to make a splash, with this highly differentiated plug-in hybrid.

i8 vehicle specs

The complete specs of the car that were recently released were more impressive than initial estimates, with fuel consumption of 112 mpg for this plug-in hybrid, helping to strategically position the i8 for commercial success. The electricity consumption was rated at 19.1 kWh per 100 miles, an impressive figure for a sports car. It can go 62 mph in 4.4 seconds and reaches a top speed of 155 mph (electronically limited).

As a plug-in hybrid it has an all electric range of 23 miles from the 7.1 kw battery, which can be charged 80 percent in less than two hours using a 230-volt socket. The combustion engine is activated when the battery drops below a specified minimum or at high speeds.

Lightweight materials

The i8 and its cheaper cousin, the i3, both make extensive use of carbon fiber -- a composite material that is lighter than steel and aluminum but has similar strength to steel and can withstand high stress. Amory Lovins has been urging the auto industry to utilize carbon fiber materials for years, touting their ability to reduce fuel consumption due to their light weight, while boosting safety, but the cost is currently high, thus it is primarily used in niche markets. Because of extensive use of carbon fiber and aluminum, the BMW i8 weighs only 3,274 pounds.

Hybrid electric vehicle powertrain

The i8 is an all-wheel drive vehicle, with a motor for each axle. There is a 131-horsepower electric motor powering the front wheels. On the rear axle, there's a 1.5-liter, 3-cylinder turbocharged unit making 231 HP. The two motors combined make 362 HP. When the car drives in the zero-emission all-electric mode, the front motor powers the car, thus becoming a front-wheel drive vehicle. It can then achieve tops speeds of 75 mph.

BMW says demand for the $136,625  sports car has been strong, but have disclosed few details. "Demand for the BMW i8 is already exceeding the planned production volume during ramp-up," BMW said in a statement. BMW and Tesla are proving there is a demand for high-performance electric vehicles.

The BMW i8 has certainly attracted a lot of attention, which is typical of high-performance dream cars, but this car has earned the attention. In the end however, does the i8 help advance the electrification of cars or make the industry more sustainable?

Greener cars

The quicker that the price of carbon fiber falls, the better. Ramping up production and use of this material will lead to falling prices and more widespread use. Its introduction into the luxury car market will likely help it spread into more widespread use, which can have a significant impact on fuel economy.

BMW is considered one of the more sustainable automakers, and the BMW i8 also draws a lot of attention and keeps electrified vehicles on our minds, even if it is outside of our price range.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV3DmhubghQ

Image credit: BMW Group

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Sarah Lozanova is a regular contributor to environmental and energy publications and websites, including Mother Earth Living, Green Building & Design, Triple Pundit, Urban Farm, and Solar Today. Her experience includes work with small-scale solar energy installations and utility-scale wind farms. She earned an MBA in sustainable management from the Presidio Graduate School and she resides in Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage in Midcoast Maine with her husband and two children.

Cape Wind is an offshore wind energy project in Nantucket Sound which will consist of 130 wind turbines producing up to 420 megawatts of energy. The first of its kind in the U.S., it has been in development for more than 10 years.

A U.S. District Court judge in Washington, D.C. ruled against opponents of Cape Wind in four lawsuits that challenged the project’s permitting approval by the U.S. Department of Interior. The judge upheld the Department of the Interior’s review and approval of Cape Wind, a permitting process that took nearly 10 years. The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound originally filed four legal challenges in 2010. William Koch, the billionaire oil man, is the group’s largest funder. The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound previously filed 14 lawsuits against the project and all of them failed.

Opponents of the project had a list of legal claims which included environmental impacts. However, national and regional environmental groups support Cape Wind. The project was reviewed by 17 federal and state agencies, producing an administrative record of more than 400,000 pages. The nine-year approval process was “much longer than a traditional coal power plant, which typically gets approval in just two years,” according to the National Resources Defense Council. The project underwent two federal environmental reviews from the Department of Interior and Army Corps of Engineers, and both agencies approved the project. In addition, there were state and local environmental reviews and approvals.

