Dry cleaners have a reputation as less-than-green businesses: There are plenty of chemicals used in the dry cleaning process and most companies aren’t really energy efficient. But some clothes cleaning operations are working hard to move beyond that image.

Nature’s Best Cleaners is the business at the forefront of the green dry cleaning movement. It’s located in Sunnyvale, California. Peter Xu, who began researching alternatives to the harsh chemicals most dry cleaners rely on after he realized the damage that exposure to those chemicals had done to his hands, owns the company. He found wet cleaning. Wet cleaning technology was developed by appliance manufacture Miele in the early 1990s. It can be used on any garment that is labeled dry clean only, despite what the name seems to imply.

Dry cleaning techniques require perchloroethylene — known as perc — to remove dirt. Perc is known for the damage it can do to the central nervous system. Working with this chemical in a poorly ventilated room will cause dizziness, sleepiness, confusion, headaches, nausea, loss of motor skills, unconsciousness, skin irritation, spontaneous abortions, menstrual problems and death. It can contaminate soil and is extremely difficult to clean up. Dry cleaners usually use a small amount of perc and experience limited effects, but it’s a pretty nasty chemical.

Wet cleaning, on the other hand, uses plant-based detergents which are entirely biodegradable. Water on its own isn’t harmful to clothing, and by varying the pH for specific types of cloth, Xu can successfully clean just about everything that a standard dry cleaner could. Wet cleaning can also reduce the chances of discoloration and damage to cloth fibers that perc is known for.

California state law has mandated dry cleaners to cease use of perc by 2023. As other companies have looked for their own alternatives, companies from Cupertino, San Jose and other parts of California have turned to Nature’s Best Cleaners for advice. In response, Xu has begun offering workshops on the topic. For his efforts, the Urban and Environmental Policy Institute awarded the company $10,000. They’ve also given Nature’s Best an additional grant of $5,000 to offer demonstrations to dry cleaners.

Nature’s Best Cleaners is an amazingly green cleaner. There have been other companies in the past that have made claims of running organic businesses. However, most of those so-called organic cleaners still relied on petroleum products, which Xu refuses to use. Nature’s Best Cleaners has demonstrated a clear path to a greener type of clothes cleaning.

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Photo by Jeremy Brooks

The arrival of $4 per gallon gasoline in some parts of the country has some consumers debating whether or not to trade their current vehicles in now or wait a few years for technologies that reduce or eliminate fuel consumption to be commercialized. Car shoppers in 2010 will have more options that are lighter on their wallets and the planet, but they may have to look beyond dealer's row to find them.

"Green" autos have been all the rage at this year's auto shows, with fuel-sipping compacts, plug-in and all-electric vehicles headlining events from Detroit to Geneva. However, many of these cars from the largest automakers are concept or pre-production models that still won't be available by 2010.

Electrics: Part and Full Time

Vehicles that can run on electric power -- either full-time or for at least 40 miles on a full charge -- are seen as the greatest hope for reducing vehicle emissions in the short term. These vehicles will cost less than $1 per gallon of gas equivalent to operate when running on electricity. They will be available primarily from boutique auto manufacturers during 2010, as the large automakers will be lucky to have vehicles coming off the assembly line by the end of the year.

Electric vehicles (EVs) that can function as primary transportation (as opposed to the many "neighborhood vehicles" out now that aren't permitted on highways) are slowly gaining momentum from both specialty car manufacturers and the major players. EV options that will be available in limited quantity in 2010 include the Think City, a compact urban car reborn from a former Ford company, the Tesla Roadster, a six-figure luxury vehicle, and the exotic looking Aptera. Japanese automakers Nissan and Mitsubishi have both committed to making EVs as well, but even if they can deliver by 2010, production levels will likely be low.

Therese Langer, the Transportation Director of the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) says consumers looking for alternative power train options from large-scale manufacturers in 2010 will have to wait. "The Tesla Roadster is cool, but it is not designed to be a mass-market vehicle," she says.

