The Integrators

"I'm a pretty conservative person," said Berke. "I don't come at this as an environmentalist. I come at this from basic good business sense. The cost of renewables is coming down; it's more competitive when compared with fossil fuel."

That sounds credible.

Goodbye. And thank you

Even in our final act, we find a way to be wasteful. Every year, Americans spend $25 billion to deep-six more than 800,000 gallons of embalming fluid; in addition, about 90,000 tons of steel and more than 30 million board feet of hardwood are used to make caskets.

Billy Campbell realized the absurdity of the situation in 1985, when his own father died. A medical doctor with a strong interest in anthropology, Campbell knew about death, both the biological breakdown of the body and the way different cultures ritually react to it. So in 1996, he launched Memorial Ecosystems, which in 1998 opened the nation's first green cemetery, Ramsey Creek Preserve. Located on 36 acres in Westminster, South Carolina, Ramsey Creek buries bodies with no fancy caskets or harmful chemicals--no vaults or conventional headstones, either; they aren't allowed--for $2,250. For $250, cremated remains are scattered over some of the 275 plant species on the property.

It's not exactly a volume business: The facility accepts fewer than 200 people per acre, compared with 1,000 to 2,000 people per acre at traditional cemeteries. "No one wants to be the first on the dance floor," says Campbell of some people's hesitancy to break from customary burials. "But now, we're running out of creek-view property." Memorial Ecosystems is working now to open 70 acres in southeast Georgia.

Your Dumpster called. It said to send someone over

Jim Poss likes talking trash: 179,000 refuse trucks rumble down America's city streets every day, he says, burning a billion gallons of diesel a year. The trucks follow the same route, day in, day out, whether or not there's trash to collect. Poss's company, Seahorse Power, aims to change that inefficient system, one trash can at a time. The company's BigBelly garbage bin is equipped with a 40-watt solar panel that powers a battery-run compactor that increases the capacity of the bin at least fourfold. An indicator on the can lights up when it's full, and plans are under way for wireless alerts that will help refuse haulers better manage pickups.

An environmental science major in college, Poss, 34, founded Seahorse in Needham, Massachusetts, after stints at a solar energy equipment maker and a start-up that developed battery-operated motors for electric vehicles. Taking apart his mom's trash compactor as a kid provided inspiration, too. Still, Poss faced his share of skeptical garbage guys who thought solar was expensive and weak. Then they saw it work--even in the rain. Today the bins, which cost about $4,000 each, are on the streets of Boston, the New York City borough of Queens, and Cincinnati. Cincinnati parks superintendent Gerald Checco hopes to go from 10 cans to 200 within the next couple of years. That will let his department retire one of its two garbage trucks and reduce collections at the city's 100 parks to every other day. "With budget cuts, we have to be more inventive with our dollars," Checco says. "BigBelly is a great idea based on very sound and very simple precepts." Revenue is expected to exceed $1 million this year, but that's only the beginning, Poss says. He has commercial plans for BigBelly, as well. Next up: custom-designed BigBellys. His dream is to create a coffee-cup-shaped bin for Starbucks, with a recycling container.

Change is definitely in the wind

It's a nice phrase: "residential small wind." It refers to wind turbines that can provide most or even all of the electricity for a house. The leader in the field is a Flagstaff, Arizona, company called Southwest Windpower.

Southwest's latest model, the Skystream 3.7, shipped in September. It runs $10,000 to $12,000, installed. It has three six-foot blades, which spin almost silently. The company now sells as many as 2,200 wind turbines a month and will sell its 100,000th unit sometime this year. "Our growth is coming not so much because of environmental issues," says Andy Kruse, who co-founded the company 20 years ago with David Calley, "but because it makes financial sense. We're seeing a merge between renewables and electricity."

 PREV  1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5  NEXT