Tag: market

Antibacterial vs. Plain Soap: A Wash

  • A new review paper in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases finds that antibacterial soap is no better than plain soap at keeping you from getting sick. Some national studies have found that about 70% of liquid soaps on store shelves contain antibacterial ingredients. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

Antibacterial soaps are marketed as an extra
defense against that awful bug going around the
office or your kid’s school. But as Rebecca Williams
reports, new research finds antibacterial soap is not
any better than plain soap at keeping us from getting
sick. And some scientists and doctors worry there might
be risks to widespread use of antibacterial products:

Transcript

Antibacterial soaps are marketed as an extra
defense against that awful bug going around the
office or your kid’s school. But as Rebecca Williams
reports, new research finds antibacterial soap is not
any better than plain soap at keeping us from getting
sick. And some scientists and doctors worry there might
be risks to widespread use of antibacterial products:


Child: “Make the frosting for the carrot cake?”


“You want to make the frosting for the carrot cake? Okay, Jasmine,
bring up your chair so you can wash your hands.”


(Sound of Jasmine pulling a chair over & washing up)


Margo Lowenstein says she’s just a little extra careful about germs.
She never borrows somebody else’s ink pen during flu season. She opens
public bathroom doors with a paper towel on her way out. But her
friends call her a germ-phobe.


“You know, you go to a birthday party and some kid blows out a cake, and
you just see the spit flying on the top of the cake, that just kinda
grosses me out. So I usually take the cake but I won’t eat that top
layer of frosting. (laughs)”


Lowenstein is a soap marketer’s dream customer. Market researchers say
Americans have been getting more worried about germs. And as a result
we’ve been buying more soap and hand sanitizer and antibacterial
products.


Antibacterial soaps have been around since the late 1940s. But the
market research firm Euromonitor International says in recent years,
germ-phobia has given manufacturers a reason to ramp up the
antibacterial products in their lines.


There are some studies that estimate that about 70% of liquid soaps on
store shelves have antibacterial ingredients in them. Ingredients such
as a chemical called triclosan.


Allison Aiello teaches epidemiology at the University of Michigan
School of Public Health. Aiello is lead author of a paper in the
journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. She examined more than two dozen
studies on antibacterial soaps containing triclosan. She says
triclosan kills bacteria by going after the bacterium’s cell wall:


“The cell wall cannot be kept intact anymore; it’s not able to
survive.”


But Aiello says there’s a growing body of evidence that even though
antibacterial soap kills bacteria, it’s no better than regular soap
at preventing illness. Regular soap doesn’t kill bacteria, but Aiello
says it works just as well at getting that harmful bacteria off your
hands.


“Regular soap, is basically, it has a surfactant in it and what it does is it allows
bacteria to be dislodged from hands and then the motion that you’re using
under water helps dislodge it and make it go down the drain,
basically.”


Aiello says it’s important to note that the soap studies were done with
basically healthy people. She says more research needs to be done to
find out if antibacterial soaps could be more effective for elderly
people or people with compromised immune systems.


But Aiello says generally, for healthy people, antibacterial soaps are
no better than plain soaps at keeping you healthy.


And she says there could be risks to antibacterial products. She says
there’s evidence from lab studies that antibacterial soaps might be
adding to the emergence of super-bugs: bacteria that are resistant to
antibiotics.


“In the laboratory setting, it is clear that there are mechanisms that
can lead to antibiotic resistance when bacteria are exposed to
triclosan.”


Aiello says they haven’t seen this play out for antibacterial soaps in
the real world yet. But she says researchers need to keep an eye on it
because antibiotic resistance might take some time to develop.


The soap industry dismisses the idea that antibacterial soaps might
have something to do with antibiotic resistance.


Brian Sansoni is with the Soap and Detergent Association.


“The last thing we want to see is people discouraged from using
beneficial products. Antibacterial soaps have proven benefits, they’re
used safely and effectively by millions of people every day. Consumers
should continue to use these products with confidence.”


The Food and Drug Administration has the final word on antibacterial
soaps. But they’re still trying to figure out what to say about them.

The FDA has been trying to come up with rules for the products for more
than 30 years. Right now there are no formal rules about the levels of
antibacterial chemicals in soaps. And there aren’t any rules about how
the products can be marketed or labeled.


There’s one thing both the soap industry and doctors agree on –
Americans don’t lather up often enough with any kind of soap. A new
study found one out of every three men walk out of the bathroom without
washing their hands. Women did better than the guys, but still, about
one of every ten women didn’t wash their hands either.


