environment
Bjorn Lomborg: skeptic or too much an optimist?
Sep 4th
Bjorn Lomborg, author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” used to argue that concern about climate change was overblown because there were better causes to spend money on such as curing AIDS or malaria.
The Danish political scientist now says in a book coming out later this month called ”Smart Solutions to Climate Change: Comparing Costs and Benefits,” that global warming is one of the top challenges facing the world and we should spend money on trying to fix it – $100 billion a year.
But true to his contrarian nature, he thinks the way the world is fighting climate change is all wrong.
First, he thinks that global environment and climate negotiators are trying to put money into the wrong places. Many of them want $100 billion a year by 2020 to go to developing countries to pay for adapting to the worst effects of climate change, like flooding and droughts, and to help them move into alternative energies like solar power.
“Of course if adaptation money is well spent it can be pretty good money,” Lomborg told me in an interview. “But if you want a solution, the real and only long term solution will be to make green energy much, much cheaper.”
Instead, the money should be spent on research and development of solar panels and other alternative energies, he argues, because the technologies today are more expensive than coal, natural gas and oil.
Some companies say solar panels are approaching parity to fossil fuels, especially when they are put up in the sunny U.S. Southwest. But Lomborg says many countries without stellar sunshine, especially Germany, have moved too quickly into subsidies for expensive alternative energy. “It underscores much of the problem with current climate policy that you want to put up new technology because it looks good and it gives politicians a photo opportunity, but at the end of the day it will do virtually nothing to deal with climate change.”
He compares the current alternative energy situation to where we were with computers in the 1950s or 1960s. “Computers only got more efficient because we spent large sums of money mainly through the space race on making computers much better,” he said. “But we did not force everyone to buy a huge, inefficient computer in the 1950s and say everyone must have one in their cellar,” referring to mandates some countries and states have passed for minimal amounts of renewable energy.
Still, the space race had in many ways much clearer targets than slowing the world from warming up without hurting economic growth. Many experts say that alternative energies need to be deployed now to work out kinks and prepare for changes to the power grid.
And if he’s wrong, and the world experiences rapid catastrophic warming before alternative energies are perfected, he believes there’s an insurance that could be rapidly deployed – geoengineering. For just $6 billion specially placed ships in the mid-Pacific could generate steam that would whiten marine clouds. He believes that would bounce much of the sun’s rays back into the atmosphere and help keep the world cool.
But few climate experts would consider geoengineering an insurance policy because little is known about how cloud whitening, or other techniques, would change weather systems in the future.
“We should be wary of any problems with it, but we should investigate so if we need it we have it in our arsenal of options,” he said.
Whatver label you put on Lomborg – skeptic or overly optimistic believer, or something else altogether – it’s hard to say he doesn’t have ideas.
Photo: Tony Gentile/REUTERS
‘Friendly’ push for Facebook to dump coal
Sep 2nd
With half a million signatures backing it up, Greenpeace fired off a letter to Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg today calling for the world’s largest social network to cut ties to coal-fired power at its new data center in Oregon.
“Other cloud-based companies face similar choices and challenges as you do in building data centers, yet many are making smarter and cleaner investments,” executive director of Greenpeace, Kumi Naidoo, writes. He points to Google and its a recent agreement to buy wind power from NextEra Energy for the next 20 years to power its data centers.
The letter adds to what’s turning into a miserable week for Zuckerberg, who is also fighting a civil lawsuit by a man who claims to own a huge chunk of the social network site and is seeking to uncover “unnecessary details” about Zuckerberg’s private life.
Greenpeace’s “Unfriend Coal” drive targeting Facebook falls under the environmental group’s larger Cool IT campaign, which aims to influence infrastructure choices behind the cloud-computing boom.
When Facebook broke ground on its center in Prineville, Oregon, last January, it blogged about energy-efficient technologies at the new facility, including cooling the air by bringing in cooler air from outside in an “airside economizer” and re-use of server heat during the colder months.
But Greenpeace says since then Facebook signed a deal to source its energy from PacificCorp, which it says uses 83 percent coal in its energy mix, the Associated Press reports.
An increase in the use of coal over the past four years was linked to a record 3 percent per year rise in global CO2 emissions, a recent IPCC report showed.
