Tech helps bridge gap between economy, ecology

Pick your area and you'll find that technology can make Earth-friendly choices easier to make. Green buildings have historically been trophy homes or corporate headquarters designed to make a statement about a company's commitment to the environment. That's still the case, but the gap, if there is one at all, between paying a premium for green goods is narrowing for products, such as efficient lighting or materials made from recycled content.

Everyone knows we can lower the cost of clean energy and clean transportation, but there's a lot of innovation that can happen in materials and waste reduction. The first sustainability initiative at Wal-Mart was when one executive reduced packaging for a toy, which eliminated the need to ship 215 containers from China. Now, Wal-Mart is driving those reductions--and cost savings--through its supply chain of partners.

Dell developed packaging for a Netbook that is made of bamboo, sourced sustainably from China. The cost is the same as other packaging materials, and Dell expects it can be compostable. It also gives the company options if prices fluctuate for different packaging materials, according to Oliver Campbell, senior manager for global packaging engineering at Dell.

Dell developed bamboo packaging for its line of Netbooks, one area where the company is developing eco-friendly products.

(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)

The key is for employees to reconsider the environmental footprint of their jobs, people said. Chemistry companies, for example, can seek to make products from plants rather than fossil fuels or make more environmentally benign chemicals.

"We're looking at things in different ways. We're looking through the lens of sustainability and developing new technologies to address really big problems," said Scott Elrod, vice president and director of hardware systems Laboratory at the Palo Alto Research Center, which is developing technologies for cheaper water treatment or techniques to convert carbon dioxide from power plants into a liquid fuel.

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