Next time you open a package from your local grocery store, take a minute to think about what that bag or box went through before it made it into your kitchen. Most food starts off, in one form or another, on a farm or — increasingly — in a lab, and often it's pumped with antibiotics (animal products) and chemicals (think fertilizer). The various ingredients are combined and cooked, usually in a factory of some kind. Likewise, all of the packaging must be produced. It's warehoused and shipped, stocked on your grocer's shelves and sold. Then you open it and eat it. A lot goes into every typical, modern American meal -- a lot of hands, a lot of energy and often a lot of chemicals.

How green are those Cheerios? Well, no—you’re right—Cheerios shouldn’t be green, but I mean green green. Increasingly, restaurants and food service companies are weighing the need to green their operations and products but the results are often not what they anticipated.

According to stories in this week’s issues of two food service industry magazines, QSR and Nation’s Restaurant News (NRN), greening up the kitchen is an effort fraught with as many potential pitfalls as it is possible benefits. Equally as frustrating to customers as it can be for the companies attempting to clean up their acts, many companies that are greening themselves aren’t seeing the payback or the recognition for which they’d hoped. In the worst cases, others are getting credit—a lot, in one case—they simply don’t deserve. More encouraging is that many food service companies are looking at green alternatives to current practices from an ethical viewpoint and not just profit motives.

Many companies have proven quite successful in promoting their products as sustainable, but their actual practices are—gasp!—quite the opposite. In the Maddock Douglas survey of 2,032 U.S. adults, General Mills—the maker of brands ranging from Hamburger Helper to Muir Glen—ranked highest among companies in the food and beverage sector scoring 81 out of 100 possible points in public perception. However, General Mills, which also makes Cheerios, scored only 49 points based upon their actual practices.

At the other end, Stoneyfield Farm and Unilever scored well below General Mills in public perception—in fact they ranked below Pepsico, Kellogg, and Kraft—but came in at 81 and 79 points respectively for their actual sustainability practices. Uniliver, incidently, produces Bertolli, Slim-Fast, and Knorr brands in addition to numerous others. Stoneyfield, of course, produces yogurt, milk, and ice cream and—by the way—helps to fund Climate Counts.

Even in the food services industry, those perceptions are misleading. Wendy’s International—you know, the hamburger chain—scored highest among fast food chains in customer perceptions at a healthy 65 points. In actual sustainability, Wendy’s came in at 2. Yes. Two points. In the meanwhile, Starbucks pulled a 51-point ranking for their sustainability practices but scored only 48 for public perception. Burger King received 49 points for perceived greenness, but in practice they’re only eight points above Wendy’s, coming in at 10 points.

Read the entire Grist.org article, by Eric Burkett, here.

On the other hand, you could always consume "slow food."

Look for an official announcement sometime today.

Yahoo has something new to yodel about: tweets.

In its latest attempt to make its Web site more compelling, Yahoo Inc. is plugging its services into the rapidly growing craze of posting short messages, or "tweets," on Twitter.

Although Yahoo planned to announce the Twitter partnership Wednesday, most of the new features won't be available until later this year. Among other things, anyone with a Twitter account will be able to tweet and see the updates of people they're tracking while logged into Yahoo's Web site.

One change occurred Tuesday, when Yahoo started to show a wider range of Twitter updates in its search results — something that Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. began doing late last year.

Like its rivals, Yahoo is paying privately held Twitter an undisclosed amount of money for better access to its data.

Yahoo previously had been using Twitter's free tools to find tweets that pointed to the latest news about hot topics.

Unlike Google and Microsoft, Yahoo plans to turn its Web site into a tweeting perch. This follows Yahoo's recent commitment to tether its Web site to Facebook, which is even more widely used than Twitter.

Read more from Yahoo!News.

For those of you still resisting Twitter:

In case you're curious, The Mecklenburg Times is reporting adult clubs are faring just fine in the Great Recession.

It started with a little dive bar on South Boulevard.

David Baucom, then working for the City of Charlotte supervising tree maintenance crews, bought the neighborhood watering hole near Dilworth in the early 1980s. Over the years, he experimented with different themes: For a while it was a biker bar. Next, he jumped on the country music bandwagon. Then he turned it into a rock club, packing in the big-hair, Spandex-clad crowd.

In 1987, he decided to go in another direction, this one involving scantily clad women dancing on stage for money. He called it Leather and Lace.

“Things just clicked,” said Baucom, who quit his job with the city to focus full-time on the strip club, doing everything from serving drinks to working the door. His wife, Jackie, worked as a waitress and dancer.

Today, Baucom owns a dozen adult nightclubs in the region — including Baby Dolls, The Gold Club and six others in Charlotte — and a club in Panama City, Panama.

