When The Customer Values Green

  More than just telling a story of turning what was once "trash" into a commodity, this story tells of how a company realized that having a lighter environmental impact was important to their customers!!!! From The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Palermo's finds a way to recycle less-than-perfect pizza crusts

Company supports efforts to make Menomonee Valley 'green'

By Thomas Content of the Journal Sentinel

Oct. 8, 2014

As workers on the rapid-fire pizza line at Palermo Villa Inc. are churning out nearly 1 million frozen pizzas a day, every perfectly round crust makes it onto the line.
But flawed pies — the ones that are cracked, somehow missed a key ingredient, or don't quite make it into the coveted circle shape — won't move down the line to get doused with sauce.
So they end up on the floor. From there, they used to be tossed in the trash.
Instead of that, workers at Palermo's now toss the faulty crusts into a brown bin that ends up keeping something edible out of the landfill.
Every year, Palermo's is sending 900 tons of pizza crusts to a waste processor, where they are ground up and then distributed as animal feed for livestock.
Feeding animals instead of filling a landfill is among the achievements that made Palermo's the Distinguished Performer in the Environment category this year on the Deloitte Wisconsin 75 list of closely held companies.
Palermo's moved its headquarters to the Menomonee Valley in 2006, deciding to open in what had been a brownfield. Since then it has been working in concert with Menomonee Valley Partners in efforts to "green" the valley, said Laurie Fallucca, Palermo's chief creative officer. That includes support for Three Bridges Park and the Urban Ecology Center's valley campus, as well as work by company employees who help as part of Palermo's stewardship crew.
The Palermo's "stew crew" heads out, usually at midday on Fridays, to help keep the Hank Aaron State Trail tidy and to prevent invasive plants from overtaking native plantings. Palermo's is one of about a dozen companies or neighborhood groups with stewardship crews.
"It's neat to be able to get out and walk the trail in the middle of the day," said Jessica Rautmann, a member of the crew. "People riding bikes will stop and thank us for picking up garbage, so it's a really good feeling."
Sometimes Palermo's is paying extra for its green initiatives. The company has been using cardboard from recycled pulp, with the Sustainable Forestry Initiative logo on it, for both its pizza boxes and the "master cases" that deliver a dozen pizzas at a time to the supermarket.
In all, that's more than 15 million pounds of cardboard a year. Going with the greener packaging option costs the company more, Fallucca said, and Palermo's did marketing surveys to gauge whether consumers really cared about whether the Sustainable Forestry logo was on the package.
"A lot of companies are moving to that. All of that is a lot more expensive than the other packaging, but since we've moved in here we've always done that," Fallucca said.
"If we didn't have to do this, it would cost us less," she said. "We've definitely done research. We're always like, 'Do people really care?' The answer is: 'Yes, they do.'"
Other environmental work at the company included the installation of energy-saving occupancy-sensor lighting in the factory and converting to LED lighting, as well as recycling tons of cardboard, plastic and plastic drums.
The company also donates dozens of large plastic food barrels that are reused as rain barrels in neighborhood gardens in Milwaukee.
Though Palermo's has had labor challenges in recent years, the company has carved out a "slice" for stewardship in its pizza-shaped corporate mission statement.
The company employs 645 people and is finding more and more that new hires want their company to be a good citizen, she said.
"We have a large group of millennials working here. They grew up on 'reduce, reuse, recycle,' so for them it's been a big part of how they grew up," she said.

http://www.jsonline.com/business/palermos-finds-a-way-to-recycle-less-than-perfect-pizza-crusts-b99361422z1-277892451.html

Old Dogs Learn New Tricks

Hmmm........ charging for shopping bags changes behavior..... from The Washington Post -

