Earth Blog

Did you ever play SimCity for the Super Nintendo or PC growing up? Not The Sims, the simulation game where a player basically creates a suburban version of his or herself, but rather the old school game rooted in city planning and map making. 

Do you remember the anxiety felt when building an airport in your simulated town because, yes the residents are demanding it but it’s going to create so much pollution! How did you fight pollution? Did you place the airport on an island, far away from residential areas but connected to the main land via rail? Did you surround it with park land trying to combat pollution with the power of trees? Did any of that even work to reduce pollution? Furthermore SimCity was just a game; you could always destroy your town and start all over.  That isn’t an option in real life when city planners look at their communities and airports.

Eco-rewards program RecycleBank, despite its known flaws, is a program that works for many people around the United States and in Britain.

Incentivizing home recycling on a municipal level with coupons for the mundane (buy one bottle of water, get one free) to fantastic (gift cards) would be icing on the cake for homes that consistently recycle. But not all homes do so and some towns haven't always had curbside recycling which means a commitment to one of the easiest ways to be earth-friendly isn’t present in every home. Therein lies one of the problems with RecycleBank.

The company with the corner on the macaroni & cheese market, Kraft Foods, released a fact sheet today to highlight the ways they are minimizing their environmental impact through waste reduction and recycling at their manufacturing plants. The company credits their employees for making “steady progress” across the globe. Overall, Kraft recycles or reuses about 90% of their manufacturing waste.

"We're waging war on waste, one plant at a time," said Christine McGrath, Vice President, Global Sustainability.  "Today, we have 36 facilities in 13 countries that send zero waste to landfills, and we've reduced our manufacturing waste by 50 percent since 2005.  Our strategy is simple: generate less waste and find new uses for the waste we do produce.  And our employees are doing just that."

Perhaps you missed the 2012 People’s Choice Awards on Wednesday which was televised on CBS. The Internet is still buzzing with commentary on who was there, who wasn’t, who wore what and just how did Kim Kardashian manage to win favorite reality star when her recent actions have not been favorable? But if you are sad you missed the awards show and need to see people being handed accolades to tide you over until the Golden Globes this weekend you can read about the eight winners of the Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance's (MEEA) 2012 Inspiring Efficiency Awards.

This year’s winners were announced yesterday at a dinner and gala during a three day conference hosted by the MEEA at the Fairmont Hotel in Chicago. This year marks the tenth annual conference and they began handing out the Inspiring Efficiency Awards in 2005.

Earth conservation and recovery is a responsibility shared by us all. And while the earth-saving efforts made by individuals certainly is vital to our planet’s health, it is the power of large numbers working towards common causes and goals that gives Mother Nature the best chance of survival. Because of this, whether they are ready to acknowledge it or not, medium to big businesses and corporations have an inherently larger responsibility towards earth conservation and resource recovery. With pollution, habit destruction, natural resource usage and other negative environmental factors at all-time-high levels, there should already be plenty of motivation for all of us to pitch in and help improve the health of our planet. Nonetheless, additional motivation is sometimes needed to catalyze earth-saving action. Businesses in need of additional motivation should consider the massive potential for lucrative exposure that can accompany earth-friendly acts.