"eco-friendly" news and stories

Despite all the hullaballoo over carbon footprints and "green" building design, The DailyGreen recently pointed out that there are only 38 restaurants in the U.S. that have so far received LEED certification (an internationally recognized certification that stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). Thirty-eight in the whole country? That's a pretty paltry amount, given that, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are more than a half-million eating and drinking places in the country. Even more surprising is that 40 percent of those LEED-certified establishments are chain restaurants. Who made the list? Sandwich chain Subway currently has one LEED-certified restaurant in Chapel Hill, N.C; and burger-meister Arby's has a green building in Magnolia, Texas.

PepsiCo has announced that it is developing a new biodegradable bag for its potato chips, and hopefully this time you won't need to put in earplugs before reaching for your favorite salty snack.

The company's most recent efforts to make its packaging more eco-friendly came to a dismal end just last week when PepsiCo's chip maker in the U.S., Frito-Lay, announced that it was ditching biodegradable bags for most varieties of its SunChips and switching back to conventional plastic-based bags.

The move came after a growing chorus of consumer complaints about the bags being ridiculously loud, inspiring Facebook pages with titles like "I wanted SunChips but my roommate was sleeping..." One Air Force pilot measured the crackly crunch of the bags at 95 decibels, or about as loud as a motorcycle.

But PepsiCo hasn't given up on trying to perfect the compostable chip bag, according to BusinessGreen.com. The president of the company's UK division recently said that they're now looking into making biodegradable bags from potato peelings (which seems logical for a potato chip company). He expects that the new bags might be used for some of the company's smaller chip brands (marketed under the name Walkers in Britain) within the next 18 months.

Adding to the (occasional) guilt of finishing off a greasy, cheese-laden pizza is that awkwardly large, hard-to-trash pizza box -- do you bend it? Rip it into pieces? Leave it for someone else to deal with in the morning?

Whole Foods will be breaking this vicious cycle with the newly designed GreenBox, made to sustainably package, serve and store their take-out brick-oven pizza. Announced today by makers ECOvention, LLC, the boxes are manufactured from 100% recycled cardboard and are said to replace the need for paper plates (for serving), as well as plastic wrap or tin foil (for storage). The company realized that a standard 14-inch pizza box could breakdown into smaller reusable compartments, which could then be recycled more easily.

What's their secret? Clever perforation.

Even the most environmentally conscientious consumers harbor a little trash in their lives. One culprit lurks in the frozen food aisle, with all those veggies sealed in polyethylene -- which takes hundreds of years to decompose.

Now those plastic veggie bags may be on the way out, too. Oregon's Stahlbush Island Farms announced today (on Earth Day, of course!) that they are replacing the standard plastic frozen-food bag with a new, 100-percent biodegradable version. Working with Cadillac Products Packaging Company, which has a twenty-year history of creating sustainable packaging, Stahlbush has developed what they call "the first of its kind" biodegradable bag for its frozen fruits and vegetables.

Leftover pizza is all good and well -- until you realize there's no room in the fridge for a bulky box that accommodates but a couple measly slices. But eco-friendly GreenBox has revolutionized the container, in a version that condenses into smaller sizes, breaks off into individual serving plates, and, best of all, is made from 100-percent recycled paper.

William Walsh, 38, came up with the idea back in his college football years. Fitted in a body cast after having broken his femur, he and his friends were watching the game one Sunday when a friend dripped pizza grease down his shirt. In typical college fashion, Walsh and his roommates "would basically use disposable plates since no one would wash the dishes," he says. "There was a pizza box on the table and I ripped it up and threw everyone in the room a plate. The room got really quiet and my friends were like, 'You need to do something with this!' "