The Challenge Your World Blog

 There are any number of actions a company can take to make them greener than they were but at what point should a company be considered green (or green enough)? This can be hard to decide, especially for small companies that don’t necessarily have enough resources to invest in long term solutions. People have wide ranging views on this point, some saying that any little bit ought to be encouraged, while the other side saying that unless they go all the way it isn’t good enough.  [...]

The entrepreneur blog, Be Excellent, collected and debunked 10 myths surrounding strategic planning. They obviously think it can help any business, by communicating goals, organising an entreprise and securing your investment. Here is a roundup of the 10 myths: 1. “We don’t need a strategic plan!” 2. Strategic planning can only be done at a resort. 3. “It interferes with our real jobs.” 4. “We can do it without any help.” 5. Planning will predict the future. 6. Planning is done when the retreat is over. 7. The plan is a binder on a shelf. 8. The plan will automatically produce results.  9. If the CEO says it, it will happen. [...]

GOOD.is have a piece on what they call “Fancy” bottled water. They argue the validity of selling natural source water versus the cheap trick big companies pulled by filtering tap water and selling it back to the consumer. They invite a water sommelier, Michael Mascha, to talk about the virtues of natural source water. According to him, the big companies (Coke and Pepsi, among others) jumped on the occasion to pass as legitimate water sellers, when they actually just confuse the customer by using real source water to sell their own product. Tap bottle water is a waste of money and resources to bottle the same water we can all get, whereas source [...]

 The recession has not stopped consumers from buying green, according to a Green Brands survey conducted by Cohn and Wolfe. Miller Zell, a retail consulting firm conducted another survey showing that all consumers are willing to pay a higher price for their green products, not only richer ones. To the question regarding how likely they would be to spend more for a green product, the 999 consumers, divided into 3 income groups: low, middle and high) had to answer whether or not they would pay a premium price, and if not, what would be the price difference that they would accept. While low-income consumers were less inclined to pay a higher price, [...]

 Your office is already using 100% post-consumer paper ? Reusing printing mistakes for note-taking, and recycling everything else too ?  Well, there is a way to go even greener. Ink usage vary greatly depending on which font you use. A recent study conducted by Matt Robinson tries to show the different amounts of ink that are used depending on the font type. According to his experiments, light and sans-serif fonts use less ink than their "heavier" counterparts. Garamond and Courier are the lightest ink users in his test, while Impact and Cooper Black were the heaviest on ink. It's worth nothing that there is another font, Ecofont, that uses less [...]

 Guy Kawasaki tallied up a list of the top 10 lies entrepreneurs love to say in a meeting. Lies is a harsh word  of course, but those expressions are cliché and shouldn't be used too liberally. With his lists he comments and gives alternatives (when applicable) as to how to approach those subjects.  I'll list the lies here, and make sure you read the post to get the full info ! “Our projections are conservative.” “(Big name research firm) says our market will be $50 billion in 2010.” “(Big name company) is going to sign our purchase order next week.” “Key employees are set to join us as soon as we get funded.” “No one is doing what we're [...]

According to the Green Inc. Blog, Congress appears to be close to restoring the $100 million that were cut earlier this year in the hydrogen car research field. Last Friday, the House of Representative voted in favor (20-90) of the $26 billion in the Department of Energy. $153 million of that amount are going in the hydrogen and fuel cells. Of course, with this bill passed, the ball is now in the court of the Senate, and Robert Rose, from the United States Fuel Cell Council, is hoping the Senate will vote on it before the scheduled recess in August, which is to say in the next 2 weeks. This could be great news for the hydrogen car community of [...]

We were talking about the water footprint yesterday. A dying company in California, Colorep, is taking water out of the equation in the cloth dying process. They use air to dye the clothes instead of the usual dozens of litres of water for every kilogram of product. This process, AirDye, uses a powerful stream of air to conduct the dye into the fabric, and requires less energy than the regular dying process, and no water at all. The drawback ? Well AirDye only works on synthetic fibers, and is only available in the U.S. at the moment. Colorep expects to export its technology in Europe before the end of the summer, and in Central America by the end [...]

Raffles City shopping centres are building 2 skyscrapers in Hangzou, China. They are building them according to the LEED guidelines, and they aim for the Gold status. The project will include commercial, residential, hotel and working office spaces, and will include transportation from within the complex. The project obviously aims to be environmentally friendly on multiple fronts: using ecologically smart materials for its construction and energy efficiency, as well as a reduced amount of materials for the construction. The architectural firm in charge of the project, UNStudio and Dutch archictect Ben van Berkel, think it is not only sustainable [...]

In the United Kingdom, 2 groups are pushing for a water footprint label to be printed on different products. The Sustain campaign, and the Food Ethics Council are pushing for a measure of how much of the precious liquid is used in the creation of products. For example, did you know that 140 litres of water were used in order to make a cup of coffee available to you ? Over 16,000 litres are required to create a kilogram of beef. They suggest a "litre of water per kilo of product" label on different products. Water is not a resource that everyone thinks about, everyday. Such a label could create a visibility for the scarcity of water around the [...]