UC Irvine students Bryan Le and Kyle Good stumbled upon the “What’s Your Crazy Green Idea” X Prize competition while searching online for contests they could enter. And surfing the web never paid off this much because — not only did they participate — they won the $25,000 prize!

On Sept. 10, 2008 the X Prize Foundation announced the competition and asked contestants to submit two-minute videos through YouTube that address a possible breakthrough on an energy-and-environment-related issue. (For more information, read Think Crazy Green Thoughts and Maybe Win $25,000.) More than 100 videos were submitted and three finalists were chosen. Then, it was up to the public to determine the final winner.

Over 4,000 viewers decided that the “craziest” green idea was “The Capacitor Challenge,” which challenges the X Prize Foundation to develop a new storage medium. You can see the winning video below.

For future X Prize reading, check out Jack McCornack’s blog about building a 100-mpg car for the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize.

By Jenna Woginrich

If you’re the first of your friends to move to the country, get some chickens and plant an organic garden there will be some inevitable social fallout. It’s not your fault, but you’re going to raise the eyebrows of some of your more cynical friends. While there are plenty of people out there excited about self-reliance, there are just as many folks jaded by the hype and greenwashing that society has been slinging at us ever since Al Gore shared his slideshow. As green living gets trendier, it can’t help but jump the shark. You just can’t blame people for rolling their eyes when oil companies air commercials about sustainability.  

Around the time your coffee table starts to fill up with seed and hatchery catalogs you can expect the occasional jab for subscribing to the country cliché. The suspicious will cross their arms and peg you as just another converted-starry-eyed-back-to-the-lander. With an air of certainty and rib-nudging judgment, they’ll announce that at the end of all your dirty fingernails and feed sacks you’ll learn nothing that hasn’t been learned a million times before. That the merits of country living have already been printed in thousands of books, seen in endless movies, and are currently being spouted as gospel by hundreds of others just like you, probably even at the same farmers market. They’ll start doling out references from old episodes of Green Acres. There will be melting glacier jokes. You know the drill, you’ve been there. These otherwise wonderful folks will point their fingers at your western shirt and call you another sucker for the country life.

Here’s the thing. They’re right.

Of course they’re right. Agriculture isn’t exactly new to the scene, and deciding to turn your life from consumer to producer (even if it’s just a few gardens and some chickens) is a step taken by throngs before us. There is nothing new, or special, or innovative about it. The Simple Life has been experienced by humanity since the fertile crescent, was, well... fertile. The results are ridiculously cliché. If you join the coverall club you’re not going to have any experiences that many of us haven’t already had, and will continue to have indefinitely. Sorry kids, this show is always a rerun.

But you know what I say to all this? So what. I mean isn’t that the point of all this? To get your hands dirty and join the secret society of tractors and baling wire? To be able to nod your head around the campfire when other gardeners talk about blight and potato beetles, and to learn the same sense of satisfaction of growing your own food? There is comfort in knowing you’re living a cliché. It means the results of the lifestyle are so stereotypical they’re guaranteed. And while it may not be clever — it’s clear that there are a reason some clichés stick around. Some are good enough to be true. Roll your eyes all you want son. This stereotype’s got some eggs to collect.

Toyota, hailed as the top hybrid manufacturer, has more green footprints than just its tread marks from the Prius.

This month, Toyota, in partnership with the SunPower Corporation and GE Energy Financial Services, will begin operation of one of the largest, single-roof solar power installations in the country.

The system, installed in Ontario, Calif., stretches 242,000 square feet (the length of four football fields) of the roof of Toyota’s North America Parts Center California (NAPCC) and produces 2.3 megawatts of electricity, which will provide almost 60 percent of the facility's power. If the company wasn't using this system, it would produce 6.4 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions.

SunPower installed the system; GE Energy Finance footed the bill; and Toyota received RECs and protection from rising energy prices.

Toyota also installed a 53,000 square foot roof system on its headquarters building, located in Torrance, Calif., in 2003.

Words like “green”, “environmentally friendly”, “all natural” and “eco” have become common descriptions for what we’re all supposed to look for as consumers. But they don’t really mean anything. They’re as useless as describing a person, saying that they “have hair” or are “wearing a T-shirt.” These environmental descriptions need a definition, and that’s why Canada has made an effort to provide one.

The Competition Bureau and the Canadian Standards Association recently created Environmental Claims: A Guide for Industry and Advertisers to help improve accuracy for such claims in today’s business world. It says that environmental claims will soon need to meet the same requirements as advertising and labeling claims and are now subject to their same laws, such as the Competition Act, the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act and the Textile Labelling Act. The guide specifically addresses claims that say a product is “recyclable” and “biodegradable.” These claims will need to have supporting data that is “accurate and readily available to law enforcement agencies.” If they don’t, individuals or corporations can be fined or even serve prison time, depending on how severe the penalty.

The Bureau is allowing for a one-year transition period while companies re-work any needed advertising campaigns. At that time, Canadians will have to put their money where their mouth is when it comes to advertising “green” products. But they can look forward to a more “environmentally friendly” Canada.