While most Charlotte boosters may not acknowledge it, these types of establishments — there are about 20 in Charlotte — play a vital role in the local economy, employing hundreds and helping infuse the area with cash, even if it is mostly in $1 denominations.

According to Angelina Spencer, the U.S. has close to 4,000 strip clubs with an economic impact of $15 billion annually. Spencer, herself a former dancer and club owner, is managing director of the Association of Club Executives (ACE), a Washington, D.C.-based industry trade group with more than 1,400 members.

Read the rest of this article, by Sam Boykin, here.

Um ... who goes to The Gold Club to eat? Wait. Don't answer that. From April 2008:

One of the things that scares me about our country building new nuclear energy plants to solve our energy woes is this: We're out of practice. The last plant completed in the U.S. went online 14 years ago, in 1996.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, "Despite all of this relatively attractive news regarding nuclear power, there has been no new order for a nuclear power plant since the 1970s. The last nuclear plant to be completed went on line in 1996. A few, perhaps four, construction licenses are still valid or are being renewed for half-completed reactors, but there are no active plans to finish these reactors."

Though, keep in mind, it's not like we're not already living with — and using — nuclear energy. Almost a third of the nuclear plants in the country are in the Carolinas. Five of the country's 43 licensed nuclear reactors are in North Carolina, seven are in South Carolina. There are two near Charlotte alone. (Around these parts, nuclear energy equals jobs which, in turn, equals tax revenue.)

In fact, on any day but Sunday, you can hang out at Duke Energy's EnergyExplorium and gawk at the McGuire nuclear plant, which is on the same campus, on Lake Norman's south shore. Hell, in the 1950s, people used to go to Nevada and watch nuclear bomb tests on vacation.

When the bottomline's on the line, you can always make your staff work harder for less — or fire them. Right Duke Energy? Hey, whatever makes the shareholder's happy ... isn't that the corporate mantra?

Duke Energy Corp. reports fourth-quarter net income of $348 million, or 26 cents per diluted share, performing better than analysts had projected.

The company called it a strong quarter despite the recession, which has cut the use of electrical power during the past year.

“When we were able to beat the fourth quarter of last year, when we are were able to beat our … earnings target of $1.20 by 2 cents, I was really pleased with our performance,” says Chief Executive Jim Rogers.

He says the company reduced its operating costs by more than the $150 million target Duke executives had set. And Duke hit some of the best operational marks in its history, even though pay increases were frozen.

“So I think our people really worked hard and pulled together,” Rogers says. “When our demand was so much less than what we had forecast, I think in some ways it was heroic to hit those numbers.”

Revenue for the fourth quarter dropped to $3.11 billion from $3.13 billion a year earlier. Still, net income exceeded the $330 million Duke made in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Fourth-quarter earnings per share equaled the 26 cents from a year ago. And the results were better than the average of 25 cents per diluted share forecast by analysts.

Read the rest of this Charlotte Business Journal article, by John Downey, here.

While watching the Audi ad during the Superbowl, I got a laugh out of my friends by saying, "Oooo. Oooo. I wanna be part of the green police!" (My excitement waned once I realized it was a car commercial. Boo.)

Missed the commercial? Here it is:

No big deal, though; the game went on, the baby commercials kept us rolling and the Saints won. I kinda forgot about the green police commercial until I saw this OpEd in Grist (below).

At first blush this seems like more teabagging—appealing to angry white men with the same old stereotype of environmentalists as meddling do-gooders obsessed with picayune behavioral sins. If you check in the comments under the video, that perspective is well represented. Says Metallicafan6611, “You guys all laugh. But this is really going to happen. Wake up people!? Stop being sheep!” Enviros are predictably steamed (see, e.g., Adam Siegel).

The more I’ve thought about it, though, the more the teabaggy interpretation just doesn’t quite fit. The thrill at the end, when the guy gets to accelerate away from the crowd, turns on satisfying the green police — not rejecting or circumventing them, but satisfying their strict standards. The authority of the green police is taken for granted, never questioned. If you’re looking to appeal to mooks who think the green police are full of it and have no authority, moral or otherwise, why would you make a commercial like that? Why offer escape from a moral dilemma your audience doesn’t acknowledge exists?

Anyway, not to overthink it (ahem), but the ad is not just another pot shot at greens. It’s an appeal to a new and growing demographic that isn’t hard-core environmentalist — and doesn’t particularly like hard-core environmentalists — but that basically wants to do the right thing. Audi’s effort to reach them, however clumsy, is actually a bit ahead of the curve.

Read the entire Grist.org post here.

Is the author, David Roberts, overthinking? Perhaps. You'd have to ask him. (Or read on, he suggests he's over-thinking the topic himself.)