The surprising reason why those 5 cent charges for plastic bags actually work

By Chris Mooney November 13, 2014

If you live in Washington, you know the drill: After bagging your groceries, the checkout machine asks you how many bags you used. And if you used plastic or disposable bags (rather than bags you brought on your own), you have to pay 5 cents per bag. The District passed a law requiring as much in 2009 -- a policy that states like New Jersey and New York are also considering, and that has been adopted around the world from Ireland and Scotland to South Africa.
Some localities have gone farther still -- California and Hawaii have effectively banned plastic bags outright -- but recent research suggests that charges or fees can also be effective (and have the added benefit of being less coercive). Moreover, it suggests that they work, at least in part, through a surprising mechanism. It's not just the relatively minor added cost, on its own, that impels people to stop using plastic bags and to instead bring their own bags with them to the store. Rather, it's the way this small change disrupts habitual behaviors and helps people draw a tighter linkage between the environmental awareness that they already possess, and actions in the world that actually advance that consciousness and their values.
Such is the upshot of a new study on plastic bag charges published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology by a team of Argentinian researchers, led by psychologist Adriana Jakovcevic of Buenos Aires University. Charging a relatively small amount for bags "produces changes in behavior," says Jakovcevic, "and these changes are not only because of the economic value of the incentive -- there are also some other processes at play that involve environmental concerns."
As the researchers note, Buenos Aires provides a perfect opportunity to study the effects of plastic bag charges because in 2012, the vast city's Environmental Protection Agency put in place bag restrictions that in turn led the leading supermarket chain association to institute a bag charge (the equivalent of 2.5 U.S. cents for bags of medium size and 4 cents for large bags) Oct. 9, 2012. For smaller supermarket associations, meanwhile, the same charge went into effect roughly two months later on Dec. 10, 2012. But for Gran Buenos Aires, the larger area that surrounds the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires (CABA), there was no change instituted at all.
This is, the researchers note, a "natural experiment": You have three groups of supermarket shoppers, two of which experienced new bag charges at different times, and one of which did not experience plastic bag charges at all. So the researchers conducted several field studies, observing shoppers leaving supermarkets in low-to-middle income areas in the three different regions at different times -- before any policies went into place, after the first change, and after the second change.
The result was that sure enough, the policies greatly increased the percentage of shoppers who were observed to be carrying their own bag. Here's a figure from their study, showing the effects for the first set of supermarkets to institute the charge (CABA1), the second set (CABA2), and for supermarkets in Gran Buenos Aires that never saw a bag charge instituted (GBA). Consumers were observed at four times: before any policies took place (Time 1), just after the first policy affected CABA1 (Time 2), four weeks after the policy change (Time 3), and then shortly after the second policy affected CABA2 (Time 4):

From Adriana Jakovcevic et al, "Charges for plastic bags: Motivational and behavioral effects," Journal of Environmental Psychology, 40 (2014), 372-380.

Clearly, the bag fees worked to dramatically increase the habit of people carrying their own bags. But importantly, in a second study that involved directly interviewing consumers who were observed to leave supermarkets carrying either plastic bags or their own bags, the researchers tried to get at why they had begun to adopt this new behavior, rather than paying the relatively small bag charges that had been instituted.
First, it turned out that a surprising number of people didn't like the bag charge policy, but started carrying their own bags anyway. According to Jakovcevic, it is likely that the small economic cost is the best way of explaining the behavior of these individuals. Past research, however, has called into question whether a purely economic effect like this is a lasting one, with sustained influence on behavior.
But there was another group of Argentinian shoppers -- those who supported the charge and carried their own bags for reasons of environmental concern. They cared much less about economics and much more about green motives. "The people who supported the policy most, they also say they do it for environmental reasons," says Jakovcevic, "and this is a stronger finding because it was an open question, the people could say anything that comes into their mind, and most of them say it was to protect the environment." For these shoppers, says Jakovcevic, the policy provided an opportunity to "rethink why they are using plastic bags or their own bags, and if they care about the environment, this will push them to change their behavior and change it longer over time."
Thus, the paper concludes that the bag charge might have worked "both by the activation of pre-existent pro-environmental attitudes and by a direct effect of the charge on behavior." In addition, it suggests that the new policy worked in another way as well -- by being disruptive of the status quo and changing people's default options and choices. "After the introduction of the plastic bag charge, customers had to explicitly approve or request to obtain a bag and pay for it," notes the study. They couldn't just get one without thinking about it.
So just maybe, a little 5 cent charge can indeed help the environment. You don't have to confiscate all the plastic bags in the world to save the environment (enraging anyone from industry to the Tea Party in the process). You can just give people the slightest push, and let them fix the problem themselves.

Chris Mooney reports on science and the environment.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/11/13/the-surprising-reason-why-those-5-cent-charges-for-plastic-bags-actually-work/?tid=hpModule_79c38dfc-8691-11e2-9d71-f0feafdd1394&hpid=z17

Nuclear Power - Corporate Welfare

Ahh, the things that amaze me........ from The Washington Post's Wonkblog comes the following account of corporate welfare. Yet people worry that subsidies to homeowners for roof top solar is a giveaway......

