Sustainable breweries; Wastewater into fertilizer; Google working on making clean energy as cheap as coal; PICC plug-in Prius can now go 70 mph on battery power alone; Solar-powered plane.

Breweries Push Sustainability. By using renewable energy, sustainable ingredients, and increasing their energy efficiency, Full Sail Brewing has been named one of the Top 100 green companies in Oregon. They used reclaimed and recycled building materials in its location at the old Diamond Fruit cannery and use energy-efficient lighting and air compressors. They have also adopted a four-day work week to reduce water and energy consumption by 20 percent.

Oregon Wastewater Treatment Plant to recycle nutrients into ‘Green’ fertilizer. Recovering phosphorus and other nutrients from wastewater and recycling them into environmentally-safe commercial fertilizer is a pretty cool idea. Their technology integrates directly into the treatment system, which then processes sludge liquids and recovers phosphorus and other nutrients that is turned into “green” fertilizer.

Google working on making clean energy as cheap as coal. We all know Google tries to do the right thing, and here they go again – they want to make renewable, clean energy that is just as cheap as coal is now. The company is investing in solar thermal technology, while also researching geothermal and wind energy technologies. Go Google Go!

PICC plug-in Prius can now go 70 mph on battery power alone. For those of you who own a Prius but want to convert it to a plug-in hybrid, this is great news. PICC, a company that does these conversions, has announced that due to some software tweaks, the Prius’ are now capable of running at 70 MPG on battery power alone.

Solar-powered airplane. OK, not really – but part of it is solar-powered. The solar panels on this plane will produce enough power to enable the pilot to carry out his pre-flight checks. It is supposed to save fuel because the plane doesn’t have to be running to do the checks now. Interesting idea.