Reporter Ginger Zee

NBC – Chicago 

When I fondly reflect on college, the cafeteria surely doesn’t pop as a positive.  But at Loyola University in Chicago, it will be for one group of students changing the world with leftover grease from the café.  It’s Chicago’s own on the cutting edge of bio-fuel technology. 

I ran across this story while covering another ‘green’ event at a new restaurant in the Windy City  -The Uncommon Ground-.  A fully acoustic and dedicated green group of rockers -The Giving Tree Band- were playing as I enjoyed an eco-tini (like martini – just friendlier – earth-wise).  When suddenly a group of seemingly marauding college students rushed the kitchen and said, “We’re taking your grease!” 

Okay, it didn’t happen quite like that, but they were there with info about their bio-diesel lab.  And they were going to take the leftover grease from fried foods. 

In the ultimate test of conservation, a hands-on, interdisciplinary program at Loyola U. challenges students to take waste and transform it into bio-diesel fuel.   If this were like any other lab experiment the pressure would be there to get the grade, but this is different.  The product doesn’t need pass but it needs to be perfect because it powers vehicles driven by Loyola maintenance staff and even some professors’ personal cars! 

Enter the lab and watch a process that will inspire and give hope for the future.  The leftover grease is brought in barrels.  From there, super-smart engineer-types take over.  I think I’ll let Zach Waickman (bio-diesel lab intern) explain: “Our whole process starts when we go to the cafeteria and gather the vegetable oil – which is the deep fryer grease.  Then we put the grease through a 25-micron filter; basically really tiny little holes that take out all the ‘chunks’ that we don’t need. We then heat up the oil, which separates the water from the grease.  The grease is then ready to start ‘the reaction’.  We pump it over into our main reactor and heat it up.   Then we add  Methoxide (a mix of methanol, which is a very strong grade of alcohol) and Lie (a typical every day grain feeder).  Methoxide is the only agent you need to put in to make bio-diesel.  We mix the grease and the Methoxide and we re-circulate them together through a pump and mix for about an hour.  It then has to sit and separate:  glycerin the bi-product at the bottom, and our friend bio-diesel on top. “ 

The bio-diesel still needs to be washed a few times, but it’s basically ready.  We watched as the students pumped (with a crank-like device) their concoction into Professor Elizabeth Coffman’s (Chair of the Communications Department) car.  Before she drives away she tells us, “The students have been filling up my Jetta with bio-diesel for 8 months. It’s been great.”  Free gas usually is.  J 

Impressed yet?  Well, the students won’t let the bi-product go to waste either.  Waickman again explains, “There are a number of ways we can refine our glycerin, which is used in a whole slew of daily products (soap for example).”   

Better yet, soap with a cause.  That calls for extra credit right?  (wink, wink – Mr. Professor) 

It feels good knowing there are students studying the future of sustainability and conservation; in what some believe is need-to-be green world.  Alas, even if it comes from the depths of a greasy on-campus cafeteria.

For more Green stories and tips go to our NBC 5 homepage.

By Perri Peltz

NBC New York

Does the sight of  carbon dioxide spewing from a tail pipe send you into a frenzy? Do 70 degree days in the middle of winter put you into a panic- do you try and avoid air travel because you don’t want to expand your ever growing carbon footprint? Or do you worry that your city will one soon become one with the ocean?

If you answered yes to any of these, unscientific, questions, then you may be suffering from the latest neurosis to hit the city streets- it’s called Eco Anxiety, and believe it or not its real.

I know I was a little skeptical when I was originally assigned the story. Just what I figure we needed, another thing to add to the ever growing list of angst producing scenarios. Where should I shoe-horn eco- anxiety? After the kids health, before mortgage payments? My anxiety list needs no further additions.

But off I went to interview the man who coined the term. He’s the editor of Plenty Magazine which looks at all sorts of environmental problems, and I must admit by the time I walked out of his office, I was convinved that the syndrome exists. He told me eco-anxiety first  came to his attention when one of his reporters was no longer able to get out of her bed because she was so certain and fearful that the world would soon face extinction. This, she believes, happened as a result of covering too many stories about global warming. Do you remember reading biology text books and becoming convinced that you had every single ailment in the book? Well, reporting on these issues, is no different.  Just call it an occupational hazard.

I then went and talked with a psychiatrist., a full fledged medical doctor who was surprised by my skepticism. He says  he sees a lot of patients who are really afraid the earth is coming to an end and he says what makes it even worse is that the sufferer feels incapicatated and helpless. After all you might be able to figure out how to work through your anger that you didnt get a promotion, but solving global warming? Hard to get your arms around that one.