Why is the Obama administration using taxpayer money to back a nuclear plant that’s already being built?

 By Steven Mufson February 21, 2014



If nuclear power is such a good idea, why does it need financial help from U.S. taxpayers?
This week, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz announced that the Obama administration would extend a $6.5 billion federal loan guarantee to cover part of the cost of building two new reactors at Southern Co.’s Alvin W. Vogtle site. Thursday he went to Waynesboro, Ga. to finalize the deal. Another $1.8 billion in guarantees could come soon.
The impact: Southern’s Georgia Power subsidiary, which owns 46 percent of the project, will save $225 million to $250 million because the loan guarantee will reduce interest costs. Instead of borrowing from a commercial bank, Southern can now borrow at rock bottom rates from the government’s Federal Financing Bank. And you, gentle reader, the taxpayer, take on all the risk if the project goes bust. Does the name Solyndra ring a bell?
If that’s not enough, Southern is also getting help from the federal production tax credit and other federal incentives that will ultimately save the company an additional $2 billion or so, Southern’s chief executive Tom Fanning said on a Jan. 29 conference call about earnings.
“This is a deeply subsidized project that will cost the taxpayers a lot,” said Ken Glozer, a former Office of Management and Budget senior official who is president of a consulting firm OMB Professionals.
Southern has said it didn’t need the loan guarantee to finish the project. But the guarantee doesn’t hurt.
The company also says that it will pass along the savings in financing costs to Georgia electricity ratepayers, but those ratepayers are already footing a large chunk of the reactors’ construction costs. Usually ratepayers only pay such costs once a generating station is in operation, not while it’s being built. In December, the Georgia Public Service Commission approved a three-year plan to spread out $465 million in rate increases, according to Wells Fargo Securities analysts. Southern said customer rates once the units are in service would rise between 6 and 8 percent, less than the 12 percent increase originally projected for capital costs.
This is all part of a bigger picture. Less than a decade ago, the nuclear industry was anticipating a renaissance, fueled by hopes that climate concerns about fossil fuels would trump safety worries and would help rally support beyond the industry’s usual allies. Congress tried to do its part by approving in the 2005 Energy Policy Act a $17.5 billion program of nuclear loan guarantees.
But even with that help, building a nuclear plant is extremely expensive, and for a single utility, even a large one, to undertake such a project means betting the farm, as former Duke Energy chief executive Jim Rogers once put it. Moreover, costs rose since 2005. While Congress envisioned helping half a dozen reactors or more, the program is now expected to cover only three or four.
Then, if those challenges weren’t enough, the industry was hit by the recession, competition from low natural gas prices, and the Japanese earthquake and tsunami that destroyed three reactors at the Fukushima plant and fanned safety concerns worldwide.
It wasn’t just a perfect storm. It was three perfect storms.
Moniz said the Vogtle project was “not only a major milestone in the Administration’s commitment to jumpstart the U.S. nuclear power industry, it is also an important part of our all-of-the-above approach to American energy as we move toward a low-carbon energy future.”
Many experts say it’s not the sort of milestone Congress and the industry once had in mind. The nuclear industry is nearly halfway through a more than $30 billion construction program, with the two new reactors being built in Georgia, and three others in South Carolina and Tennessee. Like the ones in Georgia, a pair under construction in South Carolina can rely on a state law allowing costs to be passed along to customers while construction is in progress. The fifth is being built by the Tennessee Valley Authority.
But while five reactors are under construction, four others have closed down or announced plans to close down. Two cited competition from natural gas plants and two others faced large repair and upgrading costs. The renaissance seems to be stillborn.
Proponents of nuclear power are still trying, though, and they say that the loan guarantee and production tax credits aren’t any different from what wind and solar projects get. Level playing field and all that. Besides, Southern says, Solyndra was a new company with a new technology whereas Southern has been around for roughly a century and nuclear power plants have been in operation for decades.
“Loan guarantees have been in place for years and are a successful vehicle used by the federal government to ensure investment in critical infrastructure projects,” Marvin Fertel, president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, said.
The Vogtle loan guarantee had been conditionally approved by the Obama administration four years ago, and Southern is already well into construction — although it’s running about 21 months behind schedule according to the anti-nuclear group Public Citizen. (You can see photos of the project’s progress here.) The reactors are Westinghouse AP1000 models, a new generation reactor.
Wells Fargo last month lowered its earnings outlook for Southern, citing “construction risk” from the nuclear reactors as well as a modern coal plant under construction — and over budget — in Mississippi. Now that risk belongs to all of us.
“No doubt, this is a bad deal for the American people who have been put on the hook for a project that is both embroiled in delays and cost overruns and to a company that has publicly stated that it does not need federal loans to complete the project,” Allison Fisher, Outreach Director, Public Citizen’s Energy Program said. “This is a classic case of throwing good money after bad – an unnecessary and unconscionable decision to make with taxpayer money.”