Experts say the best way to avoid getting sick is to wash your hands with soap and water for 20 seconds. That’s as long as it takes to sing the happy birthday song twice.


For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Solar Shortages

  • (Photo by Lisa Ann Pinkerton)

Leaders in the solar power industry say the
market is on the brink of expansion. But shortages
of solar panels and electricians to install them
need to be addressed. Many states are seeing those
problems as a way to boost their lagging economies
and create a new sector of manufacturing jobs.
Lisa Ann Pinkerton Reports:

Transcript

Leaders in the solar power industry say the
market is on the brink of expansion. But shortages
of solar panels and electricians to install them
need to be addressed. Many states are seeing those
problems as a way to boost their lagging economies
and create a new sector of manufacturing jobs.
Lisa Ann Pinkerton Reports:


10-year-old Alex Hinkley is sitting at a picnic table watching the Cleveland Indians play
the Kansas City Royals. She’s eating a hotdog, oozing with ketchup, and she’s found
shade under a rather unique awning. It’s made up of 42 solar panels.


The Cleveland Indian’s is the only American League Ball Club to have solar panels and
it’s the only one to use its solar electricity at the park. The panels power 400 TVs at
Jacob’s Field and fifth grader Alex thinks it’s a cool way to introduce people, young and
old, to renewable energy:


“Some people don’t know what they are, but if they know what it is they’ll
wanna learn about it. Because a lot of kids go to the Indians games and I think they should learn a
lot about energy.”


Alex thinks if people are exposed to what solar panels can do, they’ll want them for
themselves. And the notion isn’t far off. High energy prices and state and federal
subsidies are expanding the market more and more each year. In 2006, the electrical solar
industry generated more than 1 billion dollars in revenue.


Exhibiting his products at a Solar Convention, Al Frasz of Ohio Dovetail Solar and Wind
thinks the solar business is on the brink of expansion:


“We’re projecting over 100 percent growth this year. So we’re expecting probably over
the next five years at least 300 percent.”


But the Solar Industry suffers from supply shortages, locally and internationally. Brad
Collins of the American Solar Energy Society says current federal subsidies make solar
competitive with fossil fuels. But entrepreneurs haven’t invested in solar panel factories
because they don’t want their products to collect dust on the shelves if those subsides
aren’t renewed in the future.


So now, he says states are starting to take the lead. He says the rustbelt of America in
particular has a lot to gain from this supply shortage. It’s got the manufacturing
infrastructure and the skilled workforce needed to build the nation’s photo voltaic solar
panels, known in the industry simply as PV. Collins says factories that make auto glass
could easily make the switch:


“There’s a lot of similarities between the production of auto glass and production
processes that could be modified to produce PV. It’s putting a film on a piece of
glass…And that’s the way we can compete.”


Even if states are successful at establishing solar product factories, Bernie Kotlier says
there may not be enough electricians to install the systems. He coordinates weekend
training sessions for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, in Los Angeles:


“What we feel is that the manufacturers are gearing up to supply the equipment but the
next bottleneck will be labor…What would happen if we don’t address it? Well, we’ll have a
shortage.”


In the next ten years, California wants 1 million roofs generating power from the sun.
Kotlier says to make that happen the state will need conservatively, more than 10,000 additional certified
installers than exist today, to make that happen. He says that number’s even bigger is you
look at how the solar market could grow nationally, and across the country certified
installers are already scarce:


“We have people from all around the country who are contacting us regularly saying
we’re getting interest in PV solar in Arizona, in Washington state, in New York, in
Massachusetts. So it is spreading…but it’ll take time. But actually, that’s a good thing because frankly we couldn’t
handle all that interest at once.”


If states continue to offer incentives that bring the cost of solar power down to where it’s
competitive with fossil fuels, Kotlier says solar manufacturing sectors will surely be
required to meet the demand. Where those manufacturing jobs are located and if there
will be enough certified installers nationally remains to be seen. But he says the states that offer
subsides and the people who invest in solar now, could see a huge return on their
investments. Those who delay could find themselves left behind.


For the Environment Report, I’m Lisa Ann Pinkerton.