And Greenpeace is predicting that the rise in data centers and telecommunication networks will mean an increase to 1,963 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity by 2020.
Yes it would be better for acid rain and air pollution if nobody burned coal for electricity.
But with 500 million members propping it up, should Facebook care how its users think its infrastructure should be powered? It’s a free service, after all, one that those 500 million people choose to use. Is the threat of their non-participation in FB networking enough to prompt any action?
Genetically engineered fish, anyone?
Sep 1st
Would you eat a genetically modified fish? What about pork from a pig with mouse genes? Beef from cattle with genes spliced to resist “mad cow” disease?
These are questions Americans may soon have to answer for themselves if the U.S. health regulators allow the sale of a genetically engineered salmon. The company that makes it, Aqua Bounty Technologies Inc <ABTX.L>, expects an agency decision by year’s end.
The biotech says its Atlantic salmon grows nearly twice as fast as normal salmon and could help Americans get more locally farmed fish. That could cut down on U.S. imports of roughly $1.4 billion a year in Atlantic salmon from other countries such as Chile while also easing pressure on wild Atlantic salmon in the nation’s Northeast.
But environmentalists and consumer advocates are concerned about what could happen if such altered fish were to escape or be released in rivers or off-shore salmon farms. They also worry about the health effects of eating such modified fish.
The Food and Drug Administration takes up the issue starting Sept. 19 as part of a three-day public hearing on whether to allow the genetically altered salmon on the U.S. market.
For more on the salmon situation, click here. For other genetically engineered food animals that aren’t far behind, click here.
Photo credit: Reuters/Victor Ruiz Caballero (Workers process farmed salmon at a plant in Chile. The fish shown in the photo are not genetically modified.)
SF activists mark Katrina anniversary with Big Oil protest
Aug 31st
After playing dead on top of oil-black plastic sheets outside a Chevron office, protesters marched through downtown San Francisco on Monday to denounce “oil addiction” on the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, as the U.S. Gulf Coast recovers from its more recent disaster.
About 100 marchers, drawn from activist groups ranging from Code Pink to the Rainforest Action Network, took part in the ”Climate Justice” protest to demand that BP pay to clean up the mess in the Gulf and that the industry clean up its act in general. (BP has agreed to set aside $20 billion for spill damage claims and to pay all legitimate losses related to the spill.) Protestors also called for ”real solutions” after briefly blocking the entrance to the headquarters of Chevron Energy Solutions, the oil giant’s solar power arm.
“Let’s get power from the sun: oil is over, oil is done,” the marchers chanted, on their way to the local branch of the Environmental Protection Agency and then to a BP office. Some of them wore bright white jumpsuits splattered with molasses to simulate oil stains.
At first, half a dozen motorcycle cops tried in vain to herd the marchers on to the sidewalk amid busy lunchtime traffic, before agreeing on a route and escorting them to the EPA.
Many tourists, out enjoying the mild sunny weather, snapped photos for posterity as the march passed by world-famous cable cars at the end of California Street, with one declaring excitedly: “Oh, a San Francisco protest — I got to get this.”
Tiger among fluffy toys shows extreme smuggling tricks
Aug 27th
The drugged tiger cub (left) hidden among cuddly toys in a bag at Bangkok airport ranks as one of the most bizarre smuggling tricks.
Imagine the shock of X-raying the bag — as airport workers checking luggage did — and finding a live tiger among the fluffy tiger toys. Maybe it moved, or they spotted the outline of its skeleton among the other toys?
For a story about the two-month-old cub (photo courtesy of wildlife trade monitoring group Traffic) click here. A 31-year-old Thai woman was about to board a flight to Iran when they found the cub in her oversized bag.
It highlights how smugglers find extreme ways of packing away live creatures.
In July, officers at Mexico City’s airport arrested a man trying to smuggle 18 small monkeys from Lima wrapped inside his socks.
Women smugglers have several times been caught with endangered bird eggs hidden in their bras — an aid to incubation and far easier to hide on an international flight than a flapping, squawking parrot.
But Traffic says it’s no joke: smuggling is pushing species of some animals and plants towards extinction. And while it’s hard to pin down the scale of wildlife smuggling, some estimates are between $10 and $20 billion a year, it says.
