Legambiente, the Italian environmental organization I mentioned a couple of days ago, just announced the 2012 winners of its Premio Innovazione Amica dell'Ambiente (Friend of the Environment Innovation Prize). The prize, in its 12th year, is a way to highlight innovative green businesses. It's also a chance to nudge Italian businesses that they should be spending more on research and development. The announcement notes that Italian companies spend only 1.27 percent of GNP on research and development, less than a third of Finland's 3.97 percent (U.S. businesses invest about 2.7 percent).
Some examples of the winners:
BikeDistrict, an on-line map service in Milan providing directions for travel by bike, including information about road surfaces and degrees of safety. The service is still in beta form.
Car2Go, the car-sharing service, which has been in Washington, D.C. for about a year, is a subsidiary of the Daimler Corporation and started in Germany. Despite the prize, Italy is still waiting for the service.
Grow the Planet, a social network concept dedicated to small-scale, home gardening.
My favorite, though, was not one of the top eight prize winners (of 165 entries). This was "Ecocapsula," refillable capsules for Nespresso and similar single-shot coffee machines. They let you buy and use your own coffee and the company says the capsules can be reused up to 300 times. If I could find these here, I might be tempted to buy one of the machines.
The prize also reminds me that there's much more to the country than tourism and troubled governments.
I'm somewhat familliar with Car2Go, which is a really cool service. As a person without a car, I've thought about subscribing, but it has two major drawbacks. First, the car is tiny which is great for the environment but bad for people who only use cars for grocery shopping and moving furniture. Second, they have a cheap zone and then once you leave the zone it becomes much more expensive, so I wouldn't be able to go to the airport, my office, or Ikea. Which is fine since the car wouldn't fit more than a second person and a carry on, so hauling a new bed frame home from Ikea would be out of the question. Still, its a pretty cool service and I love the idea of car share and bike share!
ReplyDeleteHow about Zipcar?
ReplyDelete