Related Links

Nature Profile: Nature & the City

  • Audra Brecher, who lives in Manhattan, says the city lights are her stars. (Photo by John Tebeau)

Big cities have skyscrapers, smelly subway stations,
and people from all over the world. In our
occasional series about people’s connections to the
environment, Kyle Norris talks with one big city
resident who says that the people and places of New
York City connect her to the world:

Transcript

Big cities have skyscrapers, smelly subway stations,
and people from all over the world. In our
occasional series about people’s connections to the
environment, Kyle Norris talks with one big city
resident who says that the people and places of New
York City connect her to the world:


Audra Brecher wears her chestnut hair in a Louise
Brooks bob. Actually, she’s a dead ringer for Louise Brooks,
that silent film movie star. She’s stylish
and snazzy.


Audra lives in Manhattan. Her apartment is above a
pizza parlor on a bustling avenue. She says in the
evenings, she hears blaring taxi horns and the thumping
techno music from the clubs on her block. But she
loves everything about the city: its sounds,
its architecture, and its people.


I once asked her if she ever missed nature. She said,
“The city lights are my stars.”


“Yeah, I don’t feel as if I’m missing anything. I don’t
feel maybe such a romantic feeling about stars, the
night sky. I feel maybe the same excitement when I
see the city lights and when I walk across Lexington
and I look north and I see the Chrysler Building lit
up and those beautiful, starry chevrons of the
Chrysler Building. I think maybe the feeling I have
looking at that, is what other people feel when they
look at the night sky.”


So here’s the deal. When I think of someone connected
to nature I picture a state park ranger. I picture a crunchy-
granola type. I do not think of someone who wears
fashionable clothes and wines and dines in the city. I
do not think of Audra. But Audra says she has a
better connection to the natural world than people in the
suburbs:


“I go to the Union Square market on Saturday and I
buy varieties of apple that have come from the
Hudson River Valley and I know my parents, who
live in the suburbs in Florida, they go to the grocery store
where they buy everything pre-packaged and already
cut up fruit. I feel like my experience is actually closer to
nature even though I’m in heart of Manhattan.”


Audra works in an architecture firm. She’s a historic
preservationist, and she’s studied architecture all over the
world. But she grew up in the Florida suburbs. And
what she saw there – the sprawl and development –
seemed wrong to her:


“What led me to do what I do is noticing how
unhappy I was with a suburban existence. Having to
get in car to drive somewhere, or looking at
expanses of parking lot in strip centers and
subdivisions with gated communities that are named after
the natural feature they replace. Like ‘Eagle’s Nest.'”


Those new developments seem wasteful to her. She
likes the idea of re-using materials. And this
connects her to nature. At her job, she’s always in
close contact with old buildings and old materials:


“Yeah, I love the materiality of them. I mean, I love
an old brick from 120 years ago. I love the building
materials and the craftsmanship from that time. I
love the idea of taking something that has been cast
aside and might not be used and giving it a new
purpose, giving it a new vitality. Taking a building that
somebody has abandoned and giving it a new life.
To me, that’s the ultimate recycling.”


Audra says although she’s not walking through the
forest and communing with nature, she feels
ecologically responsible in different ways. She either walks or takes public transportation to get someplace. She never drives a car.


“I’m not asking so much of the world in terms of
water and energy and resources and I feel like when
live in dense environment you are allowing for those
things to remain protected and safe. And pristine. So
I feel like a responsible citizen living in Manhattan
in many ways.”


This stylish city-slicker may not be the person
who pops in your head when you think of someone who’s connected to nature. But Audra’s
deeply connected to the world around her in her own way. She’s also aware of how we can use natural
resources in better ways.


For the Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.

Bottle Laws Expand to Water

Most states don’t have bottle deposit laws. Some of those states that do have the laws are expanding them to include deposits on bottled water and other beverages. Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Most states don’t have bottle deposit laws. Some of those states that do have the laws are expanding them to include deposits on bottled water and other beverages. Lester Graham reports:


When Ed Solomon drives up in his delivery truck, he’s not just taking
in cases of soda and other beverages:


“Most every stop we go to as we deliver products, we take the empties
out, and the crates also. But, WHOOO! Yes. Sometimes there’ll be a
lot of empties at various stops.”


Solomon delivers Faygo beverages in Michigan. That state has the
nation’s highest deposit on bottles and cans: ten cents each. And
whether it’s Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Budweiser or Miller, if distributors
drop off product, they have to pick up the empties that people bring
back for the deposit refund.


Of the ten states that have bottle deposit laws, some are adding the deposit requirement to new beverages such as bottled water.
Forty other states have no deposit law at all.


Johnny Georges operates the convenience store Stadium Party Shop in
Ann Arbor, where Ed Solomon is dropping off new product and picking up
the empties. If the law in Michigan is expanded, it would mean Georges
and his employees would have to take in a lot more kinds of empty
bottles and cans.