The good news is, eco-anxiety doesn’t necessarily respond to anti-depressants. According to Dr. Stephan Quentzel, the best approach is to get involved, do something, anything. Change your light-bulbs to the new energy efficient ones. Try and reduce your carbon footprint. Plant trees, anything to help the environment. The other suggestion is to enjoy the great outdoors and learn to appreciate mother nature.

The  remedies for eco- anxiety may not completely rid you of your concerns, after all, anxiety about the environment is very real, but the experts say it will definitely help.

Visit NBC4′s homepage for more green stories and tips.

By Terry Ruggles

NBC Philadelphia

In the mid 1980′s Philadelphia became the first major city in the United States to start a city wide recycling program.  But today even city officials agree it has been a huge flop.  Only 7% of Philadelphia households recycle.

Philadelphia’s apathy toward recycling reflects what has been much of the countries apathy toward going green.  Too much work, too expensive, and inconvenient are just some of the excuses people use.

But the city of brotherly love seems to be awakening from an “environmental nap” that has lasted a quarter of a century.  Some neighborhoods participating in a new recycling initiative have a 70% participation rate.   Car sharing programs get bigger every day.  People are switching to those energy saving light bulbs. School kids can tell you how trees help clean the air.

There is a new awareness!   I’m really not sure why.  Maybe it’s Al Gore and his academy award-winning movie.  Maybe it’s the price of a barrel of oil and a gallon of gas.  Maybe it’s baby boomers feeling guilty about being such a large part of the resource gluttons we have become.  Quite frankly, I don’t care the reason.  I’m just happy it’s happening and that Philadelphia is jumping in, again, with both feet.

For more on this topic, as well as tips and Green stories visit our homepage.

By Ryan Hanrahan

NBC Hartford

Jeff Bradley knows what it means to “go green.” Several months ago I toured his unusual 10,000 square foot workspace in Clinton, CT to get a glimpse at how he works to preserve the past and preserve future.

Bradley is an exceptionally talented woodworker who has merged his love for woodworking with his strong belief in preservation. His company, New England Outbuildings, works tirelessly to rescue antique barns that are slated for demolition. Piece by piece, he takes apart barns that have dotted the landscape of rural New England for the past few centuries. After bringing the salvaged lumber back to his warehouse he begins the painstaking task of reassembling it by hand.

The end result is magnificent pieces of furniture, small sheds, or even entirely new barns. Without Bradley’s work, dozens of barns would be stuffed into dumpsters and clogging landfills. Now, those barns have been resurrected, in a sense, and transformed into any number of items. Every creation has a story to tell about the past, and a lesson for the future.

Walking around the warehouse you get a sense of just how much work goes into one of these projects. Everything Bradley does is by hand. Instead of a power saw he uses a handsaw. In place of a drills and nails he uses mallets and wooden pegs. At any given time, each corner of his massive warehouse is taken up by any number of projects. From a dining room table, to a small barn, to a children’s toy set, every piece of salvaged lumber is used. Nothing goes to waste.

Visit NBC Hartford’s Going Green page for more stories and green tips.

By Kris Sanchez
NBC Bay Area

I like wine… from the good stuff to the stuff that comes in a box my roommates and I loved in college, I’m not too picky. I’d like to think I have a decent palate, but I have rarely sent a glass back. That being said, tasting biodynamic wine was a whole new experience for me.

First of all, I thought biodynamic wine sounded like something out of the future, engineered and tweaked in a lab. In a visit to the Bonny Doon Vineyard in Santa Cruz, I found out quite the opposite is true.

As I am expecting my second child, I took my husband Chris along for the tasting along with my 20-month old daughter Isabel. Turns out, founder Randall Grahm’s own young daughter was part of the impetus for the sale of his more commercial labels which sold 400,000 cases a year to concentrate on making just 35,000 cases of biodynamic wine he says are better for the body and the environment.

Biodynamic growing is about getting back to old world ways of winemaking, letting the vines extract everything they need from the soil they’re planted in and the air around them. Okay, up to this point, I think this sounds like the organic movement. Here’s where it gets a little out there.

At Bonny Doon, biodynamics also means stuffing a cow’s horn with manure, then burying and unearthing it according to the planetary and seasonal cycles. It also means putting the wine into barrels lined with rose quartz crystals. Um, my husband grew up in Woodstock, New York and even he was looking at Director of Sales Alex Krause like he was just a touch – just a touch – off his rocker.

