Go Green for Saving and Earning Money

Many of the utilities that we use at home cost us money - whether it's a water bill, rising gasoline prices, lighting up or heating our homes. Access to these resources costs big money, but there are little ways to conserve energy and balance your bank account at the same time!

1. If you live in a home with a backyard, use a portion of it for a vegetable garden. If you live in an apartment building with a small balcony, you can grow the vegetables in pots. You will not only save money but also have fun taking care of the green plants.

2. When you wash the vegetables in the kitchen sink save the water for the plants in your garden. In this way you will not only save money on the water bill but also enrich the plants as well. Do not throw away the leaves or grass that are caught in the lawnmower bag when you mow the lawn. Collect them in a container. Pour the water from the washed vegetables that you save from the kitchen sink into the container and you have a very rich "fertilizer tea" that costs you nothing at all.

3. Turn the faucet off when you're brushing your teeth. Saving a few gallons of running water will lower your water bill. Do not use hot water unless it is absoluely necessary because you have to pay to heat it. Do you have any idea how much water is used when your toilet bowl fills up? Quite a bit - so to save a little extra on your water bill collect the water (without the soap) that you shower in a bucket and use it to flush the toilet.

4. Adjust your thermostat. By adjusting just a few degrees, you'll notice the huge impact it makes on your energy bills. If you're hot, wear shorts, and if you're cold, throw on a sweatshirt! Your body will do a good job of regulating your temperature, and you can help regulate energy consumption by using a little less yourself.

5. Unless it is absolutely necessary you should not use the electric dishwasher and the gas dryer because these appliances consume a lot of electricity and gas that is getting more expensive nowadays. You can wash your dishes in the kitchen sink the old fashion way. Unless your neighborhood association have strict rules against hanging out your clothes in the back yard to dry, you can hang them in the garage or some place that is not visible to your neighbors.

6. Try to make your own cleaning products. Instead of buying expensive chemicals that you usually clean with, try some home-made (and biodegradable) mixtures. You will save money, because baking soda, soap, and vinegar are cheaper than brand-name cleaning products; and they work just as well, too!

7. Buy "gently used" products. From clothing to furniture, you'll save money and help reduce toxic commercial waste at the same time. Aside from local garage sales and thrift shops, there are sites like CraigsList.com and FreeSharing.org where you'll find great deals on used items.

8. Share a ride. If you've got a long drive to work or school, and you know someone else who's going in the same location, ride together! You'll both save on gas money and cut down on the number of eco-pollutants emitted by cars. If it's a short trip, consider riding a bike or even rollerblading. In this way you will not only save money in transportation but also get some bodily exercises. That is a double benefit financially and attaining good health.

9. Use energy-saving bulbs in your light sockets. While it doesn't seem like much, an energy-saver isn't only good for preserving resources - it costs less to run, so you'll save when your energy bill is due.

10. Recycle cans, bottles, plastic bags and newspapers. Support recycling by purchasing items that are reusable and/or recyclable. When you recycle, you send less trash to the landfill and you help save resources that would be used in manufacturing non-recycled products. There are so many ways that going green can save you money - if nothing else, let that be your driving factor!

HONG KONG - Just five years ago, Zhang Yin and her husband were driving around the United States in a used Dodge minivan begging garbage dumps to give them their scrap paper.

She and her husband, who was trained as a dentist, had formed a company in the 1990s to collect paper for recycling and ship it to China. It was a step up from life back in Hong Kong, where she had opened a paper trading company with $3,800 to cash in on China's chronic paper shortages.

"I remember what a man in the business told me back then," Ms. Zhang said. "He said, ‘Wastepaper is like a forest. Paper recycles itself, generation after generation.' "

Ms. Zhang took that memory all the way to the bank. As a result of her entrepreneurship, Zhang Yin (pronounced Jang Yeen) is now among the richest women anywhere in the world, including Oprah Winfrey, Martha Stewart and eBay's chief executive, Meg Whitman. Her personal wealth is estimated at $1.5 billion or more, with members of her family worth billions more.

Her companies take heaps of waste paper from the United States and Europe, ship it to China and recycle it into corrugated cardboard, which is then used for boxes that are packed with toys, electronics and furniture that is stamped "Made in China" and often shipped right back across the ocean to American consumers.

After the boxes are thrown away, the cycle starts all over again.

Late last year, Forbes magazine named Ms. Zhang the wealthiest woman in China. She may even be the richest self-made woman in the world, challenging a handful of others, like Giuliana Benetton, who started the clothing company with her brothers, and Rosalia Mera, who co-founded Zara, the Spanish clothing retailer, with her former husband.

