Recently in Green Transportation Category

President Elect Obama has made it clear that job creation in rebuilding the US infrastructure will be high on his agenda.  This slideshow synthesizes his energy plans from his campaign platform and recent transition activities.

Government policy and support with funding opens jobs in some areas...and closes them in other areas.  It is anticipated that military jobs could decrease and domestic infrastructure jobs could increase under the Obama administration.  This slideshow summarizes Obama's energy policies from his campaign...and points out some of the chnages due to today's economic situation.

THE WAL-MART SUSTAINABILITY SCORECARD

It’s likely that you’ll soon have to comply with your customers’ sustainability initiatives as well as your own. That's the case if you provide products for the Wal-Mart chain of retail outlets.

Wal-Mart has taken a "lifecycle approach" to packaging with objectives covering reduction in waste and renewable energy. Nine weighted parameters of Wal-Mart's sustainability scorecard are measured for their prospective and current vendors.

Wal-Mart has told its buyers that, starting in 2008, they should consider the packaging scores when choosing among various products for its Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores. Matt Kistler, Vice President - Package and Product Innovations, Sam's Club Wal-Mart

Part of the challenge in rolling out greener products is informing customers about changes that affect their perception of savings. Wal-Mart's April 2008 "Earth Month" promotion is highlighting its greener products and informing customers how making better choices, especially on a large scale, can cause a difference. Wal-Mart is featuring more than 50 products in stores and 500 online, from transitional cotton shirts to mulch made from rubber to Clorox Green Works products.

The majority of Wal-Mart's environmental footprint comes from suppliers. The company has direct control on about 8 percent of its footprint, with the remaining 92 percent coming from its supply chain.

To green its supply chain the company launched a it's "Wal-Mart Packaging Scorecard" in 2007 . By filling in information about products' packaging, suppliers are rated and find out their rank in relation to peers. Kistler said Wal-Mart works with suppliers, telling them what they can do to improve and let them know what other suppliers have done to reduce packaging.

Who would think, after watching all of the high-glamor television and Internet ads for new cars that safety matters more than paint color!

Maybe the sustainability message is getting through -- quality matters! Value matters -- and that's not just price. Performance matter. All those features are part of sustainable product design and service.

As the Federal Trade Commission looks at environmental claims in more depth, it's time to take a look at what truly is wanted in the marketplace -- and it looks like the safety and quality messages are gaining on the label of the day...like glamor or sexy style that's out of date in nine months.

A 2008 survey also revealed that car buyers consider safety and quality as the most important consideration, followed by value, performance, environmental friendliness, design, and technical innovation.

Source: Consumer Reports' 2008 Car Brand Perception Survey

Is "free shipping" an oxymoron?

In this day of climate change, asthma and cancer, is it realistic for a socially conscious company to offer "free shipping" as a marketing strategy?

I've been visiting with various leaders in the transportation chain -- from truckers to insurance salesmen to aerodynamics marketers to APU designers to state regulators to owner/operators...and retailers. And my takeaway is that we are overdosing on goods movement!

Addicted to oil? That's too simple. Addicted to cheap, invisible choice that depends on oil, distant manufacturing, cheap natural resources, localized environmental and health burdens...the list of effects from our 'cause' of runaway transportation seems endless.

No one WANTS to give anyone asthma. No one WANTS to have a plate of food travel 2,000 miles. No one WANTS to force companies to outsource manufacturing jobs. We hold our nose and just do it because everyone else is doing it. Because it is expected.

Identify your SYSTEM(s)

It's about the SYSTEM we have developed.

Refine Your Systems

So what's the 'solution'?

Reduce Your Footprint by 50%

That reduction requires sacrifice by each of us.

Some Green Marketing Solutions to Consider...and Implement 

Reduce transportation. Increase localization.

Reduce blindness to excesses. Increase truth in marketing.

Reduce stuff. Increase personal relationships.

Reduce loopholes and compliance. Increase personal responsibility.

Reduce footprints on the earth. Increase real life connections and solutions.

Everyone's system is different. Only you can design a better approach that is less wasteful, more respectful of this real, closed system world.

It's up to each of us -- and it's no longer an option. We're in an emergency. There is no "free shipping". Everything has a cost whether or not we know what it is. What will you and I do about it?

Read more details about green business practices...and green marketing  at CaliforniaGreenSolutions.com

Green Car Institute, a non-profit research and educational organization, has conducted a major study of the market for neighborhood electric vehicles (NEVs).

The study measures the potential for NEVs, focusing on their primary consumer market, master planned communities.

Green Car Institute’s background includes the landmark study of the electric vehicle market in California presented to the California Air Resources Board in September 2000: The Current & Future Market for Electric Vehicles. The study remains the most thorough publicly available research quantifying the market potential of, and analyzing obstacles to, the mass marketing of battery electric vehicles.

A number of electric vehicle marketing studies for NEVs are available on the Green Cars Institute website at www.greencars.org/studies.html

"Be the most effective you can be" -- that is the heart of sustainability.

Business still believes it HAS TO GROW. And investors want HIGH growth.  Like invasive species. It's  a governance dilemma to balance growth pressure on one side, and the realization that  environmental  damage caused by high growth is increasing long term environmental risks that can damage the company.

How do you evaluate executives on a corporate teeter-totter of growth and social responsibility?

In recent years / and months -- higher margin products were acceptable to well educated, higher income customers.  Wal-Mart's aggressive and huge impact in the marketplace is changing that equation, slightly.  They are pricing products for the average consumer to give them access to making better choices -- Wal-Mart is working to bring Waste Reduced products to the middle and lower income markets.