Don’t get me wrong, we try to be green. We recycle, we take our own bags to the grocery store, our kid gets organic food and we read her bedtime stories by the lovely light of compact fluorescent bulbs. We just aren’t as groovy as the winemaker who named one of his wines after the French law banning the landing of UFOs.

Alex Krause, who’s held all kinds of positions within Bonny Doon and learned to love wine in France, explains that every aspect of winemaking has been tweaked so much that many of the grapes end up being mere vessels for the water and chemicals forced through the vine. His description made me think of the people who look like they got a little too much plastic surgery. First the nose, then lips to fit the new nose, which then demands a change to the cheeks that no longer match the eyes and in the end a face that’s hardly the one with which they were born. Seems like the same thing’s happened in winemaking.

At Bonny Doon, winemaker Randall Grahm is now focused on making wines that taste like the place they come from. And, he succeeded, without coaxing the vines with artificial fertilizers and without the protection of pesticides. That’s pretty unbelievable for a winemaker who lost a whole vineyard to an insect-borne disease. Sips – tiny doctor-approved sips – of the white, red and rose still in barrels taste of fruit but also of minerals. Not quite what you get when you pop the cork on most bottles. But then, these bottles don’t have corks either, they’re sealed with screw tops which the winemaker feels provide a more consistent seal.

I went into Bonny Doon looking forward to a new wine to buy and came out with a new appreciation for biodynamic growing and the kind of winemaker willing to give up commercial success for a wine that’s closer to what it was in the old world and a vineyard he can walk freely through with his daughter without the fear of chemicals.

For more Going Green info, please visit NBC San Francisco/San Jose’s homepage.

By Pablo Pereira

NBC Los Angeles

First of all, I am not a LAWN Expert. Let me repeat that: I am not a LAWN Expert! But for our Going Green segment, we will take a look at alternatives to the traditional green lawns so many of us have come to expect.

Let me start off with a little history. I am not a LAWN expert. Did I say that already? My history with lawns is not a good one. I have struggled with lawnmowers, chemicals and weed eaters all in search of the perfect green lawn for my home. Despite my best efforts – my lawns always seem to look different than the neighbors. My first home was not a problem, at least in the beginning. The house was small and the lawn area even smaller. So in most cases, I was able to keep the lawn somewhat green, but with time the problems would arise. Too much water? Too little fertilizer? I haven’t a clue.

But brown patches would develop. Weeds would take over the lawn and I was no longer sure what I was mowing. My solution was to always water, water, water. Probably too much. Trying to figure out what fertilizer to use was always an issue for me. This one in the spring, that one in the fall and another for the summer – can’t forget winter! Those spreaders you worked by hand always seem inefficient… so my solution was always to just grab a handful and toss it everywhere. No wonder my lawns never looked good.

So finally it was on to a bigger home – with a MUCH BIGGER yard. In fact, the area I moved to ran ads in the local newspaper promising to care for any lawn for the giant sum of $29.95 a month. I decided for that price, I would take the plunge and invest in an expert. Here was the problem. My yard was the size of a football field! Yes, they do grow things bigger in Texas. Each and every time I called one of these $29.95 per month specialists to come to the house – they pulled up and ran away before they even stopped. I finally cornered one of these so-called experts and asked why nobody wanted to do my lawn. They very politely said, ‘Sir, that price is for a lawn that’s no more than 600 sq ft.’ My yard would take a full football team to do at something like 7-times the amount quoted in the ad. So it was back to the old lawn mower once again. I did notice that all the neighbors with a yard my size had these ride-on mowers with cup holders, etc. Now I know why they invested in them! This lawn was perfectly good when I moved in. But over time and usually 5 hours later after each mowing, my lawn started to take on that familiar look that my little patch of grass had at my first home. Craters developed everywhere, weeds I could not find in a book showed up. My lawn had become the eyesore of the neighborhood once again! This time I held my breath and started writing that check once a month to have the professionals come in. The lawn improved. But what I wasn’t told was the price quoted was for mowing only. If I wanted the weeds cleared and the lawn fertilized it would be more. I declined and my lawn once again took on that look that I had become all too familiar with. Heck – it wasn’t that bad I reasoned – so I learned to live with it.

Finally it was on to my present home. California real estate is expensive which means the size of my lawn got much smaller. In fact, I bought a home on a hill that would require very little lawn. I put sod in – just enough for the dog to use. Years later – the lawn is pretty much gone in the backyard where the dog goes. There is a side strip of grass that for some reason stays green and beautiful. I’m guessing it has something to do with the dog. There is a vacant lot next door that grew high with weeds for years. So I tossed out some grass seed there and with no dog on the premises it looks pretty good. But I did notice my water bill nearly doubled trying to keep it green.

