In Business, Creating Sustainable Enterprises & Communities

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENTS

In Business, November-December, Vol. 29, No. 6, p. 8

GREEN OLYMPIC VILLAGE RISES IN VANCOUVER, BC
Vancouver, British Columbia - reports New Urban News of Ithaca, New York - is moving ahead to build an eight-block project that will serve both as housing for athletes in the 2010 Winter Olympics and as a model of environmentally sustainable neighborhood development. The project, on 17 acres of reclaimed industrial land in an area called Southeast False Creek, is Vancouver's latest attempt to

“combine pedestrian-scale streetscapes with a generous helping of contemporary architecture,” reports the newsletter. The city's Arthur Erickson, age 83 - Canada's most internationally celebrated architect - is to design two of the most prominent buildings in the Olympic Village, one a community center and the other residential.

PRODUCING BIODIESEL FROM VARIETY OF OILS
Seattle Biodiesel produces pure, unblended B100 biodiesel refined from a variety of oils - canola grown in Washington State, soy and many other crops. “Our goal is producing biodiesel at the lowest possible cost, passing our efficiencies along to our customers,” says co-owner John Plaza. The company works directly with regional farmers to develop the finest virgin feedstock oils for use in processors. “Our 'farmer to fuel pump' approach and commitment to local production benefits our regional economy by keeping energy dollars within our communities,” he adds.
Founded in 2004 by Plaza, Seattle Biodiesel entered into a joint venture with Saybr Contractors to construct the region's first commercial refinery. It sells directly to leading fuel distributors, and pioneers inventions across the biofuel value chain. It recently launched pilot projects with Northwest farmers to develop oilseed crushing and refining capacity in eastern Washington. The refinery is capable of producing 5 million gallons/year of ASTM-certified biodiesel. Made from renewable vegetable oils, the B100 biodiesel is a nontoxic, biodegradable and safe fuel that works in any conventional diesel engine.

CAPITALIZING BIOENERGY COMPANIES
The Clear Canopy, a marketing and communications company in Princeton, New Jersey, hosted a bioenergy forum in October entitled, “The Perfect Storm: Bioenergy in New Jersey.” The conference highlighted opportunities and challenges of bioenergy development and showcased companies implementing biofuel and bioenergy projects. Several presentations discussed one of the major obstacles confronting most biofuel and bioenergy startups - raising capital. Mick Gilbert, vice president of Vancouver, Canada-based Global Green Solutions, talked about his company's efforts to raise money for his company's two processes, Vertigro and Greenstream. Vertigro is a process for mass-producing algae for use in biofuels production and other coproducts. The system grows algae in high-density, closed-loop vertical bioreactors made from plastic sheeting. The sheets are hung within a greenhouse in a vertical orientation, which increases algae yields by increasing the surface area and the volume of the material exposed to sunlight. Vertigro facilities use little water and can be built on nonarable land. The company's first test facility is located near El Paso, Texas.
Greenstream employs a cyclonic combustion process to burn agricultural and waste biomass feedstocks, producing process steam or electricity. Gilbert sees opportunities in markets with good supplies of waste biomass, high electricity costs, stringent air quality standards, high land disposal costs and in states with renewable portfolio standards. Global Green Solutions has raised money in the Over the Counter stock market but requires additional funding to further develop, commercialize and finance projects for both technologies. The challenge is to get access to project debt and equity for growth while minimizing the amount of additional equity that needs to be raised by the company.

