It has been sometime since I posted any posts on this site. There are various developments that have taken place since I last posted a message here. "Energy Independence" is the key word in US now. US citizens are questioning the political leadership the need to import 700 billions worth of oil every year to meet their energy demands.

Mr. Pickens Boone the oil baron has come out with a plan to make the US energy independent by advocating large amount of investments in wind and other renewable energies. Al Gore not to be left behind, came out with another plan to make US totally energy independent by adopting to renewable off grid systems at house owner level.

Pickens plan website has generated enormous amount of interest and the registered membership on his website crossed 100,000  within six weeks of the launch.

The oil  prices started coming down and the general demand for oil has also dropped in he US.

If every oil importing country starts educating its people on energy independence, probably we will witness a global revolution propelling economies to adopt adequate renewable mix in their energy supply.

What does this mean to common man? It simply means that every individual is now aware of the benefits of going off-grid and lead a sustainable lifestyle. New Energy Finance recently published its report on cleantech investments and it is heartening to note that there is a 40% increase in cleantech investments compared to previous year.

Back home in my own country India, there are few setbacks. The over hyped Biofuel policy has been stalled at Group of Ministers level and it looks as though the Biofuel policy will not see light near future.

 

The global debate on Sustainable development is truly on.There is great confusion about what is sustainable development. Each one defines sustainable development in their own way to suit their convenience. There is lot of myth and untruth surrounding these overhyped marketing of the so called sustainable development initiatives.

For a common man how do we define sustainable development? Majority of human population is under nourished and poor. How do you include them in sustainable development?  Wikipedia defines it as a development that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs".

I had posed a question in LinkedIn Q&A forum,definition of Sustainable Business - two interesting definitions emerged. One definition given by Richard Kubin that more or less applies sustainable development definition to businesses. He defined it "as a business that is economically viable, socially equitable and environmentally benign" The other definition was more holistic and was given by James Stuart. He defined it as "the process by which long term - and widespread - benefits are gained. Widespread, meaning further than any particular business or the employees of that business, encompassing the suppliers, the producers, the consumers. This means shared benefit and a joint future based on trust, mutual respect and development". You can find the article of James Stuart here: /uploads/sustainable Business.pdf

If business is the vehicle of wealth creation globally, is it not apt to expect full partcipation of the businesses in sustainable development? Is it happening globally?

Well only time will tell.

I was wondering for a while what kind of opportunities are really being highlighted by the CleanTech warriors in their blogs. More than 90% of these initiatives talked about were related to energy efficiency, hybrid fuels etc.

We human beings are the only species in this world to use packaging products to package our food. In packaging industry a lot of research needs to be done to find alternatives to petroleum based plastics like PET and I was lucky to come across this discussion on LinkedIn. 
http://www.linkedin.com/answers/marketing-sales/business-development/MAR_BDV/216724-4497348
 
For new business ideas is this a new area to focus on? Packaging industry is scaleable, global business and influences the way we store and preserve the precious food we consume. Can some brave men/women take cue from here and work on these initiatives?

Would you like to use paper produced from Elephant dung or Rhino dung?

Well this is a sustainable development initiative I have come across in recent times. Probably the paper manufacturers knew this long before but now with companies in Thailand, UK and India processing elephant poo and rhino poo to produce paper this is a reality. The beauty about this concept is that any dung that has high fibre content ( elephants and Rhinos eat large quantities of bamboo shoots, banana plant trunks that have high fibre content)can be processed using water to separate fibre from the dung and use that fibre to make paper.

From this paper high quality gift articles are made which are sold to consumers worldwide.

The dung slur separated after water treatment has high amounts of nitrogenous compounds that are used as natural fertilizers in farming.

Can there be better example of sustainable development than this?

This only demonstrates how naturally available raw materials like Elephant poo can be innovatively and productively used to create products of great value.

 

It is two weeks since any new posts are added by me in this blog. In the meanwhile, I had discussed the structure, look & feel and ease of use of this blog with few techies and few suggestions I received are worth implementing immediately. I assure you that you can see a better look and feel blog with more contributions across the regions this month. I request all visitors to mail your feedback to moderator@globalgreeninitiatives.com. I assure that you will receive a prompt reply from my end.