Could wind push energy bill to fruition?
Aug 27th
–Andris (Andy) E. Cukurs is chief executive officer of North American operations of India-based Suzlon Energy Ltd., the world’s third-largest wind turbine manufacturer. Any views expressed here are his own.–
The climate bill may have stalled and, with it, a renewable electricity standard that would promote wind and other renewable-energy sources. But at the same time, wind energy continues to make strong strides.
Just look at the commitment of large corporations, like Google, purchasing 20 years of wind-generated electricity in Iowa, ostensibly to operate its huge data centers. Or SC Johnson & Son, installing turbines at its Wisconsin headquarters and putting up a windmill at its largest European manufacturing plant – in addition to nearly half its Ziploc plant in Michigan powered with wind.
Is this how the use of wind and other renewables will play out in the States, with corporations leading the way?
Major electric utilities ramp up wind energy gradually alongside long-term incentives, but corporations like Google and SC Johnson are using wind turbines right where they’re needed. The company I work for, Suzlon, started this way in India – by bringing clean, reliable power to businesses that needed it.
What is preventing even broader growth of wind power in the U.S.?
Billions of dollars were spent building our wind capacity over the past decade, yet wind energy still generated just 1.25 percent of our electricity in 2008 (although that’s up from 0.4 percent just four years earlier).
The 1.25 percentage is a far cry from the 20 percent goal the U.S. Energy Department set for wind’s share of the U.S. electric supply by 2030. It also falls far below the Energy Information Agency’s projection in May 2009 that by 2012 – less than 18 months away – wind energy will generate 5 percent of electricity.
Much more recently, the U.S. added only 1239 megawatts of wind power installations in the first half of 2010, dropping such installations to the lowest level since 2007. Manufacturing investment in wind also continues to lag below levels in the 2008-2009 period.
As for the benefits of wind, they’re indisputable.
Wind promotes national security because it diversifies our energy portfolio. It also has the tremendous potential to create jobs — jobs that deliver clean, affordable, reliable domestic energy to promote economic vitality and environmental quality besides our national security.
Wind-power projects created 35,000 new jobs in 2008, estimates the American Wind Energy Association. And in one state, Illinois, each new wind-turbine project generates 1,473 new jobs during construction, a new Illinois State University study found.
As for clean energy, wind produces no emissions and no dangerous radioactive waste.
Wind-energy generation also doesn’t consume any non-renewable resources, such as oil, natural gas or coal.
Wind is free and with today’s technology advances, it can be captured efficiently, at about one-quarter the cost of solar power. Further, wind turbines come in a wide array of sizes. This means that a range of people and businesses can use them on a self-reliant basis – from single households and businesses to small towns and villages.
Besides, strong consumer support exists for wind.
A survey released in June 2010 by Applied Materials, a capital-equipment maker serving the solar industry among others found that three-quarters of Americans feel that increasing renewable energy and decreasing U.S. dependence on foreign oil are the nation’s top energy priorities.
As for wind alone, an April 2010 survey by AWEA found that 89 percent of respondents – 84 percent of Republicans, 93 percent of Democrats and 88 percent of Independents – believe increasing the amount of energy the nation gets from wind is a good idea.
Wind energy faces challenges, of course; all energy sources do. It’s true that wind can’t provide all of our nation’s energy supply, but that’s why the U.S. requires a portfolio of energy sources, especially of renewable forms. And it’s possible to generate a significant portion of energy from renewable sources.
Already, wind power supplies more than 20 percent of the energy consumed in Denmark and more than 11 percent in Spain and Portugal.
Many of the perceived disadvantages are just myths. Wind energy isn’t universally more expensive; it’s very competitive with fossil sources of generation.
While the upfront capital cost of wind energy is more expensive than some traditional power sources, such as natural gas, there are no fuel costs with wind. Further, in good locations, the cost of capital and other “levelized” costs are now very competitive with other energy sources, research studies show.
It’s a myth, too, that insurmountable transmission issues emerge trying to get wind energy from remote areas to customers elsewhere.
A recent Stanford University study found that about one-third of the electricity that wind farms generate will become a reliable source of around-the-clock power to customers in various U.S. regions through electricity grid interconnections.