Back in 2010, when the Department of the Interior approved the Cape Wind project, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said that the federal agency conducted a “ lengthy review and consultation process and thorough analyses of the many factors involved” that lasted almost a decade. “I believe that this undertaking can be developed responsibly and with consideration to the historic and cultural resources in the project area,” Salazar said.

Cape Wind could provide enough energy to meet 75 percent of the electricity demand on Cape Cod and the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. The offshore wind farm is projected to create 600 to 1,000 jobs in Massachusetts. It would also be one of the largest greenhouse gas reduction initiatives in the U.S -- reducing carbon dioxide emissions from conventional power plants by 700,000 tons a year, which is equivalent to removing 175,000 cars from the road for a year.

The U.S. has tremendous offshore potential. The Department of Energy estimates that the U.S. offshore wind energy potential along the coasts and Great Lakes could provide 900,000 MW of electricity, which is almost equal to the nation’s current total installed capacity. There are more than a dozen other offshore wind projects being developed in the U.S. Cape Wind President Jim Gordon said that the judgment in favor of the project represents an “incredibly important legal victories for Cape Wind” and helps “pave the way for other coastal regions to utilize this clean energy resource for energy independence, a healthier environment and new jobs.”

Image credit: Igor E.

Apple enthusiasts in the U.S. looking to upgrade their iPhones have been able to trade in their old devices for a newer model at Apple stores since last summer. But now the tech giant is expanding its iPhone buyback and recycling program to Canadian stores, the Vancouver Sun reported, offering store credit of up to $275 for working but unwanted iPhones.

The trade-in program is an affordable way for consumers to move up to a newer iPhone model, the Calif.-based company said in a statement, and represents a larger trend of retailers and mobile carriers jumping into the growing market for refurbished electronic devices already occupied by companies like Gazelle. There will be approximately 396 million idle or inactive mobile devices in the U.S. by the end of the year, marketing analytics firm Compass Intelligence predicts, and of all those electronics, only 80 million will be recycled – clearly indicating an opportunity for increased collection and recycling.

Prior to the expansion of Apple’s in-store buyback program, Canadian iPhone users could mail in old devices to the company for recycling, but did not receive any cash or store credit in return. Now Canadians can bring an iPhone into any Apple retail location, where staff will evaluate the phone’s condition and determine the amount of credit the company will pay – up to a maximum of $275. Devices for either business or personal use are both eligible for the trade-in program, Apple said, and stores will also accept non-working phones for recycling. Phones collected at Apple’s Canadian stores will be handled by mobile phone distributor Brightstar Corp., the Canadian Broadcast Corp. reported.

Apple rolled out its iPhone buyback program in the U.S. last August and in the United Kingdom, France and Germany earlier this year.

While it’s difficult to compare prices for used iPhones promised by different companies (prices vary widely based on phone model and condition), Apple’s $275 maximum trade-in credit is priced to compete with the other retailers, mobile carriers and electronics buyback companies vying for your old smart phone.

Image credit: Apple

Passionate about both writing and sustainability, Alexis Petru is freelance journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area whose work has appeared on Earth911, Huffington Post and Patch.com. Prior to working as a writer, she coordinated environmental programs for Bay Area cities and counties. Connect with Alexis on Twitter at @alexispetru

Earlier this month, the news was filled with stories about recent studies that showed the growing, and often devastating, impacts of climate change – from an increase in malaria cases in Africa and South America to heavier losses in global crop yields to spikes in crime.

Yet, Americans don’t seem to be overly concerned. A new Gallup survey looking at the degree Americans worry about different issues found that only 24 percent of Americans worry a great deal about climate change. Fifty-one percent of them worry about it very little or not at all.

So what do you think when you read that?