Bonus fact: The reactor site in Georgia is named after the late Alvin Ward Vogtle Jr., former chairman of Southern. Vogtle was an Army Air Force pilot in World War II, and flew more than 30 missions before crash-landing in North Africa and being taken to a prisoner of war camp in Germany. On his fifth attempt, he escaped by scaling a 14-foot barbed-wire border fence and crossing to Switzerland. The character Steve McQueen played in the 1963 film “The Great Escape” was based on recollections of several veterans, including Vogtle.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/02/21/why-is-the-obama-administration-using-taxpayer-money-to-back-a-nuclear-plant-thats-already-being-built/?hpid=z4 

Nuclear Power Subsidies: The Gift that Keeps on Taking

By Sustainable Plant Staff April 26, 2011 03:29:17 pm

 

 

Since its inception more than 50 years ago, the U.S. nuclear power industry has been propped up by a generous array of government subsidies that have supported its development and operations. Despite that support, the industry is still not economically viable, according to a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). The report, “Nuclear Power: Still Not Viable Without Subsidies,” found that more than 30 subsidies have supported every stage of the nuclear fuel cycle, from uranium mining to long-term waste storage. Added together, these subsidies often have exceeded the average market price of the power produced.

“Despite the fact that the nuclear power industry has benefited from decades of government support, the technology is still uneconomic, so the industry is demanding a lot more from taxpayers to build new reactors,” said Ellen Vancko, manager of UCS’s Nuclear Energy and Climate Change Project. “The cost of this technology continues to escalate despite billions in subsidies to both existing and proposed plants. Instead of committing billions in new subsidies that would further distort the market in favor of nuclear power, we should focus on more cost-effective energy sources that will reduce carbon emissions more quickly and with less risk.”

Pending and proposed subsidies for new nuclear reactors would shift even more costs and risks from the industry to taxpayers and ratepayers. The Obama administration’s budget proposal would provide an additional $36 billion in federal loan guarantees to underwrite new reactor construction, bringing the total amount of nuclear loan guarantees to $58.5 billion, leaving taxpayers on the hook if the industry defaults on these loans.

The key subsidies for nuclear power do not involve cash payments, the report found. They shift the risks of constructing and operating plants – including cost overruns, loan defaults, accidents and waste management – from plant owners and investors to taxpayers and ratepayers. These hidden subsidies distort market choices that would otherwise favor less risky investments.

The most significant forms of subsidies to nuclear power have four principal objectives:

• Reduce the cost of capital, labor and land through loan guarantees and tax incentives.
• Mask the true costs of producing nuclear energy through subsidies to uranium mining and water usage.
• Shift security and accident risks to the public via the 1957 Price-Anderson Act and other mechanisms.
• Shift long-term operating risks such as radioactive waste storage to the public.

The report evaluates legacy subsidies that helped build the industry, ongoing support to existing reactors, and subsidies available for new projects. According to the report, legacy subsidies exceeded 7 cents per kWh, well above the average wholesale price of power from 1960 to 2008. In effect, the subsidies were more valuable than the power the subsidized plants produced.

“Without these generous subsidies, the nuclear industry would have faced a very different market reality,” said Doug Koplow, the author of the report and principal at the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based consulting firm, Earth Track. “Many of the 104 reactors currently operating would never have been built, and the utilities that built reactors would have been forced to charge ratepayers even higher rates.”

The industry continues to benefit from subsidies that offset its operating costs, which include uranium mining, cooling water, accident liability insurance, waste disposal, and plant decommissioning. The exact value of these subsidies, however, is difficult to ascertain. According to the report, ongoing subsidies range from 13 percent to 98 percent of the value of the power produced. Even at the low end however, subsidies account for a significant portion of nuclear power’s operating cost advantage over competing energy sources.