Another myth concerns the dependability of wind – that it may not blow during periods of peak demand and it’s difficult to store. It’s true that wind turbines generate electricity 65 percent to 80 percent of the time, so the output amount is variable. But no power plant generates at its maximum 100 percent potential. Because of the electricity grid’s intelligent design, no need exists to back up every megawatt of wind energy with a megawatt of fossil fuel or dispatchable power. The reality is that while wind energy is naturally variable, it’s not unreliable. In addition, wind won’t supply all of our electricity anyway; that’s the reason wind should serve as one portion of a diversified energy portfolio.
Let’s discard several other untruths. Wind turbines are noisy. A Lawrence Technological University study found that it’s difficult to distinguish the sound of a turbine from the rustling of corn stalks.
Wind turbines kill birds. Yes, an estimated 28,500 a year – while buildings kills 550 million; power lines, 130 million; cats, 100 million; autos, 80 million; and pesticides, 67 million, estimates the U.S. Forest Service.
Wind projects require more concrete and steel than other power sources. Wind towers do need concrete and steel for their foundations, but simply consider the gargantuan amount of concrete and steel required for a nuclear plant or a hydroelectric power plant.
Add up the scorecard and it’s hard to question that the advantages of wind far outweigh the negatives. That’s why it’s disheartening to see such a dark political climate for renewable energy in general and wind specifically.
The U.S. needs a national renewable-electricity standard that would set a percentage, say 15 percent by 2020, of electricity generated for utilities that would have to come from wind and other renewable energy sources.
A growing number of major countries in Europe, Asia and elsewhere, as well as several states in the U.S. such as California and Texas, already have set ambitious standards. For the U.S., a national RES is essential to foster stable, long-term investment in wind energy.
Tom Friedman of the New York Times contends that if Congress doesn’t pass a serious energy bill, “we may not have another shot until … we get a “perfect storm” – a climate or energy crisis that is awful enough to finally end our debate on these issues but not so awful as to end the world.”
Will it take another crisis before we wake up to the clear value of wind energy? Let’s not find out. It’s time to re-energize the broader growth of wind energy in America.
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Photo shows a state-of-the-art wind turbine at the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL) National Wind Technology Center (NWTC) spins on a sunny day near Boulder, Colorado July 21, 2010. REUTERS/Rick Wilking
Norway: recovering ‘petroholic’ or prudent saver?
Aug 26th
My name is Norway and I’m a petroholic.
“I’ve tried it all: Vaseline, kerosene, gasoline, jet fuel and diesel. I’ve even tried natural gas,” says a leaflet from the most controversial stand at Norway’s biggest oil and gas exhibition.
Situated next to lavish exhibits of dozens of oil and gas companies and hundreds of oil sector contractors, green group Bellona is preaching the sober message of the renewables revolution at the heart of Norway’s oil world – the ONS conference in Stavanger.
In a 12-step rehab plan for Norway, Bellona says the world’s No. 5 exporter of oil and No. 2 gas provider has based its prosperous economy on resource extraction that will not last, and is already exhibiting signs of a “petro hangover”.
By some measures, Norway is increasingly dependent on oil. Half of its exports, a third of budget revenues and a quarter of its economy come from the offshore sector. Studies show that wages in Norway, which was the poorest Scandinavian country at the start of its oil era 40 years ago, are among the highest in the world and about a third higher than in neighbour Sweden.
Norwegians also work the fewest hours per year in the developed world, take the most sick leave, and have built up a generous welfare state that relies heavily on oil revenues.
But Norway has also managed to do something quite sober – it has saved some of its oil wealth in an offshore fund, to spend when the black gold runs out. The democratic world’s biggest public savings experiment has grown to about $450 billion, or the size of Norway’s annual GDP.
By diverting the stream of petro-dollars away from its economy, it has managed to avoid overheating and collapse of non-oil industry associated with the “oil curse” that has engulfed many resource-rich states.
So what’s your view? Is Norway a petroholic in need of rehab, or a prudent saver with a taste for petroleum tipple?