I know it’s very easy to get upset about these results or wonder if this is that surprising given the American record so far on climate change, but if you leave these emotions aside for a minute you can actually find some interesting lessons in this survey that might even give us a clue about the way to change these results.

1. Learn how the budget deficit is framed

Behavioral economist Dr. Dan Ariely explains it very clearly – if we had to design a problem that would maximize human apathy, we would come up with climate change. “Think about all the elements,” he says, “long in the future, will happen to other people first, we don’t see [it] progressing, we don’t see anybody suffering and anything we would do is a drop in the bucket.”

It makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Interestingly, the elements Ariely describes seem to apply also to the federal budget deficit. It’s a long-term issue, it’s difficult to see actual progress, you don’t really see anyone suffering now because of the debt (unless you count people who receive less support in food stamps), poor people will feel it first and there’s nothing much you can do to solve it.

So how come this issue (“government spending and the budget deficit”) got to second place on Gallop’s list, with 58 percent worrying great deal about it, only one point less than the issue that came in first (the economy)?

One explanation is that the difference is due to the way these issues are framed in the public discourse. Climate change has been framed as a long-term problem with questionable and unproven impacts, while the budget deficit has been framed as a big and urgent problem, which will lead us to “a future in which we’re impoverished by the need to pay back money we’ve been borrowing,” as Paul Krugman describes it.

So the problem with climate change is not necessarily about the fact that we are not wired to worry over long-term issues (although this is probably true), but that it is poorly framed. Maybe taking a look at the playbook of those promoting the budget deficit as an urgent matter that we should all be worried about right now will help figuring out how to reframe climate change.

2. “Climate change” has become a tainted concept

How else can you explain the fact that 66 percent of the respondents say they worry either a great deal (31 percent) or a fair amount (35 percent) about the quality of the environment while only 49 percent worry similarly about climate change (24 percent and 25 percent respectively).

The only explanation I have, other than that many respondents watched Johan Rockstrom’s TED talk about planetary boundaries and are worried about the health of other systems, is that the efforts to question the scientific basis of climate change and the integrity of the people leading the fight against it have succeeded.

The result is that we have “the environment” as a more neutral concept that a larger number of people feel is worthy enough to worry about, and “climate change/global warming” that apparently get some people who worry about the environment uncomfortable enough to scale down their concerns about it or not worry at all.

3. People don’t connect the dots between climate change and other problems

When you look at the list of problems that people worry about more than climate change it is apparent that part of the problem is that people don’t connect the dots between climate change and its impacts on many issues they seem to worry much more about. The economy is one thing, but the list goes on to include the availability and affordability of energy, hunger and even crime and violence.

It’s clear that for many people communicating the concept of climate change just as a huge problem isn’t effective. The “one explanation for all” mechanism to fight climate change, like the one we saw on An Inconvenient Truth, just doesn’t work anymore. There’s a need now to address different audiences with different arguments in accordance with the issues they’re more worried about.

It is worth mentioning though that we should be careful of not characterizing climate change as the meta-problem responsible for every major problem in the world – people just won’t buy it.

4. Democrats are also part of the problem

You might not be too surprised to hear that only 10 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaners worry about climate change according to the survey, but it might be surprising that only 36 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaners do so.

These figures mean the Democrats are part of the problem as much as the Republicans are. It’s a different scale comparing to Republicans, but it is still worthwhile noting that Democrats are also influenced from an environment where climate change is mostly on the defense.

It would be only fair to mention that last week 28 U.S. Democratic senators “held an all-night 'talkathon' Monday to call attention to climate change.” This is great, but these senators (and their fellow Democrats on the Hill) will need to have many more sleepless nights if they really want to see a change in the way climate change is perceived in general and in the Democratic camp in particular.

Image credit: Marian Gonzalez, Flickr Creative Commons

Raz Godelnik is an Assistant Professor of Strategic Design and Management at Parsons The New School of Design. You can follow Raz on Twitter.