Even with recent improvements in battery technology the electric vehicles currently in development can't provide the range of a gasoline vehicle, which will limit their attractiveness to many consumers. Alan Weverstad, GM Executive Director of Environment and Energy, says people have "range anxiety, a fear of not being able to complete their trip."

California's decision to reduce the number of electric vehicles required to be sold into the state in the coming years has diminished some of the manufacturers' drive to go gas-free. California's Air Resources Board switched to requiring more plug-in hybrid vehicles instead, and automakers are primed to respond.

For the past few years, a growing faction of consumers has been lobbying the auto industry to build vehicles that can run on battery power alone or gasoline when the batteries run out. By 2010, some of those prayers will begin to be answered. Plug-in hybrids, which are currently limited to costly conversions of Ford Escape and Toyota Prius hybrids, could be in select dealer showrooms in 2010.

In conjunction with the University of California, Toyota is now testing plug-in models of its Prius to see how they perform and their emissions, according to Cindy Knight, the company's Marketing Communications Manager. Knight says Toyota is "not ruling out having a plug-in hybrid by 2010," but having a vehicle ready that year "would be ambitious." More testing and assessment of consumer expectations is needed before a plug-in is ready for the lot, according to Knight. Today "we can engineer a decent car, but we're not sure anyone would want it," Knight says. Ford is similarly testing a plug-in version of its Escape Hybrid SUV in conjunction with utility Southern California Edison, but has not committed to a timetable for production.

General Motors is developing a plug-in version of its Saturn Vue Green Line SUV that is scheduled to be in production by 2010. The company is taking an alternative approach to electric vehicle power with its "extended range vehicle," the Chevrolet Volt. The Volt sedan is neither traditional EV (running on battery power) nor hybrid because instead of an internal combustion engine providing power when the batteries are depleted, the car relies on an electric generator powered by gasoline or alternative fuel to keep the batteries charged.

"It's really an electric vehicle" since electric power is always the source of locomotion, says GM"s Weverstad. But the Volt's arrival in 2010 is uncertain. Weverstad says the company has "talked about having the Volt on the road in calendar year in 2010... assuming that the battery technology will become production quality" in time.

John O'Dell, the editor of Edmunds.com's Green Car Advisor is skeptical that plug-in hybrids or extended range vehicles will be for sale in 2010. "[The Volt] probably won't be produced until December, and probably won't be for sale until 2011," he says. O'Dell thinks Toyota is closely gauging the Volt's progress. If GM appears remains on schedule, Toyota could "make some compromises" to have a plug-in vehicle available first, he says. "It will be 2012 to 2015 before we see a lot of alternatives to the combustion engine showing up" according to O'Dell.

Hydrogen vehicles -- powered by either fuel cells or an internal combustion engine (ICE) -- perpetually remain on the far horizon. BMW has begun limited production of its Series 7 Hydrogen ICE vehicle, but mass production is several years away, and lack of infrastructure to refuel the vehicles makes it unlikely that other manufacturers will follow. Just as in 1998, today hydrogen vehicles are projected to be more than a decade away from volume production.

Diesels Redux

The biggest changes on the roads and showroom floors entering the next decade will be the resurgence of diesels, a wider selection of hybrids and flex fuel vehicles, and existing models that have been engineered to require less gas per mile.

Edmunds’ O’Dell predicts that an unprecedented variety of diesel passenger vehicles will be the biggest change in showrooms in 2010. He says diesel vehicles, which are less than 1 percent of current car sales, will jump in popularity to become between 8 and 10 percent of passenger vehicle sales by 2010.

Diesels will become popular because "We now care about fuel economy," according to O'Dell, who cites concerns about emissions and the price of fuel for the change in consumer interest. The auto industry is reacting, with new diesel cars from Nissan, Acura, and Honda scheduled to arrive in the U.S. market by 2010. Later this year Mercedes will release a trio of "clean" diesel SUVs for the U.S. market that can meet the emission rules of all 50 states, and Volkswagen aims to reignite its U.S. diesel sales with a Golf TDI and Jetta BlueTDI .