Subsidies to new reactors could significantly exceed those enjoyed by the existing fleet. In addition to benefiting from ongoing subsidies to existing plants, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 introduced a new suite of subsidies for nuclear power. The report estimates that these subsidies could be worth between 4.2 and 11.4 cents per kWh, or as much as 200 percent of the projected price of electricity when these plants are built.

“All low-carbon energy technologies would be able to compete on their merits if the government established an energy-neutral playing field and put a price on carbon,” said Vancko. “Investing in nuclear power carries the unique risks of radioactive waste storage, accidents, and nuclear weapons proliferation that must be fully reflected in the technology’s costs, which is not the case today.”
Based on these findings, the report recommends that the federal government reduce subsidies to the nuclear power industry. If subsidies are necessary, the government should award them competitively to the most cost-effective low-carbon energy technologies. The report also recommends that the government modernize liability systems for nuclear power and establish regulations and fee structures for uranium mining, waste repository financing, and water usage that fully reflect the technology’s cost and risks.

“After 50 years,” said Koplow, “the nuclear industry needs to move away from government patronage to a model based on real economic viability. The considerable operational and construction risks of this power source need to be reflected in the delivered price of power rather than dumped onto taxpayers.”
 

 http://www.sustainableplant.com/2011/04/nuclear-power-subsidies-the-gift-that-keeps-on-taking/

 

 

Solar Power Farm At New England College

   I recently saw this solar power farm at Stonehill College in Massachusetts - fantastic to see!

One of Nation’s Largest College Campus Solar Fields Being Built at Stonehill

January 6, 2014

A 15-acre solar field is being built on an unused parcel of land across from Stonehill College’s main campus on Route 138 in Easton. Scheduled to be completed early in 2014, it will be 2.7 megawatts in size and contain 9,000 solar panels which will make it the 11^th (tied) largest solar installation on a college campus nationwide and the largest on a New England college campus according to the Association for Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) database.
The solar field is expected to save the College over $185,000 a year or an estimated $3.2 million over the course of a 15-year contract it has signed with New Jersey-based Marina Energy.  The energy produced is expected to account for 20% of Stonehill’s electrical usage.

Protecting God’s Creation

The impetus for the solar field is not just financial. The project also aligns with Stonehill’s strategic commitment to building a culture of sustainability on campus and ties in with the College’s Catholic ethos.
“The solar field is an extension to our Catholic commitment to care for creation and sustainability. It gives further indication of our commitment, on every level, to preserving the resources that are in our care for future generations,” says Rev. James Lies, C.S.C., the College’s vice president for mission.
“As Catholics, we are called upon by God to be good stewards of the earth and the natural world. We have a responsibility to use our gifts and expertise to advocate for environmental justice and to create sustainable development options,”   explains Fr. Lies.
In 2012, Stonehill became the 12th Catholic college in the United States to sign the St. Francis Pledge, which is a public promise to protect God’s creation and the environment, and to advocate for those who are impacted the most by global climate change. The pledge is named in honor of St. Francis of Assisi who is the patron saint of the environment and of animals. 

Good Stewards

Across a variety of fronts, Stonehill has taken numerous actions towards sustainability. For example, in 2012 the College phased out bottled water usage and in 2011 created The Farm at Stonehill, which supplies local food banks, soup kitchens and other meal providers with organic, sustainably grown fruits and vegetables.
Other initiatives have included composting cafeteria waste, introducing the Zip Car car-sharing option, single stream recycling and other waste reducing programs.
Once the solar field is completed, students and visitors of the College will be able to monitor the energy output from the solar field in real time on a screen which will be housed in the College’s Shield Science Center.
In addition to the 15-acre solar field, the College has also installed roof-top solar panels on two of its facilities storage buildings and has plans to install more roof-top panels throughout campus in the future.