If you’re a New Jersey resident thinking about buying a Tesla Model S, you’d better act fast: You have until the end of the month to purchase the all-electric sedan from the company’s stores in the Garden State. Starting April 1, the luxury electric car maker will not be able to sell cars from its New Jersey stores, according to a ruling made last week by the state’s motor vehicle commission.

New Jersey joins Texas and Arizona in prohibiting car manufacturers from selling vehicles directly to consumers, in favor of having franchised dealerships make auto sales. Tesla does not use dealerships to sell its Model S sedan, but instead, markets it cars online and at company-owned stores.

As to be expected, Tesla CEO Elon Musk was not happy about the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission’s recent decision, calling it an attack on technological innovation and consumer choice and “an affront to the very concept of the free market” in a post to the company’s blog on Friday.

According to Musk, auto dealer franchise laws were enacted to prevent instances of car manufacturers pressuring franchisees to sell dealerships back to auto companies at a low price – after the franchisees invested considerable capital in building their businesses. These laws are written reasonably and clearly in most states, Musk wrote on the Tesla blog, but in some states, the law’s language is ambiguous, and the car dealership lobby is trying to use the legislation to compel Tesla to sell its vehicles through their businesses.

Why does the electric car maker chose to bypass dealerships and use a direct sales model? Musk wrote that car dealerships don’t have a vested interest in promoting electric vehicles: Sales of gasoline-powered cars account for nearly all of a dealer’s revenue, while electric car sales currently make up none of its income. Musk pointed to Fisker and Coda as electric car companies that failed in their efforts to market vehicles at traditional dealerships.

In addition, Musk wrote, car dealerships make the bulk of their profit from servicing vehicles, but electric vehicles require far less service than their gas-guzzling counterparts – another disincentive to dealers pushing electric cars to their customers.

Musk also pointed the finger at New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, already embroiled in the George Washington “Bridgegate” scandal, who he said went back on previous commitments to bring the proposed ruling to a vote in the state legislature. But Christie’s office disagreed, telling the Huffington Post, “Since Tesla first began operating in New Jersey one year ago, it was made clear that the company would need to engage the legislature on a bill to establish their new direct-sales operations under New Jersey law."

Supporters of the motor vehicle commission’s decision, including the New Jersey Coalition of Automotive Retailers, say the policy doesn’t just protect auto dealers, but also safeguards consumers. Manufacturers see warranty and safety recalls as a headache, Coalition President Jim Appleton told ABC News, but dealerships are incentivized to report warranty and safety recalls to consumers because they are paid to perform recall services by car companies.

Will a ban on Tesla’s direct sales in three states – and a proposed ban in New York – put a damper on the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company? In the Internet age, you can buy anything online – and the same holds true for a Model S. Tesla’s New Jersey stores will cease car sales on March 30 and then become car-viewing “galleries,” but electric car enthusiasts in the Garden State can buy a Tesla anytime online. With a car battery “Gigafactory” and new car models in the works, it is unlikely that anything can stop Telsa’s momentum – or Musk’s so-crazy-they-just-might-work solutions to tricky problems.

Image credit: Tesla Motors

Passionate about both writing and sustainability, Alexis Petru is freelance journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area whose work has appeared on Earth911, Huffington Post and Patch.com. Prior to working as a writer, she coordinated environmental programs for Bay Area cities and counties. Connect with Alexis on Twitter at @alexispetru

General Motors announced the opening last week of its latest LEED Gold engine factory in Joinville, Brazil -- the first LEED Gold automotive plant in South America.

The plant features a 350 kW solar CHP array that provides enough electricity to handle all the lighting for both the factory floor and the offices. That’s equivalent to powering 220 homes. At the same time, it heats 15,000 liters (3,962 gallons) of hot water per day. Together, the heat and power generated provides a combined savings of 28 tons of CO2 per day: 10.5 tons from the electricity and 17.6 tons from the hot water heating.