At the Eco-nomics conference in March 2008, Lee Scott of Wal-Mart talked about bottled water as a metaphor for balancing staying in business to serve customer demands with the business strategy of reducing costs and creating less of an environmental impact -- to be the most effective you can be, more environmentally effective.

Scott admits that their main motivation is to reduce waste -- which is equivalent to reducing costs.  In the greater scheme of business, reducing waste also reduces stress and strain on the planet that provides the raw materials in the first place.  Facing reality is a good thing. A prudent thing.  A responsible approach to long term risk-management.

Among other steps, Scott said the company is working with its thousands of suppliers to reduce the amount of cardboard and other plastic packaging in its products. The company is also looking into ways to reduce the amount of plastic in bottled water and transportation emissions and fuel use. The impetus for the company in doing all this isn’t just to please environmentalists, he said, but more to save money.

“It really is about how you take cost out, which is waste,” he said.

Waste is a huge problem in the US.  Landfills are growing daily -- and the side effect is the methane they spew into the air.  The largest -- the Number One Export -- out of the Southern California ports is waste materials -- waste paper, waste plastic and waste metal.  We're losing our recycled content to the international market and buying it back in cheaper incarnations. 

Waste is the issue of our decade. And the solution is to reduce waste for numerous reasons:  staying competitive in the global marketplace, increasing product ROI, reducing climate change risks and their growing costs, protecting our customers, families and neighbors from toxic health dangers, compliance with tightening regulations... and ... survival.

SOURCE:  Wall Street Journal

Driver comfort might seem like a luxury to the non-driver, but safety on our roads depends on a driver's ability to get proper sleep, be cool and warm as they drive through deserts and mountains in the same day...and are able to concentrate on their driving and paperwork without fumes and the roar of the truck in their ears!

In addition to driver comfort, the recent addition of auxiliary power units provide significant fuel savings during times when the driver must leave a refrigerated truck running its refrigeration unit, wait at loading docks, and even deal with highway traffic jams. Safety and fuel savings are both well served with APU technology.

And then there's reduced wear and tear on the truck! The benefits of APUs just keep on rolling!

Created by Enertek Corporation and licensor Electro Energy Inc, the Gen-A-Sys® solution is a patented auxiliary power unit (A.P.U.) that effectively cuts fuel usage and emissions in long-haul trucks.

Gen-A-Sys has been specifically designed to supply power for all the creature comforts that drivers need, while using significantly less fuel than an idling truck engine would use, reducing an owner-operator's operating costs. The APU system, which includes the diesel/electric hybrid "Q" and the all-electric Day cab "DC" products, features Nickel-Metal Hydride (Ni-MH) batteries, which – unlike other batteries – are environmentally-conscious and clean, diminishing diesel particulate emissions into the air.

This solution is a "Mobile Comfort System" that provides heat and air conditioning to truck cabs without idling the engine or tapping into other truck systems. It is one of the most versatile units on the market today.

Auxiliary Power Unit – Gen-A-Sys™ Hidden from view, protected from road debris Easy access, easy maintenance Battery monitoring capability standard Total unit weighs less than 380 pounds and has constant 5kW of total power. ‘Q’ version (ICS) weighs 510 lbs. total (with batteries inc.) Twin cyl., water cooled or air cooled versions available

Enertek APU Units

Enertek produces two individual Gen-A-Sys products – the all-electric Gen-A-Sys + Day Cab (DC) solution and the Hybrid Q APU.

Paul and Bruce, the co-principals of the company are traveling the country for a month in 2008 in a 1987 fully restored 359 Peterbilt that is equipped with the Hybrid Q APU (they call it the Q for "quiet") and it has a battery backup where the diesel generator charges the batteries up for an hour, then it runs on batteries for 4 hours.

The truck is also equipped with the DC (Day Cab Sim 379), the newest Gen-a-Sys product, with Ni-MH (Nickel Metal Hydride) batteries and a low-amp draw HVAC system (3 kW hours). These are the same aerospace military grade batteries that the US Government uses on the B1, B1b, B2, Kiowa, Blackhawk, the ISS (International Space Station) and the Space Shuttle. They have characteristics that far surpass the conventional lead-acid batteries and are better for the environment.

The Gen-A-Sys + DC APU is the ONLY battery-based system that actually works as an all-electric system utilizing Ni-MH batteries, eliminating the need for a small-diesel engine-based generator APU.

The Gen-a-Sys + DC recharges itself either by running down the road driving in normal operations or plugging into 110v outlet and recharging, presumably at night and can still produce heat or cool while doing so.

Enertek has the national distribution rights to Douglas Batteries' (Motive Power famous for its forklift batteries, in business for 85 years now) LPS64013RC (the Legacy Platinum Series 6-40-13 Rapid Charge), which is the newest, latest and greatest for both the transportation and marine industry.

The Gen-a-Sys + DC retails for $7,000 installed, and can use Ni-MH batteries or the LPS64013RC Douglas batteries.

CONTACT:
Paul Baumann, principal with Enertek
Phone: 971-998-3899
Email: pbaumann@enerteksolutions.com
30 Shelter Rock Road
Danbury, CT 06810
enerteksolutions.com

Transportation is being recognized as a major contributor to the carbon footprint of human activity. But how do we market sustainability? Peter Lipman of Sustainable Transport presents his ideas on how to think differently...and face a different reality in the industrial and consumer worlds. Positive feedback loops lead to a cycle of automobile dependency. Public transport is a more sustainable approach to access to mobility. Road transport overshadows air transport in impact. Hydrocarbons -- oil: 3/4 of all oil used is for transportation. Health implications include cost to the health system, as well as suffering and loss of productivity. Personal activity also affects mental productivity. Social issues have changed local streets from a social space to a speeding traffic space. 90% of all trips start at home --- discover what you do, who you go see, why you drive.