(Photos: Top left – the Statfjord A platform and its loading buoy in the North Sea. Right: The Oseberg oil platform in the North Sea. Both pictures – Scanpix/Reuters)
Hemp car sparks a buzz
Aug 26th
The blogosphere is abuzz about an electric car made of hemp developed by a team of Canadian companies who plan its debut at the EV trade show in Vancouver next month.
The compact four-passenger car, with its body made of hemp bio-composite, will have a top speed of 55 miles per hour and a range of 25 to 100 miles before needing to be recharged, depending on the battery, CBC News reported.
Calgary-based developer Motive Industries Inc. said hemp achieves the same mechanical properties as glass composite without the weight, an important goal when designing the body of a battery-powered vehicle.
“Didn’t Cheech and Chong already try this?” wrote one observer on Slashdot.org.
“Model THC?” quipped another.
Hemp is a natural fiber product of the Cannabis sativa plant and is comparable to cotton as a fiber. It is bred differently from the Cannabis indica plant that produces marijuana, which is outlawed under the U.S. Controlled Substance Act.
“It’s illegal to grow it in the U.S., so it actually gives Canada a bit of a market advantage,” Nathan Armstrong, president of Motive Industries told the CBC.
Industrial farming of hemp is practiced in 30 countries including Canada, France, England, Germany, Australia and Russia but cultivation is illegal in the U.S.
Last year, an Ontario company secured $1.8 million from investors to open the first North American bio-processing plant for industrial hemp, The Canadian Press reported.
Hemp for the Kestrel is supplied by Alberta Innovates Technology Futures, a Crown corporation in the western Canadian province that purchases its cannabis from an industrial hemp farm in Vegreville, Alberta.
The vehicle is slated for prototype and testing later this month.
It’s not the first attempt to make a care using hemp, once an abundant fiber crop in the U.S.
In 2008, Lotus released its solar-powered car made from hemp.
In 1941, Henry Ford attempted that very feat, documented in this YouTube video:
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Top image shows an undated promotional photo of the Motive Kestrel. REUTERS/Handout
UN panel once exaggerated costs of climate fight — by 1,000 times
Aug 25th
Highlighting errors you made almost a decade ago isn’t often a good way to raise your credibility — but it might help the U.N. panel of climate scientists after controversy over mistakes in its most recent 2007 report.
In 2003, I was at a conference in Moscow at which Bert Bolin of Sweden, the first chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was trying to persuade a largely sceptical audience of Russian experts that the fight against global warming was affordable.
His problem: a key part of the IPCC evidence he presented exaggerated the costs to the world economy by a mind-boggling 1,000 times.
The cost “has negligible impacts on the projected economic growth”, he assured the audience, under a giant slide showing that the costs, in the worst case, would be almost $18,000,000,000,000,000 this century. (… it was wrong — such an amount would cripple the world economy).
Bolin was a persuasive debater, with wit and deep knowledge, but you could feel from the muttering around the audience that he wasn’t winning that one. He (wrongly) acknowledged that the costs could run to the ”quadrillions” of dollars, and produced other data (rightly) showing that the estimated costs — mostly of shifting from fossil fuels towards renewable energies — could easily be absorbed by an expanding world economy.
Bolin was under a lot of fire at that conference – especially from Andrei Illarionov, a former aide of then President Vladimir Putin, who said that IPCC scenarios for combating climate change would wreck the Russian economy. Moscow was at the time undecided about whether to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, the U.N. plan for curbing greenhouse gas emissions by 2012 (it eventually did, despite Illarionov’s objections).
A while after the Moscow conference, the IPCC quietly fixed the graph in the 2001 assessment as an “important correction”, cutting three zeroes. It now shows that it could cost up to $18,000,000,000,000 - that is still a huge amount but only a few percentage points of world GDP by 2050. 
A review is now under way to recommend reforms for the IPCC after errors in the latest 2007 climate assessment including an exaggeration of the thaw of the Himalayas and the amount of the Netherlands that is under sea level. The results of that review, and how to bolster the work of the IPCC, will be presented to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in New York on Aug. 30.
Another report in July by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency found “no errors that would undermine the main conclusions” of the 2007 report, but said the IPCC had to improve quality controls.
Some opponents of the IPCC have this year portrayed the panel as having a bias to exaggerate the negative aspects of climate change to put pressure on governments to act. The Himalayas are in no danger of melting by 2035 as one sentence in the report said, before it was corrected.