The plant, which is GM’s sixth LEED-certified plant worldwide, also contains a reverse-osmosis water purification system that recycles wastewater for industrial purposes such as cooling towers. This filtration system, an automotive first, saves an estimated 22.9 million liters (6 million gallons) per year, enough to fill nine Olympic-sized swimming pools. The plant also harvests natural light and utilizes plantings to pre-filter wastewater.

The plant’s completion was delayed by strong rains and floods in the area.

Santiago Chamorro, president, General Motors do Brasil, said: “The environmental performance of this plant has been on our minds since Day One of construction. This operation embodies GM’s outlook on integrating sustainability into every decision we make – from building efficient facilities to designing efficient vehicles.”

Since 2005, GM’s Brazilian operations have reduced water consumption by 58 percent and energy use by 36 percent on a per-vehicle basis. Non-recyclable waste was reduced by 76 percent, putting the operation on the path to landfill-free status, something GM has been committed to.

When I spoke with John Bradburn, GM’s manager of waste reduction last summer, they were up to 106 plants that were landfill-free worldwide, including six in South America. Many of them are using things like excess plastic and paint sludge to make pallets, eliminating the need for wooden pallets.

David Tulauskas, GM’s sustainability chief, told me last year that: “Traditionally, companies have been considered great if they delivered great quarterly results. Going forward, greatness is going to depend not only on financial results, but on their environmental and social performance. That’s how we’re approaching it at GM. This is about top-line growth opportunities, bottom line improvements and risk mitigation that delivers long term stakeholder value in a responsible manner."

GM’s first factory given LEED certification by the U.S. Green Building Council was in Lansing Delta Township, Mich. It began production near the end of 2006. That plant, which used more than 25 percent recycled material in its construction, has a roof made of a special polymer to minimize heat absorption and is expected to save $1 million in annual energy costs. It is also uses roof drains and other water conservation practices to save more than 15 million liters (3.9 million gallons) per year. That factory also received a Gold rating

This is one area where large multinationals can spread constructive and sustainable ideas across the planet, while saving money and improving their image at the same time.

Do projects of this type actually save money? According to information posted by NRDC, LEED projects on average show little to no difference in upfront construction costs if planned properly, while they often cost considerably less money to operate.

Images courtesy of General Motors

RP Siegel, PE, is an inventor, consultant and author. He writes for numerous publications including Justmeans, ThomasNet, Huffington Post, and Energy Viewpoints. He co-wrote the eco-thriller Vapor Trails, the first in a series covering the human side of various sustainability issues including energy, food, and water in an exciting and entertaining romp that is currently being adapted for the big screen. Now available on Kindle.

Follow RP Siegel on Twitter.

Yes, everyone values solar power—except maybe Big Oil—but how much is it actually worth in terms of dollars and cents? At least the start of an answer came last week from the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission.

Minnesota is the first state in the nation to craft a “value-of-solar” formula for calculating the value of solar power generated by consumers. The big deal is that the methodology is not just about how much solar power is worth to the utility company and its customers, but to society and the environment, according to a ThinkProgress article.

“Minnesota has really set itself apart by determining a methodology to calculate the true value of solar to the electricity grid — a value that should include the full range of benefits as well as the costs,” said Mari Hernandez, energy research associate at the Center for American Progress, as quoted in the article. “This decision could influence other states as they evaluate how to move forward with their own solar-related policies.”

Why is this important? Well, for one thing we put values on fossil-fuels: Stocks rise or fall as the cost of a barrel of oil fluctuates. Carbon-pricing is also a factor in calculating the cost of various sequestration and emissions reduction technologies. When a consumer installs a solar system, it’s not all about feeling good and doing the right thing to cut back on the electricity that comes from fossil fuels. There’s also a clear benefit to the utility companies.

As the article relates, solar panels feed excess energy back to the grid, helping to alleviate the pressure during peak demand hours. Also, because less electricity is being transmitted to customers through transmission lines, it saves utilities on the wear and tear to the lines and cost of replacing them with new ones.