"Virtually every automaker -- even Toyota -- has diesel plans for the U.S.," O'Dell says.

Spread of Hybrids

An increasing number of hybrid models will be out in 2010, but they are likely to be outpaced by diesels in sales. Hybrids, which were approximately 2.6 percent of passenger vehicle sales in 2007, will grow to between 6 to 8 percent of the market by 2010, O'Dell says. Toyota, which will likely continue to dominate the hybrid market, will offer a third-generation Prius to compete with a new compact hybrid from Honda.

Toyota has targeted selling 1 million hybrids per year by early next decade, according to Toyota's Knight. Toyota has also been showing off a hybrid truck concept that might be the basis for a production vehicle in the coming years. Toyota has dedicated a production line to hybrid vehicles that will use the more powerful lithium ion batteries.

Consumers who venture into Chrysler dealerships looking for a hybrid truck or SUV can choose either the Dodge Durango or Chrysler Aspen.

BMW and Porsche are expected to unveil their first hybrids aimed at the luxury market in 2010, while Mercedes plans on being first to market with a hybrid SUV that uses the more powerful lithium ion batteries.

Consumers looking for larger vehicles will have several options from General Motors. Later this year the company will introduce a hybrid Cadillac Escalade. In 2009, GM will offer dual-mode hybrid technology that is optimized for both city and highway driving in two pick-ups (GMC Sierra, Chevy Silverado), and an SUV (Saturn Vue Green Line). A second-generation hybrid technology that will improve fuel economy by 15-20 percent will be introduced in GM vehicles starting in 2010.

Having at least one "green" vehicle has become a necessity for automakers, according to Cody Lusk - president of the American International Automotive Dealers Association. "Companies that don't have hybrids are having trouble attracting customers... manufacturers with nothing green are losing sales," Lusk says, citing Hyundai and Kia as examples of companies that have lost market share because of the lack of a marquis green vehicle.

Drivers interested in reducing their oil consumption will also find a greater selection of flex fuel models that can run on a mixture of up to 85 percent ethanol. GM is expanding flex fuel engines beyond its trucks and SUVs and will have 15 flex fuel vehicles in 2009, and by 2012, half of its fleet will be able to go light on gasoline. Toyota will have an e85 version of it Tundra and Sequoia available by 2010.

Finding an ethanol pump will be more challenging than locating a dealer with E85 vehicles. Fewer than 2,000 ethanol pumps are available across the country, with availability in most states at less than 20 pumps.

Focus on Fuel Economy

Consumers won't have to choose an alternative drivetrain or fuel to cut back on their gasoline consumption in 2010. The cars we love today are being reengineered to add several miles per gallon without a tradeoff in performance.

Because of concerns about greenhouse gas emissions and the rising price of fuel, nearly every automaker is developing technology to maximize the fuel economy of their vehicles. Technologies such as deactivating cylinders on demand, variable valve timing, and turbo-charging are being implemented across vehicle lines to reduce emissions and fuel consumption.

Ford's Eco-boost technology is a primary example. The technology can improve fuel economy by up to 20 percent while reducing emissions by 15 percent through a turbocharged direct-injection technology. Ford will introduce the technology in 2009 and will install it in up to 500,000 vehicles in the next few years.

These technologies have been "floating around" for several years according to the ACEEE's Langer, but have not been available on a large number of vehicles. Automakers have recently shown a "dramatic interest in conventional technologies" for maximizing fuel efficiencies, Langer says, so car buyers in 2010 will likely see many of their favorite models with higher fuel economy ratings.

Performance enhancing technologies such as turbo-charging also enable automakers to use smaller engines. Consumers should see more four-cylinder sedans with six-cylinder class performance.

