Daily Green Wrap-Up 20.January, 2012

Imagine being able to tailor Google to search specifically for sustainable food suppliers or restaurants and socially-minded companies in your area. That’s pretty much what a new online marketplace, FarmPlate.com, does. It features a searchable directory of more than 40,000 business listings across the country, and you can search by category and by location to find just the sustainable food or drink you’re looking for.
The concept of small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) was brought closer toward reality yesterday with the U.S. Department of Energy outlining how it intends to support the design and licensing of SMRs. The Obama administration supports SMRs as a form of low carbon energy and for job creation.
The general idea behind SMRs is to cluster together many small reactors to match the output of obsolete coal or nuclear facilities. Steam output from many modules would power a common generator to produce electricity, and SMR reactors are passively cooled, so core meltdowns are less of a possibility.
Oil companies will pay $6.8 million in fines for not meeting federal quotas for blending in cellulosic biofuels – those produced from grasses, wood and plants – even though there weren’t enough of those biofuels available for use, the New York Times reported. Those fines are likely to rise in 2012 because the cellulosic biofuel quotas that refiners have to meet will rise more than 30 percent to 8.65 million gallons.
The more I read about food, the less I want to eat it. And the less I want my children to eat it. I’m thinking, not about the food I grow or purchase at the farmers’ market, but the stuff on our supermarket’s shelves. Cow and pig parts in cereal? BPA in canned soup, canned beans, canned everything?
Kodak may be in the middle of some financial trouble — it just filed for bankruptcy yesterday and has shut down almost all of its camera film production — but they’re looking at solar energy as a way to a fresh start. The camera and film maker is hoping to use its already existing manufacturing processes to produce thin-film solar cells.
Xuyen stands amidst taro plants in her home garden. The plant stems are a base ingredient in traditional soups and congees found on most Vietnamese dinner tables. By growing taro and other vegetables, she keeps Vietnamese traditions alive in her community.

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