Green Tech

(Credit: Prepara)

It's hard to ignore the incessant messages to buy local, plant a garden, check for organic labels, and lead a sustainable lifestyle, yet most of us dismiss these suggestions as practices that require too much money, time, and effort.

And it's true--they really do.

Last summer I went through a green phase, heading to the plant store to purchase soil, seeds, shovels, pots, and everything else that Martha Stewart suggests I buy. Well, $120 and two weeks later, I had forgotten I'd even planted a garden and deemed my project a failure.

Thankfully, there is hope for busy and forgetful people like me. The Prepara Power Plant doesn't require any soil, planting, or high maintenance. Herbs, small vegetables, fruits, and salad greens grow quickly, as the container provides the seeds with the right amount of nutrients and water.

It's not completely care-free, though--you must water the container and place it in sunlight (such as a window sill). But unlike outdoor gardens, the Power Plant Mini is always visible, so don't bother with excuses for neglecting your innocent plant.

Fresh food without bugs, dirt, digging, and worrying sounds like the perfect package. (Plus I can tell all my friends how green and sustainable I am.) Prepara lists the product for $39.99, but it can be purchased on Amazon for $29.99.

It's been criticized for contributing to the obesity epidemic and condemned by PETA, but now a Burger King franchise in the New York metro area has announced that it wants in on the green movement. The high-traffic restaurant in Hillside, N.J., will install a speed bump designed to harness the kinetic energy produced by the hundreds of cars that pass through the drive-thru daily.

As they wait for their Double Whopper, customers will roll through a section of the drive-thru lane lined with metal plates that move down and up as cars head to the next window. The MotionPower technology developed by Burtonsville, Md.-based New Energy Technologies, could harness and capture the energy twice daily, the company reports.

"More than 150,000 cars drive through our Hillside store alone each year, and I think it would be great to capture the wasted kinetic energy of these hundreds of thousands of cars to generate clean electricity," said Andrew Paterno, co-owner of 12 N.Y. metro-area Burger Kings. In its report, New Energy Technologies said it is partnering with BK for "durability testing," so it may be awhile before energy is actually captured and put to use. Once active, it's possible that the energy would be routed directly to the power grid.

So how is Burger King benefiting from this? It's unlikely one "green" speed bump will attract more customers (unless it relieves the guilt of an unhealthy meal). Instead of offsetting the restaurant's already wasted energy, BK should focus on the many ways it can reduce its energy usage in the first place. For example, recycling used vegetable oil, installing solar panels on the roof and windows, or transporting their proteins on low-impact trucks, such as this one.

Will an energy-producing speed bump eclipse Burger King's bad rep with environmentalists? Probably not. But I'll give them credit for playing guinea pig. New Energy Technologies, which develops other renewable energy, has a larger plan to install speed bumps in toll booths, streets, border crossings, and other high-traffic areas.

It looks so simple, and that's the key innovation.

The Kyoto Box consists of two cardboard boxes, one inside the other. The inner box is painted black to absorb sunlight, and the heat is trapped with a transparent acrylic lid. Captured solar energy heats up the air in the box enough to boil food and water and bake, but the stove is not powerful enough to fry food.

A prototype of the award-winning Kyoto Box solar cooker.

(Credit: Kyoto Energy)

The invention received the $75,000 FT Climate Change Challenge award last week. The competition, run by Forum for the Future with The Financial Times and Hewlett-Packard, had nearly 300 entries, which were judged on their contribution to tackling climate change.

"It feels good. It was the only finalist that was a solution for developing countries," Kyoto Energy CEO Jan Bohmer, a Norwegian-born entrepreneur based in Kenya, told CNET News during a call on a crackling phone line from Nairobi.

The invention was inspired by the 240-year-old "hot box," a heat catcher by Swiss inventor Horace de Sausseur, and it could solve problems plaguing rural areas of developing countries.