Most of the world's richest women inherited their wealth: from the Walton women of Wal-Mart fame to the daughters of the men who created Mars candy bars, L'Oréal cosmetics and BMW.

But not Ms. Zhang. A petite 49-year-old woman with a cherubic smile and a fancy for diamonds, she started out from a modest background, the daughter of a military officer. Now she dominates the world's paper trade through her giant companies, one centered in Dongguan just outside Hong Kong and the other based in Los Angeles.

"She's a visionary," says Herman Woo, an analyst at BNP Paribas, which helped her paper company list shares in Hong Kong. "She doesn't mind putting a lot of money in at the beginning, to build the company."

That company, Nine Dragons Paper, is now China's biggest papermaker. The company raised nearly $500 million when it went public here last March with the help of Merrill Lynch.

Since then, shares of Nine Dragons have quadrupled, giving the company a market value of over $5 billion. (The Zhang family controls 72 percent of the company, which makes it one of the richest families in China.)

Ms. Zhang's smaller, Los Angeles-based venture, America Chung Nam, is also one of the world's biggest paper trading companies, with ties to recycling yards in New York, Chicago and California.

No other American company sends so much material to China, in as many containers, as America Chung Nam, which was named the top American exporter to China by volume for the fifth consecutive year in 2005, the most recent ranking, according to Piers Global Intelligence, which tracks import and export data.

Now, with the paper industry shifting to China, where labor and land are cheaper, Ms. Zhang and Nine Dragons are vowing to take on the world's global paper giants, like International Paper, Weyerhaeuser and Smurfit Stone.

"My goal is to make Nine Dragons, in three to five years, the leader in containerboards," Ms. Zhang says emphatically in a short interview in her glistening Hong Kong office. "My desire has always been to be the leader in an industry."

Monday, July 30, 2007

Entrepreneurs, venture capitalists boost clean technologies.

By JAN NORMAN and MICHELE HIMMELBERG The Orange County Register Comments 0| Recommend 0

When Dave Bock started selling recycled bags and boxes in 1992, he spent most of his time educating retailers and manufacturers about the value of buying environmentally friendly packaging.

His company, Earthpack, which now owns its own building in Irvine, is an old timer in a field that is booming because of a convergence of global events and technological improvements.

There long have been environmentally conscious entrepreneurs like Bock. Now a growing number of companies and investors are betting there are also big profits in going green.

"I've become a believer in the power of venture capital to change the world," said Walter Schindler, founder of SAIL Venture Partners in Costa Mesa, which specializes in what is popularly called clean technology.

Four of SAIL's portfolio companies are in Orange County, including Waterhealth International in Lake Forest, which makes low-cost water purification systems for Third World countries.

Waiting for consumer habits to change can take a generation, Schindler added, but venture capital can speed up the process by infusing money into companies that can make big changes quickly.

The field of clean technology capitalizes on the fundamental goal of engineering to improve efficiency.

"It's anything that maximizes output and minimizes cost... environmental, economic or social costs," said engineer Ed Berkey, who is in charge of alternative energy investments at Ventana Capital Management, a San Juan Capistrano venture capital fund. "Anything that keeps that balance is clean technology."

The field has opened opportunities for a vast range of Southern California businesses.

• Opin Group in Yorba Linda and Victor Insulation in Los Alamitos are selling recycled building materials and insulation.
• PowerGenix in San Diego has attracted $31 million in venture capital to develop smaller, more powerful rechargeable batteries that can easily be recycled.
• Central Plumbingin La Habra has filled its showroom with low-flow toilets, motion-activated faucets and bathroom cabinets made of recycled materials.
• Marla's Mania, a Monarch Beach promotional products supplier, has created a separate Web site of products, such as key chains and coffee mugs, made of recycled materials.

Recently, the topic of making green by going green attracted more than 150 people to an Orange County Venture Group program in Costa Mesa.

Some in the audience wondered if the current trend is a fad, like the boom in alternative energy in the 1970s that rose and fell in tandem with global oil prices.

More than rising oil prices are now in play, the panel of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists agreed. They cited such factors as:

• The biggest oil-producing regions are politically unstable while politicians in other regions that have oil reserves block increased exploration and refining capacity.
• The public is more concerned than it used to be about environmental issues.
• Technology advances are lowering the cost of alternative fuels and other clean technology.
• Some clean technology companies have demonstrated financial success, such as the $265 million sale of Berkeley solar-system installer PowerLight Corp. to SunPower Corp. in San Jose.

