Green Tech

When electric Ford Focuses start rolling off the assembly line in March, some vehicles will incorporate recycled plastic bottles tossed away at CES.

The new EV will use Repreve seating material made by Unifi. Repreve is a blend of post-industrial fiber waste and post-consumer waste such as the plastic water bottles made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Each electric Focus will have the equivalent of 22 plastic bottles in its interior, and the strategy is expected to divert 2 million post-consumer plastic bottles from landfills.

If you're attending either the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas or the 2012 more

The conveyor belt of new mobile phone releases has created a stream of revenue for eRecyclingCorps.

The Irving, Texas-based startup today raised $35 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to expand its phone buyback services.

eRecyclingCorps, which is now used by at 3,000 Sprint and 500 Verizon outlets, lets consumers check the value of a phone they no longer want from a Web site and get a credit while in the store. A consumer can also use the application from home and mail the phone for a credit, although the company considers an instant rebate more appealing to consumers. more

Rather than recycling plastic, startup Agilyx can bring plastic back to its original source: oil.

The Beaverton, Ore., company yesterday raised $25 million in a series C round of funding, which was led by Keating Capital and joined by existing investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Waste Management, an affiliate of oil company Total, and Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital.

The company, which raised $22 million in March this year, will use the money to develop four plastic-to-oil plants expected to go online in the first half of next year, according to CEO Chris Ulum. Agilyx is now operating its first pilot more

HP is now the top-ranked tech company, according to Greenpeace's latest guide to greener electronics.

The guide's criteria has been updated to take into greater account energy use, conflict minerals, green products, and supply chain energy use.

Greenpeace released its latest rankings today, showing HP moving ahead three to the top spot. It's a big leap considering that just six years ago HP was targeted by Greenpeace as one of the worst tech companies for using fire retardant materials suspected of being hazardous. At the time, Greenpeace members stood outside of HP's headquarters and handed out more

If you are looking for little ways to get greener in the kitchen, but want to keep using aluminum foil, recycled foil might be one answer.

The makers of one brand of recycled aluminum foil say that making recycled foil uses just 5 percent of the energy required to make regular foil. In this SmartPlanet Smart Picks video, correspondent Sumi Das talks about how recycled foil stands up to traditional foil.

More SmartPlanet Smart Picks

• Flip flops help fight water scarcity
• Measuring cup does math for you
• Gizmo lets plants send tweets

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced this week it has set aside $44.6 million to fund a variety of advanced biofuel production projects in over 38 states.

The 156 projects, it should be noted, are not aimed at achieving research breakthroughs. Instead, the money will help expand existing facilities using established technologies to produce fuel from renewable biomass.

The funding is coming via the USDA's Bioenergy Program for Advanced Biofuels and includes projects of all types, producing things like ethanol and biodiesel, and even harnessing landfill and sewage waste treatment gas. The projects include biomass resources like more

HAVERHILL, Mass.--There's a good amount of energy tied up in people's trash cans. But does it make sense to burn it?

I took a tour of Covanta Energy's waste-to-energy site here yesterday to delve a little deeper into that question. I learned that modern plants like this one are far less polluting than they used to be and that "reduce, reuse, recycle" is clearly the preferred route. For what's left over after recyling, though, waste-to-energy plants can fill a role as an alternative to landfills, assuming air quality standards remain in force.

This facility north more

Philadelphia-based Quench has garnered $30 million in funding for expansion, the company announced Thursday.

Quench makes water coolers with built-in filtration systems that tap into a building's existing water supply instead of using water in five-gallon plastic jugs that need to be regularly delivered and replaced. The company makes free-standing and countertop water coolers and ice makers.

The coolers use a reverse osmosis water filtration system that includes a sediment filter, an antimicrobial filter for killing microorganisms, a carbon filter that removes things like chlorine that might change water flavor, and a lead filter for reducing heavy metal content. more

Columbia University researchers assert that tech breakthroughs in recent years now make sending trash to landfills a waste of energy.

While recycling and energy recovery from plastics is on the rise, about 86 percent of used plastics are still sent to landfills. It's a big waste considering its energy potential, according to the 33-page report, "Energy and Economic Value of Non-recycled Plastics and Municipal Solid Wastes that are Currently Landfilled in Fifty States" (PDF).

About 28.8 million tons of non-recycled plastics were sent to landfills in 2008, the energy potential equivalent of 36.7 million tons of coal more