Headlining these was a fairly large piece titled "Cleaning Solution" about the Sierra Club (America's oldest and largest environmental organization) allowing it's logo to be featured on Clorox Corporation's new line of "Green Works" cleaning products in exchange for undisclosed sums of money.
While it's understandable that the Sierra Club would want to maximize revenue (and likely will put said funds to good use), many Club members are raising the question of whether they should be in the product of co-labeling on for-profit products. Additionally, many are concerned about the particulars of this deal (such as what's received by the Sierra Club and how "green" is the "Green Works" line).
Some other things of note out of this issue:
- Update on awards conferred on writer Charles Fishman's 2007 Fast Company expose "Message in a Bottle" on the bottled water industry. This was particularly interesting coupled with a previous post made here about the impact of a Nestle Corp/Arrowhead brand bottled water plant in rural Northern California. Yep, water is good for you... bottled water, maybe not so much.
- Update on former Sierra Club president Adam Werbach who caught a large of "green flak" for consulting with Wal-Mart as chronicled in the 2007 Fast Company piece "Working with the Enemy". Werbach has since sold his consulting company to Advertising giant Saatchi & Saatchi where he'll ostensibly ontinue his environmental efforts... while at the same time defending himself about fellow enviros who feel that he has "sold out" to corporate interests.
- "Forces of Nature" about the newly rebuilt California Academy of Sciences in the Golden Gate Park area of San Francisco opening Sept 27, 2008.
- Former Microsoft (and now everywhere tech) blogger Robert Scoble and his "Sky Fighters" piece about competing telescope's available on the web... MS's WorldWide Telescope and Google Sky.
- Article on the popular travel site Kayak.