Sustainable Partnerships

Solect Energy of Hopkinton, MA, the leading commercial solar energy project developer in the state, is building the solar field while the entire project is being overseen by Power Management, Inc., an energy consulting firm which manages over 15,000 commercial and industrial utility meters throughout North America.
“Sustainability is very much part of our strategic plan and we are alert to new opportunities,” says Craig Binney, Stonehill’s associate vice president for finance and operations.  
Through a connection with two Stonehill alumni, David Cohen ’93 and Richard Tepper ’86, College officials met with Power Management in 2011.
“We liked what we heard and, after speaking with its Vice President Kevin Kelly, we saw an opportunity for a significant sustainable initiative Binney notes.
“Solar projects take a long time to complete and it’s necessary to have a ‘champion’ for the project and I cannot say enough about the Stonehill team, especially Craig and Jeanne Finlayson (Vice President for Finance).  Despite a few setbacks with the project along the way, they really moved things along and it has been such a pleasure working with them over these last two and a half years,” Kelly says.
Solect Energy broke ground on the project beginning this fall and expects the field to be completed over the next few months.
“It has been a pleasure working in collaboration with Stonehill, Power Management and Marina Energy on a project of this magnitude,” says Scott Howe, Partner at Solect Energy Development. “Stonehill is establishing itself as a shining example of how a college can reap the benefits of making a huge commitment to sustainability by using renewable solar energy to power its campus.”
Marina Energy, which owns and operates the field, commends Stonehill for its commitment to renewable energy.
“We credit Stonehill for its forward-thinking strategies which will put the College in a strong position to lead others in New England to a more sustainable future. As more and more institutions like Stonehill College turn to cleaner, renewable sources of energy, the community thrives through financial savings and improved efficiency,” says Steve Poniatowicz, senior vice president & chief operating officer of Marina Energy.

About Stonehill

Stonehill is a selective Catholic college located near Boston on a beautiful 384-acre campus in Easton, Massachusetts. With a student-faculty ratio of 13:1, the College engages over 2,500 students in 80+ rigorous academic programs in the liberal arts, sciences, and pre-professional fields. The Stonehill community helps students to develop the knowledge, skills, and character to meet their professional goals and to live lives of purpose and integrity.

About Power Management

Power Management provides energy management and sustainability services to a diversified customer base. Founded in 1997, Power Management currently manages over 15,000 commercial and industrial utility meters throughout North America. We take energy management to a higher level through a process that includes comprehensive research, recommendation and implementation.

About Marina Energy

Marina is a wholly owned subsidiary of South Jersey Industries that develops, owns and operates on-site energy projects that include district heating and cooling, combined heat and power, solar and landfill gas-to-electric. Marina has gained significant project experience through partnering with higher education institutions within New Jersey.

About Solect Energy

Solect is a full-service solar photovoltaic (PV) project developer based in Massachusetts, delivering smart solar solutions to help businesses and organizations reduce energy costs. As an industry leader in commercial solar energy, Solect takes a practical approach to the development, installation and on-going support of each system. Solect partners closely with customers, providing strong financial insight and solar technology expertise to optimize their investment while creating a positive impact on the environment. 
The company currently has 10 MW (megawatts) of systems completed and under development, with a primary focus on New England-based commercial, light industrial, and institutional property owners. Visit www.solect.com for more information.

http://www.stonehill.edu/news-media/news/details/one-of-nations-largest-college-campus-solar-fields-being-built-at-stonehill/

Earth First - No Compromise In The Defense Of Mother Earth

    I got this sticker a few years ago at Green Fest in Washington, DC -

School Cafeteria Sustainability

    Step by step.......