I get where Roberts is going, though. I hear my paranoid, deep-South friends and family worrying about big government. I've received similar hate mail. I've spent large amount of times talking to those I love about the many benefits of making a green-ish effort (i.e. save money on your energy bill, reduce our country's reliance on foreign oil, encourage green-job growth, etc.).

Over time, I'm happy to report, I've noticed small changes. My grandparents, for instance, installed triple-pane windows. "It was cold in here," my grandma said. Yeah, it was — that's because cold air was pouring through her inefficient windows and her thermostat, set at 80, couldn't keep up.

My parents' house is full of energy-efficient lighting and they haul their recyclables to town. My husband no longer rolls his eyes when I buy locally grown groceries or extract a discarded milk jug out of the trash. He's also excited about the very green, American-made car we're about to purchase.

Listen, no one's perfect. I don't expect anyone to be all-green all the time. (I don't even set that standard for myself.) Small changes are, after all, still changes. When they're aimed in the right direction, all's well.

Like the author of the Grist post, I get that the Audi commercial was playing to those who want to do something to contribute to the green economy (i.e. by voting for a fuel efficient vehicle with their hard-earned dollars) but they don't want to glue a placard to their chest announcing their love of the environment and the green movement. Really, I get it. That's cool.

I figure if we all make an effort — no matter how large or small — that's a helluva lot better than not making any effort at all. I mean, do we really want to continue wasting money on inefficiency and foreign energy? That's not very American. Of course, neither is Audi.

ReVenture Park, part of the proposed Catawba River District, is hustling to get their biomass project shovel-ready in order to qualify for federal Stimulus funding. In order to reach their goal, they've got to enlist a little help from the suits in our government centers.

Forsite Development Inc. hopes to get started on a $300 million biomass plant at its proposed ReVenture Park by year end to qualify for $60 million in federal tax credits.

Forsite President Tom McKittrick said in a recent interview it will be a “mad dash to the finish line” to get started by then. “We think it’s doable, but we have significant miles to go.”

McKittrick made a presentation to county officials on progress at the renewable energy park Tuesday afternoon. He says the park as now projected would involve $922 million in investment and create 1,034 permanent jobs. That does not include the 800 construction jobs that would be created for the actual development of the various projects in the 667-acre park.

To reach that level of investment, the park would need other companies and government agencies to come in and develop targeted projects. They would include a $250 million wastewater treatment plant, a large-scale energy manufacturer and a biofeuls company.

It is part of his effort to drum up support with local officials even as his group lobbies the state’s Congressional delegation for federal support.

He said the county currently pays $21 a ton to dispose of 250 tons of garbage every day. Much of that garbage could be the fuel for the biomass plant.

Read the rest of this Charlotte Business Journal article, by John Downey and Susan Stabley, here.

From our friends at ProPublica.org:

As the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the White House are trying to minimize their differences, a brewing battle at OSHA over a workplace injury reporting rule illustrates how tough that could become given the administration's pro-labor leanings.

While bureaucratic clashes over subtle rule changes like this one are usually waged outside the public's view, they can have big ramifications for business and workers.

At issue is a regulation that would force employers to identify when a workplace-related injury or illness is considered a musculoskeletal disorder (MSD), a term broadly used to describe ailments caused by repetitive stress, like carpal tunnel syndrome or strains from frequent heavy lifting.

Figures gathered by the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that MSD-related problems accounted for nearly a third of the 1.1 million workplace injuries and illnesses in the private sector that led to days off work in 2008.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration wants to include an additional column on the federal surveys employers are required to fill out, to identify when a worker's injury is musculoskeletal in nature. Currently, these injuries are recorded in the same category as problems like hearing loss, making it difficult for OSHA to collect accurate data. Union representatives and OSHA officials say the data could help the agency find opportunities to reduce injuries.

But business representatives, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, say the move is the Obama administration's first step toward developing sweeping regulation of ergonomic safety, which could cost employers millions.

The spat harks back to the final days of former President Bill Clinton's administration, when, on Nov. 13, 2000, OSHA released more than 1,600 pages of ergonomic rules that took three years to draft.

The rules covered everything from the amount of time a construction worker could spend using a jackhammer to requiring breaks for people using a computer mouse.

The Chamber and other representatives of large employers persuaded Republicans in Congress to pass riders on appropriations bills that would delay the rule's release.

When the rules were finally issued a week before Clinton left office, employer trade groups responded by persuading the Republican-controlled Congress to shoot them down with the never-before-used Congressional Review Act. ProPublica included this anecdote in its "midnight regulations" coverage.

Now the same groups are worried that with Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, Obama might try to introduce similar rules.

"Attempts to put this recordkeeping requirement in place represent the first efforts to return to the ergonomics question," said Marc Freedman, the Chamber's director of labor law policy. "We will be very involved in this rulemaking as it goes forward. We have a history with this issue."

