Green Jobs : Buzz

According to a recent article in Recycling Today, Minneapolis-based Pioneer Industries International opened its eighth location at the end of November.
 
Pioneer is one of the largest privately owned recycling firms in the Midwest, and its newest location in Milwaukee will offer a range of processing services, including recycling of packaging materials and metal.
 
In addition to Minneapolis, the company has operations in Chicago, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, and other Midwestern locations.
 
Talking to Recycling Today about the recent expansion, the company noted that the "principles of excellent customer service, strong end-user relationships and being a true sustainability partner to its customers resonate within this new venture just as it did before."

The Orange County Register in California recently reported on a survey from temp firm Ajilon Professional Hiring, which looked at the best places in the country for finding a job.
 
The firm named Minneapolis-St. Paul as the top spot for job hunters, based on factors like unemployment rate, diversity of industries, cost of living, level of higher education, and the range in size of companies offering jobs.
 
Ajilon noted that the Twin Cities topped the list mainly because hiring is on the rise among its large industry players in sectors like financial services, health care, retail, and manufacturing. The area is also family-friendly, with low crime and poverty rates, the article noted.

Growing fresh food in Minneapolis and selling those veggies will become easier, thanks to recent amendments to the city's zoning code.
 
Minneapolis already allows community gardens, and has rules that allow residents to keep chickens, but there has been a contentious debate over proposed changes to market gardens. Some members of the City Council weren't particularly supportive of measures to expand urban farming in the city, but the amendments ended up passing anyway.
 
A story from Minnesota Public Radio reports that Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak--a longtime supporter of urban farming proposals--signed the changes into law at the Dowling Community Garden at Dowling Urban Environmental School.

Recently the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) released a list of the top 10 states for green building through the internationally recognized LEED standards.

The results are based on U.S. Census data from last year.

Minnesota rounds out the list that’s topped by the District of Columbia.  

The LEED Platinum Marquette Plaza in Minneapolis is named in a prepared statement about the list.

North American Windpower (NAW), a publication geared toward professionals in the windpower industry, recently reported on a new wind energy research station in Rosemont, implemented by the University of Minnesota.
 
The facility consists of a wind turbine and a 420-foot-tall meteorological research tower, located about 25 miles southeast of the university's Twin Cities campus.
 
As noted by NAW, the station will host active consortium research as well as education and training of wind industry workers. The facility is equipped with instruments and sensors designed to measure factors like wind-capturing ability. 

Agriculture site Agweek recently profiled Gordon Frederickson, a Minnesota author who's written a number of illustrated books that celebrate his family's small farm in the 1950s.
 
Published by Beaver's Pond Press in Edina, the books highlight Frederickson's experience of growing up on a dairy farm in New Prague.  The author believes that it's there he learned lessons like the benefits of teamwork and the importance of physical activity.
 
As noted in Agweek, Fredrickson says that too often, agriculture is portrayed to the public as "a petting zoo," and his aim is to provide a broader view of farm life.

BrighterEnergy.org, a site that focuses on alternative and renewable energy sources, reported on Great River Energy's search for community-based renewable energy proposals.

A local program that assists immigrant farmers has been spotlighted in Harvest Foodservice Journal, a publication that connects those interested in sustainable food systems with contacts in the foodservice industry.

The Minnesota Food Association (MFA) trains immigrant farmers in techniques that allow them to grow food that can be certified as organic, which opens up new markets and resources for them. That designation can also link them to important wholesale markets that might otherwise be inaccessible.

To build a bridge over cultural differences, the MFA works with translators and various ethnic groups to build educational sessions. The non-profit training program helps by offering low-cost land rental, affordable infrastructure like walk-in coolers, and assistance with taxes.

When it comes to global warming, the Twin Cities is more resilient than other U.S. cities.

In response to the Resilient Cities 2011 Conference and Grist.org's list of the 10 most "climate-ready" cities, Nature Conservancy blogger Jeff Opperman compiled his own ranking of cities and climate change that addresses "how vulnerable or resilient a city is to climate change based on the city's environmental context," writes Opperman.

While Minneapolis did not appear on the Grist list, we were number five in terms of the "most resilient/least vulnerable" to climate change, behind Cleveland, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Chicago.

"Rust Belt" cities rank high for their sustainable water supply (like the Great Lakes), low heat-stress rankings, and low vulnerability to natural disasters, he writes. 

Minnesota ranks seventh among all 50 states in the area of clean energy, according to Clean Edge's clean energy leadership index.

States are ranked based on a number of factors falling into three major categories: technology, policy, and capital, according to a summary of the index online.

Minnesota's score of 57 ties it with New Mexico for seventh place. The number one state is California; the last is West Virginia.

The University of Minnesota is featured in a list of a dozen of the country's most eco-friendly colleges and universities on the website of the Ethiopian Review, a Washington, DC-based journal of Ethiopian and world affairs.

Schools are often "epicenters for environmental activism and change," with advanced recycling, composting and green building initiatives, for example, the post states.

At the University of Minnesota specifically, energy efficiency is a big priority.

Some of the other projects at the university that the website lauds have to do with recently installed cogeneration and biofuels plants, university fleet vehicles that run on alternative fuels, LEED sustainable construction, numerous green-focused student groups, and a popular organic teaching farm, it states.   

Minnesota Waste Wise, a nonprofit affiliate of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, is offering advice on how businesses can go green and save money in the process, reports Jeremy Stratton in the Feb. 10 issue of Finance and Commerce.

The Sustainable Business Resource Center (SBRC) went live in late January. The site gives general green-business advice on waste management, resource conservation and employee education, as well as more specific information targeted to industries: education, grocery, health care, manufacturing, office, restaurants, and retail.