Deforestation is a huge problem in Africa, note the inventors of the Kyoto Box, who hope the stove could halve firewood use, saving trees and preventing carbon emissions. The Kyoto Box is targeted at people who currently use firewood, a fuel that takes the rural poor hours of hard labor per day to collect, and can cause health problems when the fumes from the often primitive stoves are breathed in the home.

(Credit: Oasys Water)

Desalination start-up Oasys Water is banking on the fact that water will shortly be the new oil.

Flagship Ventures, Advanced Technology Ventures, and Draper Fisher Jurvetson seem to agree as the three invested a total of $10 million in Series A funding, according to a Wednesday announcement from Oasys Water.

Oasys (Osmotic Application Systems) Water, a Cambridge, Mass.-based company formed from a Yale University research project and seed money from GreatPoint Ventures, employs patented water treatment technology called Engineered Osmosis (EO).

The system was developed by Rob McGinnis, Oasys chief technology officer, while he was under Menachem Elimelech, the director of the environmental engineering program at Yale. EO is an osmosis system requiring 90 percent less fuel than the typical high-pressure Reverse Osmosis (RO) system employed by many desalination systems today, according to company statistics

Reducing the electricity needed for desalination osmosis systems, it's no jump to conclude, brings down the overall cost of producing potable water from seawater and waste water.

Aaron Mandell, Oasys president and CEO, issued a statement pointing to the drought in California and its exorbitant use of the state's electricity to produce water, as proof that water shortages are not just a developing nation issue.

Did you know there's some leeway on when a refrigerator must run its automatic defrost cycle?

Well, apparently, there is, and it could help ease the stress on local energy grids during peak hours, according to GE Consumer & Industrial.

Currently, GE refrigerators' automatic defrost modes are prompted by factors like door openings. But, the company says, it could build refrigerators that delay that cycle until a local electrical grid signals it's a good off-peak time to suck down more electricity.

Refrigerators are not the only appliances that could be programmed to wait for convenient times to run.

GE is testing a whole range of what it calls "Energy Management-Enabled Appliances" with the Louisville Gas and Electric Co. in Louisville, Ky., the company announced Wednesday. It includes ranges, washers and dryers, dishwashers, and microwaves.

The appliances are equipped with a "Smart Meter" that communicates with the local power utility, and then times itself to run during off-peak periods. Consumers are still given a choice to override the program if they want to use a particular appliance during peak hours.

The program seeks to address the nationwide problem of peak energy demand, in which electrical grids are overburdened by a consumer surge in use. It's a problem power utilities are concerned about given the rise in electric plug-in vehicles.

GE estimates that there are currently about 3,000 utilities in the U.S. Many of them are considering their energy storage options, and some are considering moving to a tiered-pricing system to encourage off-peak electricity usage. Appliances that help consumers avoid peak hours could help them save money, according to GE.

But there's a catch. In order for the appliances to work, the electrical grid they operate on must communicate with the machine's "Smart Meter."

That means utilities would have to be onboard with a standardized system that allows household appliances to communicate with their grids.

FREMONT, Calif.--First it was tomatoes, and now it's jalapenos.

The recent warnings of salmonella outbreaks show the difficulty of tracing sources of food contamination in the United States. Federal authorities this week couldn't say for sure whether contaminated jalapenos were tainted in Mexico where they were grown, at the distribution center in Texas, or while en route to markets.

A California clean-tech company is hoping to take advantage of an otherwise unsavory situation. Purfresh, a food and water ozone-purification company, makes software called Intellipur to monitor the quality of food and drinks as they move from harvesting or production to grocery store shelves. It also regulates food quality in storage or transit with the use of ozone--the three-atom molecule of pure oxygen.

David Cope, CEO of Purfresh, shows off Intellipur, a software system that helps food distributors track the quality of produce as it's shipped around the world. To the right of Cope is an example of the portable ozone generator that Purfresh makes to release ozone in minute amounts into cold storage units as produce travels.