The trick lies in determining the worth of the excess solar power produced by customers and sold back to the grid. All of which makes Minnesota’s move groundbreaking: The commission chose to look beyond the economic value of solar power to the utility and take into consideration the cost to society and the environment that comes from burning fossil fuels. The decision comes after “nearly two years of discussions among state officials, utility representatives and solar advocates,” prompted by a 2013 bill “requiring the state’s energy office to develop a formula that utilities may use to determine how it should compensate customers who generate electricity from solar panels,” Midwest Energy News reported.

Thus the commission adopted the U.S. government’s "social cost of carbon" estimate of how much carbon emissions harm the economy — such as the cost to public health, agricultural output, sea-level rise and other damaging effects that stem from carbon pollution and climate change.

As Jeff Spross has explained on Climate Progress, such estimates vary widely, and “the relevant science has put together studies pegging the SCC at anything from $55 per ton, to $100 per ton, to as much as $900 per ton.”

That’s a huge and potentially meaningless range, which makes Minnesota’s decision to use the government’s calculation a precedent for states looking to determine the true impact of clean energy.

“Investor-owned utilities will now have the voluntary option of applying to use the value-of-solar formula instead of the retail electricity rate when crediting customers for unused electricity they generate from solar panels,” according to the Midwest Energy News report.

It’s all about the metering, apparently. The state’s new formula is optional, but solar customers in Minnesota will be backed up by the current compensation structure, a policy called net metering. Hernandez says it’s worth pointing out the differences between the state’s new voluntary tariff and the state’s current net metering policy. Through net metering, customers who generate their own renewable power, such as solar power, receive a credit for any excess electricity they produce beyond what they use on-site. Under a value of solar tariff — also considered a feed-in tariff — customers buy all of the electricity they use on-site from the utility, and then sell all of the solar power they produce to the utility.

That’s where calculating the value of solar power—including its worth to the stakeholders involved as well as to society and the environment—becomes a bit dodgy, difficult and likely controversial. The point is that utilities don’t really want to pay customers using solar power, they want to get paid.

Image: Williams/Rooftop Solar Panels by SolarEWorld via Flickr CC

You’ve heard of recycling leftover food scraps into a soil amendment for farms, but now a California startup is transforming food waste from grocery stores into a fertilizer that can compete with conventional nitrogen-based soil conditioners that leach chemicals into groundwater, rivers and oceans.

We interviewed Dan Morash, founder of West Sacramento-based California Safe Soil (CSS), to learn more about how its Harvest-to-Harvest (H2H) fertilizer saves resources, reduces pollution and improves soil.

TriplePundit: How is your product, H2H, environmentally responsible?

Dan Morash: It makes productive use of something that is otherwise being wasted. Each 1,000 pounds of food waste generates 700 pounds of carbon dioxide and methane greenhouse gas emissions, as well as hydrogen sulfide – swamp gas – which is poisonous and leaches into ground water. We cut greenhouse gas emissions by reducing truck traffic, since our facilities are located near the supermarkets [where CSS picks up food waste], rather than in remote locations.

On the farm side, farms can cut their use of nitrate fertilizer and still increase crop yield, reducing the rate of nitrate runoff into groundwater.  H2H can be delivered directly through drip lines to the crop root zone. Drip line technology is over 90 percent efficient in [transporting water]. The alternative technology, flood irrigation, is less than 50 percent efficient. Now, farms have every incentive to convert to drip, since they can deliver water, fertilizer and organic material, all through their drip lines.

3p: What is the process to turn food waste into fertilizer? How is it similar or different from the processes undertaken at conventional commercial composting facilities?

DM: We use heat, enzymes and mechanical action to pull the nutrients from food – similar to human digestion. The product contains the same nutrients that enter your blood stream and sustain your body.  The process takes only three hours, including pasteurization, which is done for food safety. Composting takes three months. Over that time, microbes metabolize the nutrients in food and produce the aforementioned 70 percent conversion to carbon dioxide and methane emissions. Compost has many positive benefits, such as improving soil tilth and water-holding capacity. However, most of the nutrients are gone by the time the process is completed.

