3M and Minnesota: The End of the Affair

Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing, or 3M (MMM – $78.50), is a Minnesota institution on the order of Milwaukee and beer. Founded in 1902 by a lawyer, a butcher and a locomotive engineer, the company set out to make sandpaper and, 23 years later, came up with a packaging revolution known as masking tape. Along the…

When Creativity Clashes with Corporate Agenda

As the Hollywood writers themselves predicted, the strike has been going on for months and months. The New York Times has an entire section devoted to the action initiated by the Writers Guild of America. The big boys are back on air and we are ecstatic to see Colbert and Letterman kicking it again. What…

Marriott Hotels and Sustainability

The Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary System has named the Evergreen Marriott Conference Resort, in Stone Mountain, Georgia, as a Certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary. Marriott (MAR – $33.26) is making small steps in the right direction. Energy star, Audobon, and LEED certified Marriott hotels are emerging throughout the country. We have yet to see a unified approach…

What’s Next for Bill Gates?

When most people think of retirement, early bird dinner specials in Florida or Arizona come to mind, for they are the expected destinations of the recently retired. Now that Bill Gates has just made his final appearance at the CES, the world should ask what’s next for Gates instead of what is the future of…

Will a Recession Lead to a Solar Depression?

Investors have been fretting about a U.S. recession for months, and recent polls suggest a heightened level of economic anxiety among Americans. Assuming that we go into a mild recession, is this the time for solar investors to jump ship? To the contrary – a recession might provide some attractive opportunities in the solar sector.   

Tax Competition on the Emerald Isle

Photo:bass_nroll, Creative Commons, Flickr Guess which country is the world's biggest exporter of software? The US? Nope, guess again? No, not China, or Malaysia, or even Indonesia. The world's biggest exporter of software is a misty green island of four million people. That's right, Ireland. The country which had a famine while the rest of…

Electronic Wasteland

Photo:Curtis Palmer, Creative Commons, Flickr Finally getting that new phone or laptop you’ve wanted all year? Where is the old one going? Probably to China, India or Thailand where environmental laws are lax.

China’s San Francisco Values

Photo:Arbele Egger, Creative Commons, Flickr If you're interested in China and the environment, like me, you have been reading The New York Times' Chocking on Growth series.  It is an excellent set of articles on all of the major environmental problems the Chinese people and government are facing in the coming years and decades.  It…

Bideawee: A Socially Conscious Animal Shelter

Bideawee is a no-kill animal shelter that has a special program designed to help individuals save animals. For $24/month members can help give a shelter animal a second chance. With funds from this program, Bideawee rescues animals who are scheduled to be euthanized at kill shelters and cares for them at their own shelters (three…

Give a Dime About Junk Mail

According to GreenDimes, a company that prevents paper junk mail and unwanted catalogs, over 100 million trees and 28 billion gallons of water are wasted annually on US junk mail alone. What GreenDimes aims to do is cut 90% of this unnecessary mail and plant 5 trees per member. For those of us that look…

Thinking Twice in 2008

I recently speculated as to whether or not Christmas is wasteful. In writing about this, I spoke to my environmentally aware 17 year-old cousin about whether or not everything we do, to some extent, is wasteful, and what's realistic to expect of ourselves in terms of social and environmental consciousness. He made the very good…

If Yahoo Is Being Prepped for Sale, At What Price?

Ashkan Karbasfrooshan writes about a potential sale of Yahoo. But with a market cap of $33 billion (minus $2 billion in cash) that doesn’t leave many potential buyers with enough market cap to swallow Yahoo. All the buyers/partners that are big enough, like Microsoft and Google, are already competing with Yahoo, so they aren't really…

Organic Tea

Our passion for organic tea began with the opening of our cafe in New York City in 2003. We opened the doors to Grounded Organic Coffee & Tea House with an emphasis on quality of product and consistency of drink preparation. Though most New Yorkers are considered proud members of America’s vast "coffee culture," we…

Mission-Aligned Investing

The LA Times has spent significant energy (at least, in comparison to other journalistic outfits) on discussing foundations and the way in which they invest their endowments.  In January, they ran a report on the Gates Foundation, discussing how the foundation's grant programs and investing often act in contradictory manners that set off a firestorm…