(Credit: Stefanie Olsen/CNET News)

The logistics software has been around since December, but CEO David Cope said that Intellipur in transportation devices is the fastest growing piece of his company's business because of demand for tracking and quality controls for shipped food and water.

"It changes the macroeconomics of shipping--it provides traceability if someone gets ill," Cope said in an interview this week.

Lucky's Real Tomatoes, a customer of Purfresh's, recently saw demand soar for its produce after warnings were issued about the food-borne illness related to tomatoes, according to Cope. Lucky's uses Purfresh's ozone cold storage generator to kill bacteria and fungus on produce, and the software monitors the health of the tomatoes while stored or shipped.

To capitalize on this advantage, Purfresh launched in May a program called Quality by Purfresh, a seal for distributors that use the technology. It's a kind of "Intel Inside" marketing campaign.

Intellipur shows the air quality inside a shipping container in real time. Here it depicts shipping routes correlated to each container's temperature, oxygen levels, CO2 levels and humidity.

(Credit: Stefanie Olsen/CNET News.com)

The ozone factor
Food- and water-related products have become one of the growing segments of the clean-tech market. Organic produce sales are rising, and because organic produce can't be treated with chemicals, growers and retailers have started to invest in things like ozone purification and biopesticides to kill bugs and pests. Purfresh's systems are also used to disinfect a growing number of nonorganic foods and water products.

Based here in Fremont, Calif., the company--formerly called Novazone--has developed systems that kill fungi and other microorganisms on vegetables, fruit, and in bottled drinks without altering appearance or taste. It's chief agent for purification is ozone.

Purfresh's system, which resembles a still, essentially exploits the instability of ozone. Ordinary oxygen molecules consist of only two atoms. The third atom in ozone only stays attached until it can react with, or oxidize, another substance. If that substance is a bacteria cell or fungi, the atom will neutralize it. So Purfresh pipes ozone in minute amounts into water for purification, or sprays it as a gas over fruits and vegetables.

Because large concentrations of ozone can be harmful to people, sensors monitor the flow of ozone so that it stays within a minimal range of 100 to 300 parts per billion.

Inside Purfresh's new ozone generator, where the device converts air into ozone that will kill microbes and fungi in water.

(Credit: Stefanie Olsen/CNET News)

Purfresh makes a compact version of this system for cold storage units and shipping containers, which hold produce until its ready to go onto shelves. In the future, Purfresh expects to unveil a unit for the trucking industry because of all the food that goes to waste in transit. As much as 30 percent of the food shipped is affected by microbial decay, or spoilage, Cope said.

Smarter with software
Last year, Purfresh developed its Intellipur software to make its portable ozone generator systems smarter.

The software, layered inside a box snapped into a shipping container, monitors data from a sensor array that detects the container's air quality, humidity, CO2, and temperature. It also regulates ozone emitted into the air to keep produce fresh, and then transmits all of that data back to a central server at Purfresh. Via wireless communications, the system will also take actions to control temperature and humidity inside the container from external controls.

Then, with embedded GPS and satellite systems, the software can be used track kiwi fruit in shipping containers, for example, traveling from New Zealand via the Panama Canal to Northern Europe. So if someone fell ill along that path, the system's real-time reporting could trace where the problem occurred.

For the water bottling industry, Purfresh this week introduced a new, more compact ozone generator for small, private label bottlers. The new generator cabinet, at 24x24x11 inches, also includes the Intellipur software for remote real-time monitoring so that bottling companies could detect trouble in a shipping route.

Dansani, Aquafina, and Ethos already use Purfresh's system to disinfect their bottled waters. Colgate-Palmolive and others also use it to purify contact lens solution, toothpaste, and toilets.

The company, which employs 55 people in Fremont, has 340 customers in more than 22 countries. Last year, it raised $25 million in a Series C round of funding from Chilton Investment Company and its early investor Foundation Capital. Cope said he expects the company to reach profitability for all of its units by next year.