PLASTICS RECYCLING TECHNOLOGY COMES OF AGE
According to a report by Cindy Rovins of Rutger's University, when plastic beverage containers appeared on the market in 1978, an immediate response was provoked over the looming solid waste disposal dilemna. So quick was industry to respond, that a year later polyethylene therephalate (PET), the material used for soda bottles, was being chipped and recycled into new materials such as carpets and flower pots. The plastic material posed new challenges to the recycling front: unlike glass, metal and paper, it could not be remade into the same product due to potential contamination of food containers; and plastics came in a variety of types: PET, high density polyethylene (HDPE), polypropylene, polystyrene, low density polyethylene, etc.
In the 1980s as plastics continued to replace other materials such as glass that had traditionally been recycled, several states implemented deposit laws for plastic as they increasingly became a source of litter. While New Jersey faced the dual dilemma of rising landfill tipping fees and the prospect of becoming another bottle bill state, the impetus led to the creation of the Center for Plastics Recycling Research at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey in 1985.
The Center - now known as Rutgers' Center for Advanced Material via Immiscible Polymer Processing (AMIPP) - did its first major work on improving efficiency of the chipping of PET from soda bottles. To obtain materials, the first curbside plastic collection program was developed in the neighboring town of Highland Park, New Jersey and on the Rutgers campus. The researchers found that when you say you want soda bottles, according to Thomas Nosker, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, “you get stuff you didn't ask for”. About 20 to 30 percent of the material was plastics other than PET. At that time, there was no effort to recycle those other materials and they were becoming an issue for the recycling companies that were collecting plastic as well. Meanwhile, the Rutgers project was not permitted to throw away that other plastic, since it was, in theory, recyclable. The material was maintained in a pile in the parking lot of the Center, where it continued to grow. Nosker, who was finishing his doctorate in polymer physics at Rutgers and had done some work with the plastic recycling program, was offered a position.
Nosker explains: “I was given the job of figuring out what to do with that pile. I began to examine it and found that is was mostly HDPE - about 80 percent, and the rest a small percentage of different kinds of plastics. It was going to be very expensive to sort them out one by one, and there was no recycling technology anyway and we didn't know if our washing system would work. There were a lot of complicated issues. So, what I thought would be easy to try was to take it all, chip it up, not wash it, and run it through an extruder under polyethylene processing temperatures.”
With a blended material, it would not be useful in thin-walled items because defects would render it useless. So, thick molds were developed for the material, where small defects would not affect the integrity. What began as a big “what if?” resulted in an industry standard today. This material became the first recycled plastic lumber.

CRUMB RUBBER FROM TIRES FILTERS WASTEWATER
Environmental engineering professor Yuefeng Xie of Penn State University has developed a method that uses crumb rubber to filter wastewater; the crumb rubber is produced by chopping and grinding waste tires to a desired size, cleaning the rubber and removing metal particles. It is currently used in highway pavement, playgrounds, compost bulking agents, energy recovery and artificial reefs.
Several of Xie's studies showed that the crumb rubber filter is more cost-effective than conventional sand or anthracite filters. Because crumb rubber is compressible, porosity of the particles is decreased, and can be used at higher filter rates while performing similarly to other media. The media provide better effluent qualities and larger media allow longer filter runs at higher flow rates. This report appeared in Resource, published by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers.

SOLVING SOCIAL PROBLEMS
ReVision Urban Farm, part of Victory Programs, Inc. (VPI), serves families facing homelessness in Dorchester, Massachusetts (a community neighboring Boston). The farm is among six area nonprofits selected as a 2008 Social Innovator by the Cambridge-based Social Innovation Forum to receive more than $80,000 in cash and services. The Forum, launched by Root Cause in 2003, seeks to support organizations like ReVision Urban Farm that combine field expertise with innovation and entrepreneurial spirit needed to solve some of Boston's most pressing social problems.
ReVision Urban Farm will participate in a 12-month program that provides the organization with consulting services, executive coaching and introductions to a network of venture philanthropists looking to support innovative nonprofits in greater Boston. To date, the Social Innovation Forum has received 273 applications from Boston-area nonprofits and helped 21 as Social Innovators. Just nine months after the 2006 showcase event, the organization's Social Innovators have already received a total of just under $1.5 million in total cash and in-kind resources.
VPI is a nonprofit based in Boston that provides shelter, and innovative and comprehensive direct care services to individuals and families with very specialized needs. ReVision Urban Farm is an innovative agriculture and aquaculture project aiming to increase access to affordable, nutritious, culturally appropriate food for residents of the shelter and community members through a community-supported farm and greenhouses. The overarching goals: To provide community and client-centered programs, services and jobs; To be economically viable by generating income and developing resources; and To be environmentally sustainable in building and operating a green facility. For more information: http://www.vpi.org and http://www.rootcause.org.