Montgomery schools ending the era of the foam lunch tray

By Donna St. George, Published: May 18, 2014

Luis Pozo’s lunch tray was the size of a notebook, a thin cardboard rectangle he used to carry his noon meal through the cafeteria of Francis Scott Key Middle School in Silver Spring.
The eighth-grader loaded it with chocolate milk, potato rounds, a burger and a fruit cup. When he was done, he stacked the tray onto a growing pile.
“They can be recycled,” Luis said. “If we don’t recycle, we’re going to destroy our planet.”
It was a sign of times to come in Montgomery County, as Maryland’s largest school system leaves behind the long era of the polystyrene lunch tray for a more environmentally friendly replacement that will be used to serve up nearly 15 million school meals a year.
Starting in the fall, Montgomery expects to stock lunch lines from Clarksburg to Silver Spring with trays that are recyclable.
The change comes as schools across the region and nationwide aim to go greener and yet not overspend. Arlington replaced its foam trays with cardboard four years ago, and six urban school systems, including New York and Chicago, joined forces to leverage their buying power to get better prices on more environmentally friendly trays and healthier foods.
“We’re now seeing a revolution in cafeterias around the country ditching polystyrene and moving toward compostable trays,” said Mark Izeman, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. For Montgomery, he said, “this is a great move from an environmental and public health standpoint.”
For many districts, one of the biggest obstacles to scrapping polystyrene (which many refer to by the trademark “Styrofoam”) has been price.
“The conventional wisdom was they were too cheap to change,” says Eric Goldstein, chief executive officer for school support services in the New York City Department of Education. New York alone has 1.1 million students, many of them using foam trays “that go right into the landfill,” he said.
During the 2014-15 school year, Goldstein said New York and its five partner districts — the Urban School Food Alliance — will move from polystyrene to a compostable round plate with compartments.
“We’re very excited about this,” he said. “We’re already hearing from other districts that want to copy us.”
In Montgomery, Marla Caplon, director of food and nutrition services, said polystyrene goes back to the 1970s and that she’d received quotes as high as 28 cents each for cardboard trays, nearly 10 times more. But the gap began closing in recent years, she said, and the district has worked with a manufacturer to create a new product.
The new trays at Key Middle cost 4.3 cents each, which would mean a hike of about $140,000 a year. “It’s close enough to where we can stretch,” she said. The bid process for next year is underway.
At Key Middle, cardboard trays have been tried out since late April and have been welcomed. Key was a 2012 national green ribbon school, and it has a strong environmental focus.
In the din of a recent lunch hour, students filled trays with French bread pizza, baked cheese dippers, yogurt, burgers and chicken patty sandwiches.
A few students said the cardboard can be wobbly, so sometimes an apple or a milk jug will roll off the tray. Some spoke of environmental advantages.
“Even though it’s kind of a small step, I think maybe it can spread out to other schools and do something for our environment,” said Yemi Djayeola, 13.
The foam trays have been a passionate focus for students with the Young Activist Club at Piney Branch Elementary, who had campaigned and raised $10,000 to bring reusable plastic trays and a dishwasher to their school. Margot Bloch, 13, now in middle school and still a member of the club, called cardboard trays a major improvement.
“It’s a really good step to move from polystyrene to paper trays, but we would still like to see our dishwasher pilot happen,” Margot said.
Caplon said Montgomery’s polystyrene trays were not tossed into a landfill and did not go entirely to waste. They were incinerated, she said, in a process that produces energy. The cardboard trays will be recycled unless they are splattered with food; they are also compostable.
In the Washington region’s school systems, not everyone takes the same approach. In D.C. public schools, all disposable items must be reusable, recyclable, made of recycled materials or easily compostable. In Fairfax County, polystyrene lunch trays are taken to a plant in Lorton, where they are processed into electricity, said schools spokesman John Torre.
By contrast, Prince William County washes its reusable plastic trays, and Loudoun County relies on a foam tray that officials say is environmentally friendly. Prince George’s County’s lunch trays are not recyclable but are biodegradable, so they break down in a landfill, officials said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/montgomery-schools-ending-the-era-of-the-foam-lunch-tray/2014/05/18/3f083244-d537-11e3-8a78-8fe50322a72c_story.html?hpid=z4

Grid Parity - Tipping Point For Change

   While grid parity is where things are headed there are still many obstacles - starting with dollars and dollars of utility money to fight it. Start in Arizona to see the aggressive tactics used by utilities against grid parity. Grid parity will allow on-site power generation by independent and very small producers (a household) to be part of the discussion of the future of energy production in the United States, instead of  beening dismissed as insignificant. 
   Quality improvements and cost declines in batteries, as the article reports, are a major tipping point to make on-site surplus power generation practical for a growing number of people and businesses. While not mentioned in the article, there are recent significant performance improvements in small scale wind power production systems designed for residential rooftop mounting. With further price drops, a system that combines rooftop solar and wind electric production with battery backup becomes a practical goal for an urban dweller - not just off-the-grid back-to-the-hills people. Adding a solar hot water component further reduces off-site power needs.
    As more individual households become energy producers, the two-way potential of the grid begins to be realized. Up until now, the grid is primarily seen as a one-way street to the consumer. Deregulation has divided distribution from production but a lot of the same folks are still around and they would be happy if it stayed a one-way street. The continuing rise in on-site power production pushes the envelope though. I see two basic realities - first, less distributed power means less revenue and taxes and second, if a micro power producer wants to sell their power, they must be connected to the grid. Connection will cost money. Clearly a realignment of the present utilities vs. solar people paradigm is needed - the grid needs re-imagining with an emphasis on who is to receive the benefit - is it a democratic thing because everyone basically needs it or is it prone to corporate bottle-necks or choke points? 
   The inherent benefit of household power production is people keeping their money - the elimination of the massive wealth transfer from individuals to the corporations that control electricity production and distribution. People do not give up money streams without resistance. Corporations will go to great lengths to protect what they consider to be theirs. Grid parity is change - for forward looking people, it is a key element in a tipping point that can have significant effects on corporate and government revenues. Just as there are currently winners and losers, there are winners and losers to come. Hopefully these issues will soon be more commonly part of the discussion for everyone.
      