“I think it’s going to take a little space in my opinion because there
are so many waters out there, so many juices, so many other brands.
So, it’s going to take a little space. Hopefully we’re going to
organize it as usual. And… we’ll see.”


Not everyone is that receptive to the idea. Beverage distributors and
major grocery chains are lobbying hard against expanding the deposit
law. Distributors don’t want to hassle with picking up the empties.
Major grocery chains say they don’t like the mess of people bringing
empties into the stores. They don’t like losing floor space to make
room for bottle and can collection areas. The bigger stores also have
to invest in bar code scanners to automatically count and sort the huge
volume of empties being returned.


A lot of small stores like Johnny George’s don’t have the fancy
equipment. Here, Georges just set aside a neatly organized area where
it collects and sorts the bottles and cans. He says he knows that an
expanded bottle deposit law would mean a little more hassle, but he
doesn’t mind:


“I like the new law. I hope they pass it. That takes a lot of trash
out of the street. And it’s good for the environment in the meantime.”


And Georges isn’t the only one who thinks it would be good for the environment.
Polls show a large majority of people support the idea.


James Clift is with the environmental group Michigan Environmental
Council. He says it’s time to expand the law to other containers.
When the bottle law was written 30 years ago, beer and soda pop cans
and bottles were the biggest concerns.


“But since then, bottled water, tea, other beverages, energy drinks,
we’ve got a whole new set of drinks on the market. And they’re a
larger and larger segment of the market to the point they may become
the majority of the market in the next five to ten years.”


Clift says his state needs to catch up to the changing market, but the
majority of the states don’t require a deposit on cans and bottles at
all. And Clift argues, you can tell when you’re traveling in one of
those states:


“You know, because you see all the trash along the roadways, you see
trash cans filled with bottles and cans and it just seems so unnatural
for someone who grew up in Michigan, you know, to throw away a bottle
or a can. Luckily, we’ve been programmed to know that that has value
and has other uses.”


So people there bag or box up their empties, take them to the store, the
stores can sort them and guys like Ed Solomon can take them back to be
recycled:


“It’s hectic, yes, it really is, you know, to deal with these empties.
Yeah, but, that’s the law I guess.”


And if the can and bottle deposit law is expanded to, and other drinks, as it has been some states, more distributors
and grocers in Michigan will find the job a little more hectic… while
40 other states do little to nothing to reduce the number of cans and
bottles headed for the landfill.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Governors Push for More E-85 at the Pump

Some governors want a high-ethanol blend of gasoline called E-85 to be more easily available to customers. That’s touched off a dispute with the oil industry. The GLRC’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

Some governors want a high-ethanol blend of gasoline called E-85 to be
more easily available to customers. That’s touched off a dispute with the
oil industry. The GLRC’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:


E-85 is 85 percent ethanol made from corn and 15 percent gasoline.
Because of tax subsidies, its pump price is much lower than gas, but only
certain vehicles can burn the fuel. The number of gas stations that offer
E-85 is small.


Some politicians from corn-growing states want more E-85 pumps – right
next to where traditional gasoline is available, but petroleum industry
spokesperson Erin Roth contends some consumers might put E-85 in the
wrong type of vehicle. He also says many stations can’t add another
underground storage tank.


“Or they’re gonna have to get rid of say mid-grade or premium and put in
E-85 and there’s just not the demand for it right now.”


But if gasoline continues to sell for around three dollars a gallon, ethanol
producers and their political allies say the public will push for more
alternatives.


For the GLRC, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Marketing a By-Product of Ethanol

  • Ethanol plants are being built all over the corn belt. 97 plants are operating and another 34 new plants or expansions are underway, according to the Renewable Fuels Association. A by-product of the process is corn mash, or distillers grain. The distillers are hoping to sell it all to nearby livestock farms. (Photo by Lester Graham)

The federal government has called for more renewable fuels for cars and trucks over the next few years. Ethanol from corn is expected to meet much of that demand. As ethanol production increases, the distillers are looking for ways to make money on some of the by-products of the process. The GLRC’s Lester Graham reports on how the ethanol distillers might market what’s left over after turning corn into ethanol:

Transcript

The federal government has called for more renewable fuels for cars
and trucks over the next few years. Ethanol from corn is expected
to meet much of that demand. As ethanol production increases, the
distillers are looking for ways to make money on some of the by-
products of the process. The GLRC’s Lester Graham reports on
how the ethanol distillers might market what’s left over after
turning corn into ethanol:


(Sound of construction)


New ethanol plants are being built every year. 97 plants are in
operation today and the Renewable Fuels Association indicates 34 new or
expanded plants are under construction. The ethanol refinery
industry is gearing up for the expansion that the government wants.