Sunscreen for produce

Next week, the company also plans to publicize its latest product line, Sun Shield for crops. By spraying a formula on crops like apples and corn, it acts like an SPF 45 to reduce so-called sun stress on produce grown in high temperature or high UV areas like Australia or Chile.

Purfresh's line of sun shade sprays for produce that are designed to prevent so-called solar stress and boost crop yields.

(Credit: Stefanie Olsen/CNET News)

For the last two years, Purfresh has been selling a spray called Eclipse that helps protect produce from sun scald. But it plans to market a whole family of sun shade products, including a spray for organic produce.

The product is a powder made from multicrystalline calcium carbonate. When sprayed on wine grapes or apples, the formula has been shown to reduce losses from crops' overexposure to the sun.

"If you believe in food and water safety and not achieving that with nasty chemicals, this is a great market," said Cope.

Former CNET News reporter Michael Kanellos contributed to this report.

CORONADO, Calif.--Reducing greenhouse gases isn't enough for EcoVerdance and Accelegrow Technologies; why not tackle world hunger, too?

This year's Future in Review conference has chosen to spotlight a company called EcoVerdance, which is using a product developed by Accelegrow to promote carbon trading by using the proceeds from selling carbon offsets to purchase a chemical called Accele-Gro-M that dramatically improves the yields of existing farms and makes it possible to grow plants in places previously thought impossible.

I have to admit, the first time Future in Review organizer Mark Anderson described the scheme, two things popped into my head: the fable of Jack and the Beanstalk and the episode of The Simpsons in which Homer covered a barren farm with nuclear waste to produce a tobacco/tomato hybrid plant. But Dennis Knight, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Accelegrow, says his company's product is legit.

Accele-Gro-M is an all-natural chemical fertilizer that consists of hormones, proteins, nitrogen, urea and two proprietary ingredients for which Accelegrow is seeking patents. It overrides a plant's natural response to a stressful environment, which is to shrivel up in order to protect itself. Instead, Accele-Gro-M encourages the plant to open up and accept moisture from whatever sources are available, such as dew. And despite the stressful situation, it somehow encourages the plant to keep growing, Knight said.

The company has been studying the use of the fertilizer in drought areas, and has seen yields grow from 40 bushels an acre to 180 bushels to 190 bushels per acre, Knight said. Only 8 ounces of the product are required per acre of farmland, and the cost to the farmer is around $8 to $11 per acre, depending on the crop and the area of the world in which it will be used.

But EcoVerdance thinks it can use the promise of Accel-Gro-M to encourage carbon trading. The idea is to sell carbon credits to companies looking to reduce their carbon output, either voluntarily or as part of government regulation. Then, EcoVerdance will use that money to purchase Accele-Gro-M and donate the fertilizer to farmers in developing countries.

This will have several effects, according to David Morris, director, chairman, and president of EcoVerdance: crop yields will be enhanced on the same plots of land, and previously unusable plots can generate food. Additionally, the more plants that grow, the more carbon dioxide that can be taken out of the atmosphere.

EcoVerdance is still working out the kinks, and further testing of the product is required, but that's the idea. Knight claims that Accele-Gro-M has no side effects, either in the food that people eat grown with the product, or in any run-off into the groundwater.

SAN MATEO, Calif.--How does Dow Chemical, the world's second-largest chemical producer, turn itself into a sustainable business?

"It's where green meets green," Neil Hawkins, vice president of sustainability at the company, said here Tuesday at the opening of the two-day Dow Jones Environmental Ventures conference.

Hawkins, who was interviewed in a morning keynote address, was referring to the 110-year-old company's efforts to make money by being more energy-efficient, investing in new clean-tech technologies, and working with manufacturers on new green chemistry.

For example, from 1994 to 2005, Dow spent roughly $1 billion on refining its energy efficiency practices. That investment has paid off fivefold for Dow, Hawkins said. Since 1990, Dow has reduced its carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent, surpassing guidelines set by the Kyoto Protocol. And going forward, Dow has set sustainability goals by 2015 for chemistry, climate change, and product safety.

