It’s a big day in the environment for the U.S.

First, the long-awaited climate talks have begun in Copenhagen. Second, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has formally determined that greenhouse gas pollution is dangerous, setting the stage for the U.S. to regulate emissions through the Clean Air Act.

Though I know about these issues, I’m not a national news reporter, so let me point you to some great resources regarding these two very important events:

Copenhagen. The New York Times has a team of reporters covering the two-week talks. The NYT staff will also be keeping the public up to date via very informative video posts here.

If you’re looking for a local perspective, nonprofit Climate Solutions’ eco guru K.C. Golden is attending the talks. He’ll be posting periodically on the CS Journal.

There’s also this resource for journalists that I’m sharing with you (shhh, don’t tell).

On a bit of a side note, there is an excellent look at how green Denmark really is, reported by Henry Chu of the Los Angeles Times and carried in today’s Seattle Times. The article points out that Danes throw out more waste than Americans and eat more meat than we do (whodathunkit?) However, what struck me most was although Danish people throw out more waste than we do, only 5 percent of that waste ends up in a landfill, compared with 54 percent in the U.S. (Washington’s recycling rate was 55 percent in 2008. Seattle recycles 50 percent of its waste).

On the EPA side, there’s the NYT’s Green Inc. blog with the story, the general AP story is here, and a (somewhat) local version of it is here at Natural Oregon.org.

How does one of the biggest companies in the U.S. measure and decrease its carbon footprint? Theoretically, it should be a simple process, but when you’ve got 1.7 billion square feet of real estate space worldwide, that’s quite a lofty goal. The difficulty is made even more challenging when you also set a goal of being carbon neutral by 2010. But that’s what CB Richard Ellis did in May of 2007.

I’m here at GreenBuild in Boston, listening to CBRE speakers discuss the topic. Just to get a basic understanding of it takes an hour and a half!

It all began, said speaker Matthew Arnold of Sustainable Finance, when CBRE, a real estate services company, acquired Trammell Crow in 2006, making it a juggernaut of a real estate player. That deal, he said, suddenly brought a host of new questions like what is the diversity makeup of your workforce and what is your company’s sustainability plan? Arnold was hired to help answer those questions and make CBRE an environmental leader. 

In the end, the firm decided to focus on diversifying the workforce and on lowering its carbon footprint. CBRE formed a task force, which came up with a company policy in three months. Arnold said that is incredibly quick, as banks, in comparison, take about a year to do the same work.

In May of 2007, CBRE committed to being carbon neutral as a company by 2010. The commitment refers to the company’s own operation meaning activities directly owned or controlled by CBRE, electricity or heat consumed by CBRE and activities controlled by third parties that are directly linked to CBRE, though it is urging clients to do so as well. Arnold said, “For CBRE, one of the greatest benefits of all this is being able to bring it to its clients.”

Just measuring the company’s current footprint has been a huge challenge, speakers said. It is concentrating on building operations and on employee travel. In January, the company will launch an internal program to measure company travel as no such metrics had previously existed. It is using 2007 as a baseline for building operations.

At 62 percent of CBRE’s market, the U.S. is the biggest fish to catch. In the U.S., CBRE has 2.4 million square feet of space in 162 locations with 18,000 employees, according to Sherada Sullivan of CBRE’s Chicago office.

The company is working on getting more renewable energy and getting more submetering information from building owners. It will occupy only LEED certified buildings when possible in the future.

Sullivan said the company has issued a number of mandates for 2009 including requiring double-sided printers, switching marketing materials from paper to digital and banning water bottles. It is tracking the green office supplies it buys and is trying to raise that number. Sullivan said the Human Resources Department is also looking at options like telecommuting, flexible work weeks and public transit opportunities. 

But none of those actions will get a company the size of CBRE all the way to carbon neutral. Obviously, the final plan in 2010 will require a lot of offsets. Arnold said the firm is working to ensure it gets the most reputable and honest offsets it can.

For more information, visit CBRE’s sustainabilty site here.

In case you missed it, the news coming out of Seattle the last four months has not so covertly been undercut by one single, shining topic…. (no, not the Sonics!)… disposable bags!

That’s right. Way back in April, Mayor Nickels decided to wage war against the mighty plastic and paper grocery bag. Since then, it has grown into legend and become the most important story on everybody’s lips.

Today, that war has ended. As of January 1, if you use a plastic or paper grocery bag from a drug,   convenience, or grocery store… you will be charged 20 cents per bag.

You might think I’m being flippant (and ok, maybe a part of me is) but really, I’m only half joking. The news that this topic has generated since April… is a tad unbelievable. Doubt me? In the Seattle Times, everyone from Danny Westneat to Nancy Leson have chimed in, never mind the actual news stories. Want blogs? Try The Stranger, WorldChanging Seattle, Greenhuman…. you get the point (then again I’m also culpable as this is now the second time I’ve posted about this on the blog. hmmmm). Want to read the press release, check out the Rainier Valley Post.

I’m not undermining that disposable bag use is disgusting. According to SPU, there are 360 million disposable bags used every year in-city. But seriously, I have an insane amount of press releases in my in box about this topic on either side. I’ve been a little shocked, actually, given that the mainstream media in this state has given virtually no coverage to issues like greenhouse gas inclusion in SEPA or even the Living Building Challenge. I guess disposable bags are just easier to write about.

Then again my co-worker, Shawna Gamache, used to live in St. Petersburg  (I know, cool right?) and she says it’s the same thing: you bring your own bag or you pay. (She also says public places require you bring toilet paper. Not so sure I like that one.) Come to think about it, when I lived in France they looked at  you with a queasy eye when you didn’t bring your own bag…..

I know I try to bring a reusable bag, but sometimes I forget. Maybe with the city kicking me, I’ll finally remember it when I walk in the grocery door. Or maybe it’ll be yet another daily annoyance.

What do you think about the decision? Am I way off base here or are there more important things we should be worrying (and picketing) about?

In a separate ordinance, the council also banned polystyrene food containers from restaurants and packing from grocery stores beginning Jan. 1, 2009. For more about that, see any of the blogs cited above.

If Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels and City Council President Richard Conlin get their way, you will be charged a 20-cent “green fee” on all disposable shopping bags from Seattle grocery, drug and convenience stores, starting Jan. 1, 2009.

According to SPU, about 360 million disposable bags are used in Seattle every year, most plastic. That translates to 600 bags for each Seattle resident.

And those handy white foam containers that hold your pho soup or Mexican takeout, pictured at left? Under the proposal, you’ll also stop seeing those. Instead, businesses would have to replace everything from foam plates, cups and egg cartons with a different product by Jan. 1, 2009. Then, they would have to switch to using compostable or locally recyclable packaging by July 1, 2010.

The changes were announced in a proposal today supported by Nickels and Conlin. The legislation isn’t ready yet, but Conlin said it should be finalized, and considered by council, in June.

Nickels said Seattle is the first city in the country (that he knows of) to create a program like this, though cities across the world are adopting similar policies. At least 20 U.S. cities have banned polystyrene food packaging including Portland and San Francisco.                                                                             

Other options include packaging made of corn starch and sugar cane. A spokesperson for local restaurant group Tutta Bella, pictured at right, said at a press conference today that due to the restaurant’s recycling and composting of everything from expired pizza dough to food containers, the waste from all three restaurant locations combined fills only one garbage can per day.

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