Ethanol plants are basically giant corn alcohol stills. They produce
huge batches of – well – moonshine, but like moonshiner stills,
there’s a corn mash left over. It’s called distillers grain, and with
all the new plants coming online, there’s going to be a lot more of the
by-product in the future. Distillers grain can be used as livestock feed.
So, the agricultural industry is trying to get more cattle farmers and
others to buy it.


Tracy Jones is a farmer in northern Illinois. He says the agriculture
industry and the ethanol plants that want to get rid of the distillers
grain cheaply, have been encouraging farmers to expand their
livestock operations.


“And I know some producers that are maybe expanding. It’s a
good deal, but it’s not that good of a deal, and there’s a lot of other
issues that go into the cattle feeding business besides just getting
cheap feed.”


Jones has been feeding wet distillers grain from Wisconsin to his
cattle for about a year. Jones says the distillers grain makes sense
as long as the price doesn’t get too high.


“We need to buy it cheaply. We’re basically using it as a corn
replacer. So, when we have cheap corn, you still need to buy the
by-products cheaply also.”


Jones says his cattle are gaining weight at about five-cents a pound
cheaper using distillers grain as part of the mix of feed. Part of the
reason is the price is lower, but distillers grain has another
advantage… it’s higher in protein than plain corn. It’s got about the
same protein content as soybean meal.


That makes Jason Anderson think this stuff might be good to
export overseas as a food for people. Anderson is the Economic
Development Director for the city of Rochelle, Illinois. An ethanol
plant is being built in his city. With a couple of major railways and
a cargo container transfer station in his town, exporting dried distillers
grain would be easy. Because of the nation’s trade deficit, about
half the cargo containers go back to their original country empty.
Anderson says the by-product could be dried to a sort of high-
protein corn meal and shipped.


“Dried distillers grain could be put into intermodal containers,
which are sealed containers, put on a train and sent to the west
coast. They could also be shipped over the Pacific Ocean to starving
countries on the other side of the world.”


Corn tofu, anyone?


Exporting dried distillers grain as human food overseas hasn’t been
discussed much, but shipping it to cattle feedlots in Texas and
other cattle country has been discussed. Agriculture experts think
the ethanol plants located in the corn-belt won’t find enough
livestock in the immediate area to buy the product.


“At this point, where the livestock are and where the plants are
there’ll be a lot of them that has to be shipped.”


Jim Hilker is an agriculture marketing expert at Michigan State
University. He says he’s not sure the ethanol plants will make
much money on distillers grain, especially if they have to ship it to
cattle feedlots out west. That’s because they’ll have to dry the
product… and that adds to the cost.


“The first ones, I think, are making some money before we get
saturated on this, and I think if we put a system for handling it and
stuff in place, they’ll probably. But, if they can more than cover
the cost – remember, otherwise there’s disposal fees too. So, a
break-even here is a pretty good deal.”


So if the distillers just recover the drying and shipping costs, it
would be better than paying to dump the distillers grain in a
landfill.


But farmer Tracy Jones says he thinks the ethanol manufacturers
have already figured out the by-product will be abundant… and
they’re still counting on making some money on it.


“When they do their financials for their ethanol plant, they don’t
plan on giving this product away. So, they need to get something
for it.”


Jones says he’s noticed the ethanol producers don’t call distillers
grain a by-product of the process. They call it a co-product. He
thinks that’s a little marketing ploy that indicates the ethanol
plants definitely plan to demand a good price for the livestock feed,
regardless of the glut on the market.


For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Revving Up Sales of Cleaner Diesel Cars

When you think of diesel engines, you might think of big, noisy, stinky trucks. But that’s changing. And a domestic automaker has plans to bring a cleaner, higher performing diesel engine to passenger cars. The company insists: it’s not your father’s diesel. The GLRC’s Julie Halpert has the story:

Transcript

When you think diesel engines, you might think of big, noisy, stinky
trucks, but that’s changing and a domestic automaker has plans to bring a
cleaner, higher performing diesel engine to passenger cars. The
company insists: it’s not your father’s diesel. The GLRC’s Julie Halpert
has the story:


In Europe… people have been hearing this catchy little tune on a
television commercial…


(Sound of commercial)


If you hate something, improve it. That’s the message of this Honda UK
commercial that highlights the historically loud, smelly diesel engines.
It’s intended to promote Honda’s new, cleaner diesel, something it’s
launching in Europe.