3p: Since food waste degrades in three months with traditional composting and three hours with your process, does your process require more energy and other resources than conventional composting?

DM: Food waste doesn’t degrade with our process. Enzymes cut long-chain molecules, like proteins, fats and carbohydrates, into short-chain molecules, like amino acids, fatty acids, and simple sugars – which are ubiquitously available to organisms that live in the soil. Our process requires electricity to run our equipment and warm water to heat our digester. It is not energy intensive, especially compared with the energy used to transport food waste to remote composting locations and the energy required to turn and aerate compost windrows.

3p: Where are you currently collecting food waste?

DM: Safeway, Save Mart, Nugget Markets, Whole Foods and Grocery Outlet [in the West Sacramento area].

3p: You’re currently collecting food waste for free, but plan to charge customers for that service in the future. How will you make your collection cost-competitive with garbage company rates?

DM: By charging less than the garbage companies charge. We can do this because our facilities are located near the supermarkets, compared to remotely located landfills, and because we produce a valuable finished product, so we do not just rely on “tip fees” charged to customers for our financial viability.

3p: How much food waste have you collected and converted into fertilizer since you started the company?

DM: We have been running a pilot plant in West Sacramento for nearly two years, where we have collected approximately 1,000 tons of food waste, which we have converted to 200,000 gallons of fertilizer – enough for 4,000 acres of sustainable farming for one year.

3p: Where do you sell H2H? Who are your biggest customers?

DM: Our target markets are California farms [that grow] almonds, strawberries, leafy greens/vegetables, tomatoes and wine grapes... We also expect to sell retail through a retail supplier of organic fertilizers.

3p: What benefits does the H2H fertilizer offer? What were the findings of the independent research trials on H2H conducted at the University of California, Davis?

DM: We have shown crop yield increases from 10 to 40 percent in our target crops. We have also shown significant increases in soil organic matter. Tests show that farmers can save money by using H2H and reduce their use of nitrate fertilizers and compost.

3p: Ninety percent of the food waste you collect is converted into fertilizer. What happens to the remaining 10 percent?

DM: It has tested very well as an organic pig feed. We have a balanced diet, which gets chewed, cooked, digested and pasteurized. The solids are easy for pigs to digest and popular with the pigs. Farmers get a higher conversion ratio – more pig and less manure – than with conventional feed.

3p: What are your company’s plans for the near future?

DM: We are about to announce an agreement in principle with a major supermarket: It will provide us with all the produce, meat, deli and bakery items it can’t sell or donate from all its stores. This will result in the construction of two CSS commercial-scale projects, starting later this year.

Image credit: Dan Morash

Passionate about both writing and sustainability, Alexis Petru is freelance journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area whose work has appeared on Earth911, Huffington Post and Patch.com. Prior to working as a writer, she coordinated environmental programs for Bay Area cities and counties. Connect with Alexis on Twitter at @alexispetru

The global anti-corruption organisation Transparency International is now accepting nominations for its 2014 Integrity Awards.

Launched in 2000, the awards recognise the courage and determination of individuals and groups taking remarkable steps to combat corruption, often at great personal risk.

Past winners come from all walks of life and have included a schoolteacher and a pilot as well as public officials, activists and journalists. Between them they have brought down corrupt politicians, exposed organised crime networks and helped recover millions in stolen assets. Their actions echo a common message: corruption can be challenged.

In 2013, awards were presented to Angolan human rights activist Rafael Marques de Morais and Chinese journalist and blogger Luo Changping.

The nominations are judged by a committee of 11 experts from the anti-corruption movement.

Nominations are open to the public and can be submitted here until 1 June 2014.

This year’s winners will receive their trophies after September 2014.
 

 

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