The idea can seem discombobulating, considering that Dow is known for producing the chemical weapon napalm during the Vietnam War, as well as toxic pesticides that have caused sterility in men. Hawkins acknowledged that the company isn't green yet, but he said there are pockets of green throughout the 47,000-employee conglomerate.

"The Dow of today is focused on delivering solutions to the world's problems...in clean drinking (water), alternative energy, alternative feedstock, and public health," said Hawkins, who has been with Dow for 20 years.

The company, for example, has a unit called Dow Building Solutions, in which it is examining new technologies that can help business owners reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. The company produces a Styrofoam insulation that has received an Energy Star recommendation from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, for example.

He said the most exciting area Dow is looking at in building tech is photovoltaic technology for roofing and siding. The company is working on bringing costs down for the technology to those of comparable levels of the grid. "In the short term, the single most important thing we can do is improve CO2 (emissions) in buildings...where people are doing a lot more insulating."

Dow also has its own venture fund, with $500 million invested in public health, clean technology, and water products, according to Hawkins. He said the company is looking for the right partnerships.

For example, the company has invested in WaterHealth International, a San Francisco Bay Area for-profit that has developed a water system that has provided drinking water to 10 million people in India, according to Hawkins. He said that in addition to an investment, Dow has provided loan guarantees of $30 million to help the company's growth.

It has also teamed with the nongovernmental organization International Aid, which has developed a plastic filter for drinking water. With that technology, nearly 2 million people in the Sudan and Cambodia will get access to potable water, he said.

Dow is also involved in U.S. Climate Action Partnerships (USCAP), a collaboration of environmental groups and companies aimed at shifting U.S. policy on climate change.

"The existence of USCAP has really moved this administration and Congress to have us participate in a more friendly policy," he said.

The company is also trying to help customers with sustainability efforts. For example, he said, Dow is thinking of new battery technology for Toyota's future initiatives.

"This trend of sustainability is very real. It will impact our profit for the next 20 years," he said. "I'm hoping to lead a culture change."

U.S. consumers have the least "green" habits in the world in terms of energy use, transportation, travel, and goods, according to National Geographic and polling firm GlobeScan.

Blame the American appetite for large, two-car, gadget-packed homes located far from work, along with a general disregard for conservation and eco-friendly products, the report says.

The Greendex results, released Wednesday, are based on online surveys taken earlier this year examining the shopping habits and attitudes of 14,000 consumers in 14 countries.

The Greendex map paints developing nations a darker shade of green.

(Credit: National Geographic)

Among Americans' un-green daily habits, 59 percent said they drive alone, and a trifling 5 percent use public transportation. Seventy-eight percent eat beef weekly, and only 5 percent attempt to reduce the use of fresh water. U.S. shoppers were also far more likely than others to own multiple new TVs, PCs, and energy-hogging household appliances.

Canadian and French consumers didn't appear much to be better than those in the United States.

People in developing nations, by contrast, were more likely to live in smaller homes, use less polluting modes of transportation, repair rather than discard broken goods, and seek "green" products.

They were more likely to express worry that climate change will negatively affect their lifestyles. Only 12 percent of Americans said ecological woes are affecting their health.

GlobeScan rated Brazilian, Indian, and Chinese consumers as the most "green."

Nearly one-third of Brazilians reported buying "green" products regularly and 41 percent said they try to reduce their use of fresh water. Their overall score tied with that of Indians, whose low meat consumption and willingness to pay more for energy-conserving products helped to earn points.

The study also pitted national sustainability trends from the Economist Intelligence Unit, finding that the more new cars were purchased in a country, the lower its consumers ranked on eco-friendly transportation. Per capita wealth and increased consumption overall, both expected to increase as developing nations expand, were also tied together.

The Greendex Web site offers a quiz and calculator for users to measure their personal shade of green.