Diesels have always been more popular in Europe than the U.S. That’s
because there diesel fuel is roughly 20 to 30 percent cheaper than
gasoline there, and diesels get great fuel economy… 30 percent better
than in gasoline engines.


Here in the U.S., diesels haven’t sold well. In the 1970s, when diesel
fuel was cheaper than gas, diesels gained in popularity briefly, but people
didn’t like the stench of the smoky fumes and the clunky sounds of diesel
engines. Those lingering attitudes have scared Honda off from bringing
its new diesels here.


But Daimler/Chrysler is trying to change all that. The company is
drawing on its European expertise to bring advanced technology diesels
to more U.S. passenger cars, and now, they think Americans will buy
them.


Jim Widenbak is a manager of small diesel systems for Daimler/Chrysler.


“We think that there’s a niche for diesels in the North American market,
and We’re not sure exactly how big, but I would characterize us as kind
of bullish on diesels. We really think there’s a place for them and
that customers will ultimately be very happy with diesel products.”


Daimler/Chrysler currently offers a diesel engine on its newer models of
the Jeep Liberty and the Mercedes E-320. Sales of these vehicles were
more than double what the company expected – 10,000 for the diesel
Jeep Liberty and 5,000 for the E-320.


Widenback says that electronic controls have improved over the past 30
years, making diesels better performing, more fuel efficient and cleaner
burning.


The company is in negotiations with the Environmental Protection
Agency to use a new technology, currently in use in Europe, that cuts
pollution further – just in time for tough new federal emission controls
that take effect by 2008. The process uses a material called urea that’s
injected into the exhaust before the exhaust hits the pollution control
device. This ultimately removes troublesome emissions of nitrogen
oxides.


There is one problem with the pollution control system, though.
Anthony Pratt directs power train forecasting for J.D. Power Automotive
Systems. He says the car periodically will run out of its supply of urea.


“So, in other words, you’re not getting the injection of urea in the
exhaust, the vehicles will continue to perform normally as if the urea
tanks were full but they will not meet the more strict emission
standards.”


If the company finds a way to ensure the tanks stay full, Pratt thinks it
will work. Pratt projects diesel engine sales will grow from 3 percent of
the market in 2005 to seven and a half percent in 2012, overtaking sales
of hybrid vehicles, which are only projected to be 4% of the market.


“I think the vehicle manufacturers will be successful in ultimately
educating the consumer in that the new diesel technology is not the dirty,
clanky, loud and sluggish technology they may be familiar with from the
late 70s and early 80s.”


(Sound of car dealership)


That message – that diesels are worth buying – is falling on deaf ears for
the customers of Schultz Motors. Tyler Shultz, the general manager, doesn’t
think it will fly, based on what he’s seen.


“As diesel prices went up in the last six months to a year, we virtually
have lost interest. Again, it’s not that the consumer doesn’t want it, but
when they see fuel prices go above gasoline prices, it was almost like
somebody flipped a switch.”


Shultz says it’s too expensive to buy and maintain a diesel and customers
won’t recoup the cost savings from better fuel economy unless they own
their car for several years. He, and some other dealers in the area don’t
think diesels will ever become popular.


Daimler/Chrysler’s Widenbak disagrees. He expects those fuel prices to come
down, and as they do, he says people will start buying diesel vehicles.


“We’re confident that our vehicles, diesel vehicles in general and our vehicles
specifically, can appeal to people.”


Daimler/Chrysler is so confident, it expects to roll out diesel engines in
more of its passenger cars over the next few years.


For the GLRC, I’m Julie Halpert.