The Chamber held a closed-door meeting on Jan. 25 to discuss how to approach the new proposal. Freedman wouldn't reveal who attended the meeting or discuss the Chamber's plans. He said the only reason people outside the Chamber's membership even knew about the meeting is because he accidentally e-mailed an invitation to someone who shouldn't have been on the list.

The change proposed by the Obama administration is far narrower than the rules Clinton proposed at the end of his term. This one would merely provide OSHA, the public, and employers with a more accurate count of how many MSD injuries are actually occurring, OSHA officials say.

"The industry is just looking for a fight," argued Peg Seminario, director of safety and health for the AFL-CIO. "As soon as Obama was elected, it was clear that immediately there would be a war on ergonomics. This gives you a sense of how rabid they are that they don't even want these injuries identified."

Freedman countered that the Chamber is concerned about how musculoskeletal disorders will be defined and how OSHA will determine whether these injuries actually occurred inside the workplace.

"In the previous regulation, the definition of musculoskeletal was very broad," Freedman said. "That's definitely one of the reasons why the regulation was considered so offensive."

Jordan Barab, OSHA's deputy assistant secretary of labor, told ProPublica that OSHA will use a definition similar to one the Bureau of Labor Statistics has used for years to record these injuries. But the proposed OSHA definition will also include three problems that aren't on the Bureau of Labor Statistics' list -- Raynaud's phenomenon, tarsal tunnel syndrome and herniated spinal discs that aren't caused by slips, trips and falls.

The Chamber doesn't have an alternative definition in mind. Freedman said that's not the Chamber's job.

OSHA has consistently stated that workplace injuries and death are steadily declining. But in 2008, ProPublica reported that the decline is not so dramatic if incidents involving violent crime or transportation, which are actually overseen by other agencies, are removed.

This story was co-published with Politico.

If you haven't been to the U.S. National Whitewater Center yet, you should go and find out what all the fuss is about. Don't want to kayak or raft? Don't. Watch those who do. Check out the trails where you can walk or bike. Enjoy a meal. In the summer, there's plenty of live music. Go once and you'll be hooked. With their new rate plans, a day at Whitewater is more affordable than ever.

The bad news: The center opened just in time for an economic collapse, which has made it difficult for its administrators to pay its debts. While it hurts to find out the center needs a bailout, it's no surprise. As any business owner can tell you, it takes years to turn a profit. When a business starts with tens of millions of dollars in debt, that profit slope is all the more difficult to climb.

The bottom line: The U.S. National Whitewater Center may be struggling now, but this is one attraction the Q.C. will be proud of for decades to come.

The U.S National Whitewater Center announced Monday that lenders have forgiven roughly two-thirds of its $38 million debt, a move that the center's director said would position the center for long-term financial success.

Since its opening in 2006, the nonprofit center has been able to turn a small operating profit - but hasn't come close to making a dent in its construction debt.

That has prompted local governments in Mecklenburg and Gaston counties to pay the center $1.7 million annually, as required by the original agreement that helped build the center in northwest Mecklenburg.

The center has been in default on its loans. It has paid no principal and very little interest.

After the bailout, the center will still owe its lenders $12.4 million. Executive Director Jeff Wise said that debt will be paid off in five years ...

Read the rest of this Charlotte Observer article, by Steve Harrison, here.

Frustrated by the bailout? I get it. Why don't you go work off some of that excess energy on the water?

Ever wondered who pays their taxes and who doesn't? It's not hard to find out since that information belongs to the public and the county publishes a list of tardy tax payers (due in March or April). You might be surprised, however, to find out how much money is owed and what has, and hasn't, been done to correct the situation. (Mostly what hasn't.)

Thousands of property owners in Mecklenburg County owe a total of more than $70 million in unpaid taxes, according to a Charlotte Business Journal review of delinquent bills.

That’s more than this year’s combined budgets for the county’s library system ($31.8 million) and its parks and recreation department ($37.4 million).

As of Feb. 1, there are 38,323 unpaid tax bills, or about one out of 10. The number of county tax notices each year typically totals about 371,500. With interest, the delinquent bills add up to $70,616,298.59.

County taxes on land, buildings and equipment were due Sept. 1, but many property owners hold off paying until the first week of January, which is when interest is applied.

Many on the delinquent list are developers, commercial property owners and home builders with unsold lots. Scores of other unpaid bills are for projects that have fallen into foreclosure or bankruptcy, such as Tim Crawford’s South End Silos, the failed 210 Trade condo project uptown and scattered Crescent Resources sites.

Read the rest of this Charlotte Business Journal article, by Susan Stabley, and get the low down on the most outrageous delinquent bills here.