But remembering Bolin (he was chairman of the IPCC from 1988-97 and passed away in 2007) trying to fend off Illarionov, with a faulty graph that grossly overstated the costs, shows that the IPCC has also made errors that badly undermine the case that fighting global warming is affordable.
Maybe the IPCC, like most people, has just made the occasional mistake? Those are much easier to avoid with better checks – reforms would be far more complex if there was a consistent bias.
Photos: Top: Russia’s then President Vladimir Putin at the World Climate Conference in Moscow, Sept. 29, 2003. Below: A tourist looks at a view towards Mount Everest from the hills of Syangboche in Nepal (Gopal Chitrakar, Reuters)
The Green Gauge: CF Industries told to clean up
Aug 24th
It never looks good when the EPA raps you on the knuckles for failing to take care of your surroundings. Such was the case last week for CF Industries, a fertilizer-maker now facing a price tag of more than $12 million to improve conditions at a facility in Florida.
Here are the highlights of companies in the news from August 8 to 23. Selections of companies were made by Christopher Greenwald, director of data content at ASSET4, a Thomson Reuters business that provides investment research on the environmental, social and governance performance of major global corporations. These ratings are not recommendations to buy or sell.
CF Industries, a manufacturer of nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers reached a settlement with the Environmental Protection Agency to spend $12 million in order to properly manage waste at a fertilizer manufacturing facility in Plant City, Florida. The settlement also requires the company to pay a fine of $700,000 for violations of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. In addition the company is required to guarantee an amount of $163.5 million to ensure the proper care for the facility once it is closed in the future, an amount representing 155 percent of the company’s 2010 fiscal year net profit.
A copy of the EPA’s Consent degree is available here:
Tesoro and Valero Energy
A report issued by the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and the California Environmental Justice Alliance reveals that Texas-based Tesoro and Valery Energy, which are seeking to overturn California’s commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, are also two of the most significant polluters in the state. The report claims that Valero and Tesoro own facilities that are the 4th and 8th largest producers of toxic chemicals in California respectively and that both companies have been cited for violations of pollution laws in the state. Separately, Valero has also recently been fined $1.9 million for over 200 pollution violations during the past decade at one of its refineries in Delaware City.
American Electric Power, Duke Energy Corp., Southern Co. and Xcel Energy Inc.
American Electric Power, Duke Energy, Southern Co. and Xcel Energy have appealed a case on greenhouse gas emissions to the Supreme Court after a federal appeals court unanimously argued that the case may proceed. Connecticut vs. American Electric Power, which was filed by eight state attorney generals as well as the City of New York, argues that global warming is a public nuisance and that therefore greenhouse gases should be limited by a court order. The defendants argue that such regulations are political in nature and should be determined by legislatures. A ruling on the case would likely help clarify the extent to which legal decisions can serve as a means of limiting CO2 emissions.
Entremares, a wholly owned subsidiary of Goldcorp is facing criminal charges in Honduras, which were filed last week after the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development in the UK revealed dangerously high levels of acid and metal concentrations near the company’s San Martin gold mine. The lawsuit claims that the company violated Honduras’ criminal code, and two senior executives could potentially face up to six years in prison if found guilty in the case.
The world’s largest mining company, BHP Billiton, which recently announced ambitious plans to enter the fertilizer business through its $39 billion hostile takeover bid for Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan, has recently been cited as causing excessive toxic levels of saline emissions in the Georges River South of Sydney, Australia. The environmental license of the company’s mine, operated by subsidiary Endeavour Coal, does not regulate saline discharges, and the company has been required to submit a proposal for how to reduce saline emissions by June of next year.
Frito Lay (Canada), a subsidiary of Pepsico, has introduced a fully compostable packaging for all of its Sun Chips sold in Canada. Frito Lay will manufacture 17 million of these packages per year, which are made of 90 percent plant-based materials and will fully decompose in compost in 14 weeks of disposal. The initiative is part of the ShareGreen Sustainability challenge organized by Wal-Mart Canada in order to motivate manufacturers and suppliers to incorporate innovations into their products to make them more environmentally sustainable. The various corporate initiatives resulting from the challenge are available online here.