Related Links

Car Sharing Gets Profitable

  • Through car sharing programs, users rent cars on an hourly basis. (Photo courtesy of Zipcar)

There’s nothing unusual about renting a car by the day.
It’s commonplace at airports nationwide, but for most Americans,
renting a car by the hour is a strange notion. Renting a car by the hour
is often called “car sharing.” Car sharing is good for the environment
because its users only get the car when they need the car. They usually
take buses and bikes to get around. Car sharing has caught on in a few big
cities on the east and west coasts. That’s largely due to the efforts of a pair
of private companies, Zipcar and Flexcar. Now those firms are poised to
expand their operations. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Todd Melby
has this report:

Transcript

There’s nothing unusual about renting a car by the day. It’s
commonplace at airports nationwide, but for most Americans, renting a
car by the hour is a strange notion. Renting a car by the hour is often
called “car sharing.” Car sharing is good for the environment because its
users only get the car when they need the car. They usually take buses
and bikes to get around. Car sharing has caught on in a few big cities on
the east and west coasts. That’s largely due to the efforts of a pair of
private companies, Zipcar and Flexcar. Now, those firms are poised to
expand their operations. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Todd
Melby has this report:


For the past six months, a nonprofit called the Neighborhood Energy
Consortium has had the Minneapolis/St. Paul car sharing market to itself.
The non-profit group has raised about $450,000 to buy 12 cars. Those
energy-efficient hybrids have attracted about 140 people to join the
HourCar program. That’s Hour with an “H.”


(Sound of bus stop and rumble of passing truck)


On this Saturday morning, Mary Solac is shivering at a bus stop, waiting
for a ride to go pick up her HourCar. Despite the obvious inconvenience,
she says it’s worth it.


“You don’t have to worry about insurance. You don’t have to worry
about gas. It’s like okay, I’m paying what I’m paying and I don’t have to
worry about fixing the blasted car either.”


After a short bus ride, Solac does have to worry about more mundane car
concerns… such as scraping the ice and snow off the window.


(Sound of ice/snow scraping on the windshield)


To date, Solac’s only choice for renting a car by the hour has been
HourCar. That’s about to change.


The nation’s largest car sharing company — Zipcar of Boston — is
invading HourCar’s Minneapolis turf. Nearly 50,000 people now take
turns driving about 500 Zipcars, mostly in Boston, New York and
Washington, D.C.


Scott Griffith is the CEO of Zipcar.


“Over the last several years, we’ve really focused on those cities and getting
them past profitability, past the break even point, to prove that at the
metro market level, that we can make money in this business.”


That track record enticed a venture capital firm to invest $10 million in
Zipcar.


Another big new company is also getting an influx of cash. The nation’s
second-largest car sharing company — Flexcar of Seattle — is about half
as big as Zipcar. It too has a new investor: AOL Founder Stephen Case.
He rented a Flexcar, liked it and bought the company.


In Chicago, Flexcar has paired with a local nonprofit to put 47 cars on
the street.


Zipcar, meanwhile, is also trying to get into Chicago. It wants
government agencies in the Windy City to commit to using its cars
before entering the market. The company hopes that happens sometime
this year.


Business professor Alfred Marcus at the University of Minnesota says it’s
not unusual for emerging businesses to seek government help like this.


“To get this sector going, to stimulate it, it makes sense for their to be
some public involvement, but you would hope this could take off on its
own. I think this is transitional – these public and private partnerships,
and that’s very typical when industries start.”


In Minneapolis/St. Paul, the University of Minnesota is guaranteeing
Zipcar a $1,500 per month per vehicle subsidy, but once Zipcar meets the
$1,500 minimum, that subsidy goes away. Zipcar says it expects to do
just that in three months.


At the moment, Zipcar is growing fast. It had revenues of about $15
million in 2005. CEO Griffith says it expects to double that this year, but
Alfred Marcus with the University of Minnesota says over the long-term,
Zipcar faces big hurdles.


Zipcar has only had success in large, densely-populated cities. Its target
market is young people without cars who are highly price sensitive, and
then there’s the question of where to keep the cars. They have to be
conveniently located to the people who might want to use them.


Marcus says that if these start-ups continue to grow, someday they might
be gobbled up by bigger companies.


“The ultimate aim of Flexcars or Zipcars may be to build up a fringe
business, get it going and have a rental car company buy them or have even
have a conventional automobile company by them.”


But the car-sharing company owners say they have other plans. Zipcar
boss Scott Griffith says he’s working on a 10-year plan to make Zipcar an
international company. Flexcar owner Stephen Case says he bought that
firm “to build it” and not to “flip it.”


For the GLRC, I’m Todd Melby.

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Giant Grass a Future Biofuel?

  • Giant Miscanthus, a hybrid grass that can grow 13 feet high, drops its leaves in the winter, leaving behind tall bamboo-like stems that can be harvested and burned for fuel. (Photo by Kwame Ross)

Scientists have tested dozens of crops for their potential
as alternative fuels for cars or power plants. Now, researchers
hope a new plant might boost the biofuel industry. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee has the story:

Transcript

Scientists have tested dozens of crops for their potential as alternative fuels for cars or power plants. Now, researchers hope a new plant might boost the biofuel industry. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee has the story:


Stems of the grassy giant Miscanthus plant can grow up to thirteen feet tall and have lots of energy. So, researchers at the University of Illinois were delighted to find that miscanthus thrives in the Midwest. They’re hoping to turn miscanthus into an efficient biofuel.


