2011 September 25

Will Obama’s Recent Breaches of Trust On The Environment Really Cost Him Dollars and Votes?

Image via ScrapeTV Until circumstances change, U.S. elections are a binary choice. For many people, this means that they have to hold their nose while casting their vote for what they perceive to be the lesser of two evils. The 2012 presidential election will be no different, with votes cast for President Obama or his Republican challenger, who at this point is likely to be either an out and out climate denier or a least a climate skeptic. But beyond votes there are other metrics that politicia...Read the full story on TreeHugger

More Cool Highlights From Maker Faire New York 2011

Gon KiRin, a 20-ft robot dragon jungle gym. Designed by Ryan Doyle & Teddy Lo. Photo by Bonnie Hulkower The 2nd annual DIY festival Maker Faire took place last weekend at the New York Hall of Science in Queens. Celebrating "arts, crafts, engineering, science projects and the DIY mindset," Maker Faire started out on the West Coast five years ago and is now a highly anticipated event for the NYC nerds, designers and science lovers. There are now also smaller Maker Faires in England, Japan and Africa. For those who haven't been before, Maker Faire is a t...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Wacky-Named "Pirate" Party Gains Power in Germany, Calls for Free Public Transportation

Image: Pirate Party/Susanne Graf As the rest of the world was celebrating talk like a pirate day, the Pirate Party won its first seats in the Berlin state elections. In Germany, any party winning more than 5% of the votes is entitled to a share in government. With 8.9%, the Pirate party lands 15 seats in the state government, among them 19-year-o...Read the full story on TreeHugger

One-of-a-Kind Birdhouses Made from Scrap Metal

Watering-can birdhouse. Photo: Brian Carlisle/GadgetSponge.com. Most people would look at an old copper fireplace coal bin -- if they bothered to notice it at all -- and see something ready for the junk heap. Brian Carlisle saw a birdhouse. "It just spoke to me when I looked at and I could envision a bird hole in front and a roof on top," he told TreeHugger in an email. "From there, I saw lots of opportunities with many other metal items that most folks throw away or keep for no reason." The quirky, whimsical results are both retro and ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Savvy Newly Discovered Flower Plants Its Own Seeds

Photo: Alex Popovkin, Bahia, Brazil A new flowering plant species accidentally discovered in Bahia, Brazil has the unique ability to bow down and deposit its seeds, The tiny white and pink flower in effect replants itself for the next season. The discovery shows the fascinating survival capabilities our flora and fauna and illustrates that we've only just scratched the surface in naming the world's diverse species. ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Green business’ go-to guy is going

Andrew Shapiro, one of the most prominent sustainability advisers in corporate America, is leaving GreenOrder, the consulting firm he started in 2000.

GreenOrder, which is based in New York, is best known for its work with General Electric on its ecomagination initiative. The firm has also advised such blue-chip companies as General Motors, Hewlett Packard, JP Morgan Chase, along with major utilities and real estate developers.

Shapiro, who is 43 and a Yale Law grad, will stay at GreenOrder until the end of the year, while a replacement is sought. GreenOrder was acquired three years ago by LRN, an ethics and compliance firm led by Dov Seidman, himself a prominent adviser to FORTUNE 500 firms and the author of How: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything.

Ron Gonen, a founder of RecycleBank, a company that rewards consumers for recycling, has become an adviser to LRN, “to help lead the alignment of GreenOrder Advisory Services with the company as a whole,” according to Seidman. But Gonen told me by email that he will not be taking over at GreenOrder.

In announcing the change to colleagues, Seidman said: “Andrew’s creative and entrepreneurial vision stands at the core of GreenOrder’s advisory role.”

Before saying more, a few disclosures are required. I’ve known and liked Andrew and his colleagues at Green Order for years, and wrote about the company for Fortune.com in 2007. [See Green business' go-to guys] I consulted for LRN for about eight months in 2009, so I know Dov, too; in fact, Andrew introduced us. GO Ventures, an investment firm co-founded by Shapiro, owns a stake in GreenBiz Group, where I’m a senior writer. And my friend and colleague Joel Makower has been a senior strategist with GreenOrder, as well as a small shareholder in the firm. As ecologists like to say, we are all connected. (Cool music–check it out.)

When I heard about his departure, I called Andrew to ask him what was going on. He told me that he was ready for a change after spending more than a decade building GreenOrder.

“We had our best year ever last year,” he said, “and so I’m confident this is a good time for me to go work on new challenges.”

He’s proud, he told me, of what’s been accomplished by GreenOrder. “The goal, when I set out, was to get big corporates to believe that energy and environmental innovation is not just good for the bottom line, but a critical driver of profit and competitive advantage. I think we’ve done that,” Andrew said. He’s right, I think.  With a handful of exceptions—coal companies, oil companies and others with a strong stake in the status quo–big companies now recognize that getting ahead of the curve on environmental and energy issues is smart business.  GE, Walmart, IBM and Google had a big impact, influencing their peers to act, but Andrew and his colleagues played a role, too.

“The next challenge,” he went on, “is to accelerate mass deployment of green technologies. That’s what I’ll be working on.” This will require new forms of financing, as well as alliances between startups and big companies like GE and Google.

GO Ventures, which was spun out of GreenOrder (and not part of the LRN deal), is a step in that direction. It owns stakes in seven companies, including Serious Energy, GreenBiz, Global Thermostat (which I’ve written about for the next issue of FORTUNE),  and GreenYour Media, which was acquired by RecycleBank earlier this year. Another GO Venture portfolio company,  Class Green Capital Partners, helps municipalities borrow money by taking out mortgages on public buildings, and then using some of the proceeds to upgrade the buildings to save energy, as the Wall Street Journal recently reported. (PDF, download)

Because small consulting firms depend on the reputation and relationships of their founders, GreenOrder, which employs about 35 people, will have its work cut out for it going forward. Other key players at the firm, including Andrew’s partner Nicholas Eisenberger, Stephen Linaweaver and Sarah King, have left since it was acquired by LRN in 2008.

Mergers, as we all know, are never easy.