Nearly the same breadth of SUV choices will likely be available in 2010 as today, though automakers are switching the underlying platform from trucks to crossovers, according to Langer. She says sales of mid-size and large SUVs are dropping, which could lead to some discontinuations after 2010. So far -- despite the higher gas prices -- sales of luxury SUVs have been relatively unchanged.

Automakers are also being forced to increase the average fuel economy of their fleets each year to meet guidelines proposed by the federal Department of Transportation. Under the proposal, passenger vehicles sold in model year 2011 would have to average 31.2 MPG, and light duty trucks 25.0 mpg, up from 2007's standards of 27.5 and 22.2, respectively.

GM's Weverstad says it is "too early to say whether there are any vehicles we won't build any more of" to meet the requirements for model year 2011. Likewise, Toyota's Knight says she expects that the company's line of SUVs will continue to be sold for the foreseeable future. People "aren't going to have [large SUVs] just to drive them around town... they'll be used more for actually moving things," points out the AIADA's Lusk.

The largest SUVs might be languishing on dealer lots if the SUV loophole that allows small business owners to write off most of the cost of the largest trucks is eliminated during the next session of Congress.

The recent success of the micro-compact vehicles from Europe, such as the Smart Fortwo and Mini, suggests that more compact vehicles developed for international markets could show up in the U.S. by 2010. Lusk says the globalization of the auto market means that more cars will be engineered with fuel economy in mind to also appeal to Asian buyers, including the booming Indian and Chinese markets.

Beyond 2010

In the early years of the next decade, the federal government will play an increasingly pivotal role in automakers' strategies regarding fuel economy. If Congress and the new president enact tougher laws on emissions, impose a carbon tax on fossil fuels, or further raise fuel economy standards, automakers would respond with more fuel-efficient models.

Edmunds’ O’Dell reinforces that notion. "Everything can change depending on who is elected president," he says, adding that several Democrats in Congress have suggested raising fuel economy to 40 MPG instead of the current 35 MPG goal for 2020.

The next administration could also repeal the billions of dollars in annual subsidies to the oil and gas industries, which could affect the price of gasoline. If oil stays above $100 per barrel automakers might think twice about offering vehicles that get less than 20 miles to the gallon.

News about the advantages of switching to clean, renewable energy sources is everywhere these days. Reduced pollution, higher quality of life, lowered dependence on foreign sources and less disruption caused by fluctuating prices often top the list. But frequently, the transition from older fossil fuels is seen as a premium paid for the luxuries of cleaner air, and knowing that local energy supply treads as lightly on the Earth as possible. Certainly, given current economic conditions, that makes the changeover far less appealing to many cash-strapped communities.

But the town of Lackawanna, New York, is looking to change all that. Lackawanna was a boom town in the early part of the 20th century, driven by a massive steel industry and fueled by several important railway connections. But as in much of the rest of the Rust Belt, the past few decades have not been kind, with plant closures, recession, and other problems hitting hard. Indeed, until very recently, the Lackawanna was best known as an environmental hazard, rather than an environmental leader.

But the Steel Winds energy project, built on a brownfield once home to the massive Bethlehem Steel plant, may have marked a turning point for the beleaguered city. As Lackawanna mayor Norman Polanski told The New York Times, “It’s changing the image of the city of Lackawanna. We were the old Rust Belt, with all the negatives. Right now, we are progressive and we are leading the way on the waterfront.” The wind farm, the largest ever built in a city, transforms the city’s image from one of decay to one of modernity and efficiency. And as the city tries to redevelop its massive waterfront complex, that’s no small step.

Though Steel Winds will never replace the tax revenue or employment provided by the old steel plant, the project has still been received positively. The turbines deliver 56,000 megawatts of clean, renewable energy to local consumers and utilities, and the existing eight turbines generate at total of $100,000 in yearly revenue for the city. The project has been so successful that at a recent city council meeting, Steel Winds II, with an additional 13 wind turbines, was granted approval.