But analysts say the biofuel industry needs more than just high-energy plants. Jim Kleinschmit is with the Institute For Agriculture and Trade Policy, a green think tank.


“A lot of these crops would require specific equipment that would have to be created, or have to be a market for it. And it’s not just for the harvesting; it’s for the baling, the transporting, the collecting, the storing.”


Kleinschmit says the infrastructure to support Miscanthus or similar biofuels is years away. In the meantime, the most widespread biofuel is corn-based ethanol. Corn yields less energy, but has established markets and proven farm equipment.


For the GLRC, I’m Shawn Allee.

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RECONNECTING FARMERS TO LOCAL MARKETS (Part 2)

  • Many of the crops being grown in the U.S. don't end up in the produce aisle. In fact, they usually aren't even sold to people in neighboring areas. (Photo by Rene Cerney)

Some experts think farmers could do a lot better for themselves if they changed what they’re growing. They say growing corn and soybeans subsidized by the government doesn’t do much for the farmer and almost nothing for the local economy. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports on efforts to change that:

Transcript

Some experts think farmers could do a lot better for themselves if they changed what they’re growing. They say growing corn and soybeans that are subsidized by the government doesn’t do much for the farmer and almost nothing for the local economy. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports on efforts to change that:


It can be hard to find locally-grown broccoli, milk, or beef in most grocery stores, even in the middle of farm country. In some states, ninety percent of the land is farmed, but ninety-eight percent of food people eat is shipped in from other parts of the nation or other countries.


The local farmers are growing commodities: corn and soybeans harvested for cattle-feed or processed foods, not stuff that winds up in the produce aisle. But ag economist Ken Meter wants to see that change.


“Farmers have doubled their productivity since 1969, and yet, they’re not making more money, they’re actually losing more money after doubling productivity.”


Meter has studied the economics of farm communities. In one area, he found that nearly all of the farm fields there were used to grow corn and soybeans for the commodities market, but farmers were losing money. At the same time, nearly all of the food people bought there was shipped in from other places.


“The economy we’re in right now is extremely efficient at taking any money that you or I earn in our neighborhood or in our daily lives and basically pulling it into a big global network that very efficiently takes that money and helps other people elsewhere make some value from it.”


It hasn’t always been this way. Richard Pirog is food systems researcher at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture in Iowa. Eighty years ago, he says, most farms grew a lot of different
products and processed them to be sold locally or within the region.


“Iowa back in the 1920’s had fifty-four canneries. We were the canned sweet corn capital of the world in the mid-1920’s. Fast forward to today, there isn’t a single cannery in Iowa. So that infrastructure is gone.”


Pirog says you could tell similar stories in farm areas across the U.S. Back during World War Two, the federal government encouraged farmers to grow commodities, such as corn and soybeans. The government starting paying them subsidies to grow those crops.


These days, Pirog says a lot of farmers wouldn’t even think about risking those subsidies to grow something besides corn and soybeans. Economist Ken Meter says that might be a mistake. He says many farmers don’t realize there’s a growing market for local ag products.


“All of us get focused on whatever we’re paying attention to, and as a farmer you get focused on producing quite well. I’ve spoken with farmers who’ve told me that they really didn’t have any clue that that their neighbors would be looking for different foods, because they just haven’t heard of the tremendous increase in demand we’ve had for things like organic milk or higher quality meats or fresher produce.”


There has been an organic explosion of local farm markets in recent years, because customers want to buy fruit, vegetables, milk, and meat directly from the farmers who produce them. But government policy and farm subsidies mainly still support the commodity production of corn and soybeans.


Richard Pirog hopes that changes, but it’s unclear if growing produce for the new local markets is always economically viable. No one has studied the phenomenon.


“It has to make economic sense for a community and a region. We believe it will, which is why it’s spread so rapidly. But it’s sort of like, the real numbers, the quantification hasn’t caught up with all the growth and explosion and the interest.”


Pirog says he’d like to push the process along. He says it would make more sense for the government to shift subsidies from corn and soybean production to the farms that produce food for their local communities.


For the GLRC, I’m Julie Grant.

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