So what now? I have done countless stories on how yard chemicals wash into the gutters and eventually end up in the ocean. Not good. I remember the big drought in California a number of years ago. Things got so bad in Santa Barbara… the city banned lawn watering all together. We did a great story on a company that used green food dye to paint your lawn green. So beautiful lawns without watering? It seemed to work pretty well.

So this leads us up to today. What can we do to keep our yard beautiful and our lawns green, without polluting the environment and wasting water? How about a fake lawn? Artificial grass? Believe it or not they are becoming more popular these days. No watering. No chemicals. No gas-powered lawn mowers. Best of all, no weeds or brown spots. The new grass is nothing like the old brillo-pad feel of the past and comes in many shapes and colors. It lasts a long time, up to 20 years. It is more expensive to install than sod, 4-times more. But no more watering and no more chemicals. There is an environmental downside as there usually is with any thing synthetic. A Canadian school found that their 90,000 sq. ft of synthetic fields means they would have to plant nearly 2,000 trees over a decade to offset the carbon footprint. Oh well, you can’t have everything I guess.

For me the synthetic lawn seems like a good alternative. The price point will probably keep me from installing it anytime soon. For now, I guess I will live with the large brown lots on my property I have learned to love. Just remember if you have a dog – to watch where you step!

To find out more ways you can go green, tune into NBC 4 or visit our website for more stories, tips, and links.

By Patricia Andreu

NBC South Florida

When I pitched a “green” series to my News Director nearly two years ago, I had no idea that it would take off the way it has. My initial hope was to produce 4 or 5 stories –AT MOST– about eco-friendly ways to save energy and money. I wanted to get the word out to viewers that being “green” could be quite easy and even help trim the household budget. But thanks to the support of my News Director, and great timing in terms of the “green” avalanche of information and initiatives that soon followed, Going Green has been airing each and every week on NBC 6 since October 2006.

It’s been quite a ride! Personally (and I don’t mean to sound like I’m bragging) but I’ve learned a helluva lot from these stories! But, as the “green” reporter (a title I hold with great pride), I’ve also had to walk the fine line between being a “believer” and a “hypocrite”. While I haven’t incorporated every single tip into my daily life (I have not gone out and bought all new Energy Star appliances… my current ones are fairly efficient and work just fine), my family and I are a much more eco-friendly than before.

My biggest “conversion” has been buying a Prius. When my old car lease was up, I decided that it was time for a hybrid. All the stories I had done on hybrids — the technology, the gas savings, the reduction in pollution — was more than enough to convince me this was the right purchase to make. And, let me tell you, I LOVE IT! Each time I get behind the wheel, I check my mileage… see how my driving habits impact my fuel economy. I’ve become addicted to saving my gasoline receipts. I’ve been keeping track of how many miles I’ve driven on the gallons of gasoline used (378 miles on 8.4 gallons, 337 miles on 7.5 gallons, 394 miles on 8.7 gallons!!!!) I’m a definite convert!

I’ve also changed out as many bulbs as possible to CFLs. As many folks know by now, they save lots of energy, last FOREVER and don’t heat up the room nearly as much as the darned halogen lights that were all over my house!

I’m a water-holic and used to bring a new water bottle to work every day. Now, I use refillable bottles that I wash at home… I cut back on trash and save lots of money by filling up at the tap. I’ve also bought several reusable grocery bags that I shop with every week. No more plastic bags.

My home has a white roof (keeps the inside cooler so the AC doesn’t run as much). I regularly change my AC filters and have cleaned the coils. I’ve cut back on the hours that my pool pump runs. My showerheads and faucets are low-flow (not low pressure). I’ve had the garden sprinklers checked out so we’re not wasting water when we irrigate the front and back yards. And, I keep the temperature in the main part of the house at 78 degrees. The AC for the bedrooms comes down to 76 at night (believe me, it’s super cool inside… we’re not sweating bullets). We also recycle (as much as our city allows), among other things.

Sure, there are many more things I could do. Getting programmable thermostats is at the top of my to-do list. But, at least this is a start.

My husband’s gotten used to answering questions from cynical folks about how “green” we really are… He just smiles and says I’ve made him greener than he ever thought he’d be. He’s such a great sport. Quite frankly, I think it’s fair for viewers to wonder if I’m “buying” any of the stuff I’m reporting. Well, I am!

To find out more ways you can go green, tune into NBC 6 on Wednesdays at 11pm to catch my new reports. You can also see past stories, tips and links on our homepage.