From an article by Julie Lawrence at OnMilwaukee.com
While new fuel efficient cars and home solar panels are some of the most powerful ways to reduce our carbon footprint, a $25,000 investment is usually out of the question for most college students who are already battling rapidly increasing education costs.
But what about spending $16? Two University of Wisconsin student entrepreneurs say it can go further than you might think.
Mechanical engineering major Ted Durkee and business partner Brandon Gador, a recent graduate of Madison’s School of Business, launched Powered Green this past October to provide an economical way for anyone to support renewable energy.
Their product, Energy Seal, is a recycled aluminum laptop sticker that funds carbon offsets. At $16, the cost of the sticker covers the production of enough renewable energy to offset what an average laptop uses in its lifetime.
Amazingly, $14 is enough to subsidize the retail cost of the laptop’s lifetime energy consumption, paying for wind turbines that create electricity. The remaining $2 is for the actual seal, visual evidence that promotes the buyer’s support of the eco-friendly endeavor.
“It essentially has the effect of a wind turbine in your backyard without actually having one,” explains Durkee, who partnered Power Green with Village Green Energy, a renewable energy credit distributor based in California.