Green Building: The FTC’s Revised Green Guides and What They Mean for Marketers
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has recently released a revised version of its Green Guides to help marketers ensure that their claims concerning the environmental attributes of their products are based on truth.
As more American consumers look to buy environmentally friendly, or “green” products, companies have responded by offering products they claim have environmental benefits. The guides are the FTC’s attempt at eliminating unsubstantiated or misleading environmental claims.
But sometimes what the company means in its claims and what the consumer understands those claims to mean are totally different. This is where the FTC steps in to help marketers avoid making claims that could be misleading.
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Green Building and The Built Environment
The push for more green buildings is focused on the use of intelligent controls to monitor and manage lighting, HVAC, security and fire, all with the intent to lower energy costs, according to an article in Forbes.com.
William Pentland, the author of the Forbes article, points to a comment by Richard Gollis of the Concord Group to back up his statement: “Green development no longer simply represents an environmentally friendly label, but instead constitutes a new technology that has the capability to create larger profit margins for real estate.”
Both small and large companies like Johnson Controls, BuildingIQ and JouleX are taking advantage of this push for integrated building management controls as well as introducing new technologies into the market.
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Threat to Water Utilities: Aging Infrastructure
Philadelphia has recently been hit with proof that its aging water infrastructure has some serious problems, according to Philly.com.
A 100-year-old water main broke open, flooding streets and homes, and causing evacuations throughout the city. Officials, however, can’t pinpoint the exact cause of the break. But Mayor Michael Nutter has been working with other officials to proactively request more money through grants or other sources from the federal government for infrastructure projects.
In the article, Nutter explains the city does the best it can with the resources it has to inspect and improve the water mains, but with more financing officials would be able to do more. Philadelphia’s water system is about 70 years old and the water main that broke has been used since 1916. The city is raising water rates by 28.5% to cover the necessary repairs as well as improvements to the aging system.
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Connecting Smart Buildings and Smart Grids
Have you ever heard of the smart grid? Well, the smart grid is an automated technology used for utility delivery, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
And it can be used to save energy.
After building new facilities and retrofitting existing buildings to make them “smarter” and more energy efficient, the next step is to connect these smart buildings with the smart grid for optimal efficiency.
Smart buildings are sophisticated systems, but they’re still largely isolated from the grid. Making smart buildings interactive with the grid by implementing two-way communication between the grid and the building will impact our energy future substantially.
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