A Minneapolis startup was spotlighted this week as one of the most promising solar-biofuels projects.

BioCee, a University of Minnesota spin-off we reported on earlier this month, was included this week on a list of the Top Ten Solar Biofuels Projects by Biofuels Digest, a website and newsletter.

The company is developing a method for converting sunlight, water and CO  into liquid transportation fuels. Its technology is a thin latex coating that contains living microorganisms that serve as biocatalysts.

"It is a fascinating technology, which immobilizes living, biologically active microorganisms in thin latex coatings, represent[ing] a paradigm shift in how living microorganisms are used as biocatalyst," local cleantech attorney Todd Taylor tells the publication.

Biofuels Digest says the use of solar to create biofuels is one of the most overlooked stories of the year.

Xcel Energy announced the other week that an experiment at its wind farm near Luverne, Minn., proves that batteries can be used to store wind power.

Whether the solution can scale is another question.

Greentech Media takes a closer look at the Xcel Energy's battery trial. The utility integrated an 80-ton sodium sulfur battery into the 11-megawatt wind farm in October 2008. It's shown promising results, the company says.

Batteries are seen as an important piece of the nation's clean-energy solution because wind and solar are intermittent energy sources that often deliver the most power at times of the day when it isn't most needed.

"'This is critical technology,' Forbes Black, a battery technology and energy storage systems engineer, said of Xcel's work. 'We're going to have to figure out ways to store energy for when renewables are not generating and this sounds like a really good step in that direction.'"

Read the Greentech Media article here.

GreenMark, a Minneapolis sports-marketing firm (which we wrote about last month), is quoted in an Associated Press story about sports organizations going green.

Mark Andrew, GreenMark's founder, tells the AP that industry will only change if there's money to be made, but that he believes there is.

"Sports has lagged behind the rest of the private sector in implementing truly green practices and operations," Andrew said. "However, they're catching up and sports as an industry is doing a much better job than they were."

Read the entire Associated Press article here.

In the 1930s, Larpenteur Avenue on St. Paul's northern border was the favored getaway route for bank robbers seeking sanctuary in the Saintly City. Now a different kind of conspiracy--crop mobs of urbanites looking for a chance to dig in the dirt--is finding what it needs along the same road, on the University of Minnesota's St. Paul campus. The Twin Cities Daily Planet explains:

"Though sustainable small-scale farming may be seen as a return to low-tech methods of growing food, Anderson is organizing Crop Mobs using very contemporary mediums. One third of Saturday's volunteers signed up through his Fair Food Fight  website or follow his Twitter feed, Anderson said, another third came through the Twin Cities Crop Mob page on Facebook, and the rest were students.

"Fair Food Fight started as an online blog and conversation sponsored by Equal Exchange, an employee owned cooperative committed to fair trade relationships with farmers for crops like coffee and chocolate. River Cook, an Equal Exchange sales representative who participated Saturday, said that Fair Food Fight and the Crop Mobs are 'our way of making a local connection to the work we've done internationally.'

"After cleaning up, the Cornercopia Crop Mob air-dried while eating lunch donated by the University of Minnesota's Campus Club in a classroom. The mostly urban twenty- and thirty-something volunteers filled up tables and talked with those around them. Conversations ranged from the mainstreaming of organic products to farming experiences and plans to attend future Crop Mobs."

Read the full article here.

Eureka Recycling is trying something new this summer: compost pickup service in the Mac-Groveland neighborhood, via bicycle. If the pilot project goes citywide, St. Paul will be a pioneer nationally, reports Living Green Twin Cities:

"As part of the pilot project, composting will be done via a drop-off location, a recycling truck, and a bicycle pulling a trailer, each of which will be measured for effectiveness and maximum waste reduction. So far, no city has offered a zero-emissions bicycle pick-up plan for composting. If St. Paul initiates it citywide, it will be the first time a major metro area has implemented and offered organics pick-up on bicycle.

"While it might seem small in scope, the real benefits are the long-term plans that will sprout from the study. According to the press release, Eureka Recycling will use data and information on waste reduction and management culled from the Mac-Groveland project to develop a long-term composting plan for the city as well as uses for the finished compost."

Read the full article here.

Silent Power is getting press for its role in a Sacramento-area smart-grid project.

Earth2Tech reports that Silent Power's OnDemand system will be installed at about 15 houses in suburban Sacramento as part of a stimulus-funded smart-grid pilot project.

The Baxter, MN company, which we recently wrote about, makes technology that helps maximize the value of solar electricity panels by storing power until it's needed.

"This is a very consumer-friendly-type solution," CEO Todd Headlee tells the blog, explaining that the system can also serve as a backup during power outages.

Read the Earth2Tech blog post here and our previous report on Silent Power here.

A timely introduction to farmers markets in Minneapolis and St. Paul appeared in the Asian Pages newspaper and was picked up online by the Twin Cities Daily Planet.

"With two dozen markets in the Twin Cities alone, choosing the right market is like deciding where to dine, for each market has its own personality. The Minneapolis market open every morning at Lyndale near Olsen Highway is most like the State Fair featuring crowds of people strolling through the booths offering local produce, imported items, fast-food (grilled corn-on-the-cob, grilled brats, coffee, etc.), live music, outdoor furniture, even clothing items

"The downtown St. Paul market on 5th Street, open Saturday and Sunday mornings, is more like a country roadside stand where the farmer comes in from the field with freshly picked food. In fact, this market does not allow any imported food

"And, then there are the small markets throughout the area with their own approaches to food and fun."

Read the full story here.