With so many middle-American cities, from Detroit to Buffalo, suffering from the economic and environmental consequences of a past too deeply rooted in heavy industry, the success or failure of the Steel Winds project is being monitored very closely. Though it’s clear the shores of Lake Erie will still require a significant economic presence outside the green energy industry, wind turbines like those erected in Lackawanna could provide both the power—and the modern edge—to help the Rust Belt shine again.

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Photo by Justin Howard

The average college campus includes thousands of students and hundreds of administrators, staff members and faculty. In some cases college campuses are huge businesses, in others they even qualify as small towns.

Because of that fact, the grassroots sustainability movements on college campuses across the U.S. are increasingly important. The average college campus includes thousands of students and hundreds of administrators, staff members and faculty. In some cases college campuses are huge businesses, in others they even qualify as small towns. The New York Times took note of that fact and covered a growing effort at Oberlin College, in Ohio.

A new house, along the lines of a sorority or other group house, has established itself on that campus: the SEED house, short for Student Experiment in Ecological Design. Members of the house, including junior economics student Lucas Brown, make it clear that the house is a practical experiment. They try hard to live green lives, but in such a way as to study, work and have fun at the same time.

The project grew out of a class project on environmental design that simply snowballed. Somewhere along the way, members of Dr. David Orr’s Spring 2007 class talked Oberlin College’s administrators into handing over the keys to a house on campus. The class made the house energy efficient, convinced the school to spend $40,000 to renovate the house and generally turned the house into a green habitat.

Students moved in last September and have been hammering out the details of living sustainably. They’ve minimized their energy usage wherever they can with tactics like dressing warmly in order to keep the thermostat low and studying in groups in order to turn on fewer lights.

Reading through the lifestyle changes these students have made, you can rapidly see that most of them are fairly minor adjustments. For instance, a few unplugged appliances only translate into remember to plug and unplug items, just as most people would remember to flip a switch on and off. And Brown and his roommates have found a fairly effective manner of implementing some of the harder-to-remember rules: competitiveness. Want to convince college kids to take shorter showers? Make them compare their times to everyone else around them. They’ll set themselves the goal of washing off in less time than it took the last guy — after all, Brown is down to a three-minute shower these days.

College campuses, such as Oberlin, can be an ideal place to implement new ideas (like sustainable housing or environmental management programs), if only because of the speed with which a new idea becomes tradition at a school. If the SEED house can last four years at Oberlin, students will start to see its environmental practices as something they’ve ‘always’ done — after all, it will have been that way since they were freshmen.

And, even better in the average administrator’s eyes, students are the ones doing most of the work in these situations. Internship programs still have a lot to learn from college campuses on just how much free labor and new ideas can be obtained from a student body.

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Photo courtesy of Oberlin College

Box stores have spread across the country with the advance of the mall, offering cities opportunities for income tax and giving consumers more options for ‘one stop shopping’. However as the economy worsens, chains are closing branches, leaving big boxy ghost-buildings behind. Cities are now levying conservation taxes that can be used for demolition as one way to undo big box sprawl.

The trend has started near Milwaukee, where Lowes, Linens 'n’ Things and Walmart have closed branches. Cities there now require retail projects of over 50,000 square feet to pay 20 cents per a foot to a conservation account that can be later spent on demolition. This can add tens of thousands of dollars to project costs, but cities say it is worth it. Many times, Big Box stores are built to the specifications of the business that occupies it. The tax encourages both more careful planning as well as better building design so that the building may be suitable for other businesses should the developing business leave. Cities have also altered contracts to make renting to other businesses easier and requiring developers to finance demolition bonds.

Like a prenuptial agreement, dissenters say the measures deter business. Cities desperate for a tax base are often willing to tforgo the tax, taking more risks to attract biusiness. However the American Planning Association, who encourage the taxes, think that citizens should protect themselves and their economy from planning decisions that only pay off in the short term.

Read more at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Photo by Brave New Films