Grid parity: Why electric utilities should struggle to sleep at night

By Matt McFarland, Updated: March 25 at 9:02 am

What’s good news for those concerned with climate change, and bad news for electric utilities? That’s grid parity, which is sometimes called socket parity. It exists when an alternative energy source generates electricity at a cost matching the price of power from the electric grid.

As grid parity becomes increasingly common, renewable energy could transform our world and slow the effects of climate change. Advances in solar panels and battery storage will make it more realistic for consumers to dump their electric utility, and power their homes through solar energy that is stored in batteries for cloudy days.

“I think the grid gets disrupted,” said NRG Energy chief executive David Crane. “The only question is do you want to be the disruptor or do you want to get disrupted.”

Our world is increasingly cordless, and power appears likely to follow. While we’re not there yet, the momentum behind distributed energy is building.

The Rocky Mountain Institute has said that tens of millions of commercial and residential customers will have grid parity by 2030 and perhaps 2020. Hawaii is already there as a result of high energy costs associated with being an island.

Other estimates are more aggressive. A 2013 Deutsche Bank report said that 10 states are currently at grid parity: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and Vermont. According to a 2013 note by Citi Research, Germany, Spain, Portugal and Australia have reached grid parity.

This shift has benefited from a dramatic drop in the price of solar panels, which dropped 97.2 percent from 1975 to 2012, according to GTM Research.

For electric utilities to truly be challenged, batteries are just as important as solar panels. With batteries excess energy could be stored. Tesla announced in February it’s building a gigafactory, which it envisions producing more lithium ion batteries by 2020 than were produced worldwide in a 2013. The scale of the operation should drive down prices further (Tesla estimates over 30 percent). Some of these batteries will be used by SolarCity, a leader in installing residential solar panels.

SolarCity has a pilot program in California, in which batteries store solar power. It has complained that electric utilities are slowing its rollout. NRG Energy hopes to have a similar product available by the end of 2014.

If utilities are dragging their feet on SolarCity’s initiative, it’s easy to understand why. As solar energy gets cheaper, traditional electric utilities are doing the opposite. The cost of maintaining the electric grid has gotten more expensive, but reliability hasn’t improved. The investments of electrical utilities appear to be poorly spent.

If customers leave electric utilities, it starts a downward spiral. Fewer customers will mean higher rates, which encourages remaining customers to jump ship for a solar-battery system.

Electric utilities appear poorly equipped for how technology will transform the energy industry. For years there hasn’t been an incentive to innovate, in part due to a lack of competition. Plus, making their product cheaper means less revenue, so why innovate?
Meanwhile, energy upstarts are led by forward thinkers with disruptive track records and eyes on society’s big problems, such as climate change and our dependence on fossil fuels for energy. SolarCity chairman Elon Musk co-founded PayPal and leads Tesla, which could transform the auto industry.
NRG’s Crane speaks of having his company mentioned in the same breath as Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. It’s radical to imagine anyone feeling passionate about their source of power, but environmental concerns may make it common soon. New devices such as Nest’s popular thermostat are making consumers rethink what to expect from the companies and gadgets that manage their energy.
Crane highlighted the climate change concerns in a recent letter to shareholders: “The day is coming when our children sit us down in our dotage, look us straight in the eye, with an acute sense of betrayal and disappointment in theirs, and whisper to us, ‘You knew… and you didn’t do anything about it. Why?’”

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2014/03/25/grid-parity-why-electric-utilities-should-struggle-to-sleep-at-night/