Environmental Entrepreneurs

Fortune Small Business highlights three entrepreneurial ventures with an environmental focus.
* “One solution to America’s energy crisis just may be gobbling away at a poultry farm near you. Changing World Technologies has developed a working system to convert turkey guts and scraps into fuel oil.”
* “IdleAire is the big dog in an emerging pack of companies that provide technology to reduce pollution at truck stops. Badgett’s firm installs a system of gray control consoles attached to bright-yellow tubes suspended from an overhead rack. Drivers pull up, turn off their rumbling engines, latch the unit onto a $10 adapter that fits in their passenger window, and open a clamshell-like control console that pipes in climate-controlled air, electricity, broadband Internet access, satellite TV, and long-distance phone service.”
* “Tony Rogers is a member of the rose-bud Sioux tribe who lives on the tribe’s South Dakota reservation. He doesn’t have an engineering degree, hasn’t worked for a power station, and has never invested in the energy markets. Yet Rogers is an entrepreneur at the cutting edge of green energy development. He is director of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe Utility Commission—the group responsible for building the first wind turbine on a Native American reservation.”
Three nice examples of how the private sector can solve broader societal problems even while making a profit or creating self-sustaining non-profits. A definite win-win.