"Right now is a great time to be in clean technology because there are government subsidies (for research and development) and few government regulations," Josh Green of Mohr Davidow Ventures in Silicon Valley told the Orange County Venture Group.

However, until recently, clean technology was a career gamble for both entrepreneurs and investors.

SAIL founder Schindler said he didn't get a lot of support from colleagues when he switched from corporate law to "green investing" eight years ago because no one had heard of such a thing.

The sector has lacked strong entrepreneurs, Green added, so venture capitalists have had to recruit them from other industries.

The first venture investors in PowerGenix, for example, persuaded Dan Squiller to move from electronics. He said he was willing because he saw a technology for producing better batteries that could partner with existing manufacturers rather than spend huge amounts of money on new factories.

"But clean technology is a significant career move that many entrepreneurs haven't been willing to take," Squiller said.

Still the factors boosting clean technology aren't lost on venture capitalists, who increased their investment in the sector by 78 percent to $2.9 billion in 2006, according to the Clean Tech Network in San Francisco.

California is the epicenter of this investment. Almost three-fourths of the venture-backed clean technology companies and more than half the venture funds investing in clean technology are in California, according to the National Venture Capital Association.

by Elizabeth Blackwell

02/18/08 - 09:40 AM EST

When the world's biggest retailer offers to pay up, everyone notices.

Matt Kistler, senior vice president of sustainability at Wal-Mart(WMT - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr), recently told Reuters that the company is willing to pay suppliers more for higher-quality, environmentally conscious products.

Coming from a company known for known for its aggressive -- perhaps obsessive -- cost-cutting, that's big news.

"When Wal-Mart makes a decision, it has significant impact," says Ron Pernick, co-founder and principal of Clean Edge, a research and publishing firm specializing in clean technologies. "The issue right now is that a lot of green products can't be produced to scale yet. Wal-Mart can leverage the supply chain and drive down costs."

You don't have to be a multinational behemoth to go green. Small businesses can reduce their environmental footprint in any number of ways, from a cleaning service that uses nontoxic products to a PR agency that sends its releases via e-mail (saving both trees and postage costs).

But what exactly makes a product green?

The Web site GreenHome.com, for example, sells 150 different categories of household items, from soap to air filters to office supplies.

"In all our categories, the principles are the same, to reduce toxins and waste," says Lawrence Comras, the site's CEO and president. "But the application of those principles is different for each category." For soaps, the ingredients are key criteria (no toxic chemicals or petroleum distillates), while wood furniture is assessed by whether it came from sustainably harvested trees.

Doing your research is especially important here. If you're going to promote your business as eco-friendly, make sure you can back up your claim with specifics.

Otherwise, you'll be accused of "greenwashing": making Earth-friendly claims as a marketing gimmick rather than a serious commitment.

"The lesson for small businesses is to identify with more rigor the eco-attributes of your product or service," Comras says. "The customer is looking at the story behind the product. That's where you can differentiate yourself."

Can a small business make more green by going green? That's the big question.

The market for eco-conscious has clearly expanded: Big retailers are pushing "all-natural" items, and customers have become educated on issues ranging from fair trade to carbon footprints.

But environmental responsibility doesn't come cheap. Will shoppers pay up? Some customers do pay more for products they believe have health benefits, such as parents who buy organic yogurt for their children.

But most people still won't pay a premium for eco-conscious versions of everyday items, says Pernick: "From the consumer's perspective, a green product may be superior in many ways, but the cost has to be the same."

That's where the Wal-Mart effect comes in. By pushing suppliers to make changes in packaging and production, the giant retailer aims to offer green merchandise at the same or only slighter higher prices.

"The big players have to make the changes first," Pernick says. "It only works as a partnership between the consumer, business and government."

Small businesses have some advantages when it comes to going green. They may have more freedom in sourcing materials, for example, and can keep a closer eye on their supply chain. But only a market leader like Wal-Mart can make changes that affect the broader consumer culture.

"You're going to see this play out with the large, multi-national companies," Pernick says. "The liability of not changing is so great that they'll lose out in the long term."

If you don't want to lose out, start looking at your business through a green lens. Just make sure you've got a strong case for being environmentally friendly.

The public is already too smart to be greenwashed.

1. grass-colored: of a color in the spectrum between yellow and blue, like the color of grass

2. having edible green leaves: consisting of or containing green leaves of vegetables

a green salad

3. grassy or leafy: consisting of or containing grass, plants, or foliage

4. politics advocating protection of environment: supporting or promoting the protection of the environment

5. made with little environmental harm: produced in an environmentally and ecologically friendly way, e.g. by using renewable resources