For months, we watched the renovations and wondered what the heck they were turning that building a few doors down from the Bronx bar into. A Whole Foods, someone said. A bike shop, the construction worker lounging outside the building two summers ago told me confidently. Finally, we divined a name from the sign posted on the door facing the newly landscaped alley telling UPS how to handle deliveries: the Green Garage. “Oh yeah,” my boyfriend told me. “I heard it’s gonna be, like, a hippie mechanic joint.”

It turns out the Green Garage is not a boutique grocery store, bike shop, or a counter-culture mechanic—it’s workshop and office space available for rental by those who are developing cleantech business ideas.

“We want to work with businesses on their true development,” says Peggy Brennan, who, with her husband Tom, purchased the space and led a group of 200 volunteers in its design and development. “We’re looking for the core of what makes a business unique, viable, and good for the environment and economy.”

Acknowledging that most young businesses suffer from a lack of resources, connections, and funding, the Green Garage hopes to serve as a starting point, providing guidance with business plans, funding sources, and community connections. Once the businesses are established, the idea is that they will move out of the garage and into the Detroit business environment. The Green Garage also has a library dedicated to urban sustainability that’s available to the public for check out, and Brennan says anyone interested in urban sustainability can walk in and ask for help.

“Above all, we’re looking for people who want to work with others rather than in isolation, and that have a willingness to do what it takes to work in a green environment,” Brennan adds.

And what an impressive environment Green Garage is. The first thing one notices upon walking in is the … Next Page »

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As crafty parents know, turning chores into games can motivate hard work. New York’s Recyclebank uses a similar approach with its incentive program to encourage recycling.

Working with community and school organizations, as well as with individual members, Recyclebank offers rewards points to those who recycle empty bottles, cereal boxes, pet food cans, sandwich bags, and the like. The rewards points, as with other types of incentive programs, can be exchanged for discounts on products and services from retailers and restaurants. In the never-ending cycle of manufacturing and consumption, Recyclebank believes its incentives can help stem the tide of waste. “We need to find ongoing solutions to live in balance with the resources that are available on this planet,” says CEO Jonathan Hsu.

Offering incentives for good “green behavior” seems to be catching on. The seven-year-old company is growing rapidly, Hsu says, with more than 2.6 million members in its program, up three times from a year ago. “We are deployed in 300 communities in the US and the UK,” he says.

Hsu took the reins at the company last October after serving as CEO of digital marketing company 24/7 Real Media in New York. One of his goals has been to expand Recyclebank’s services. In May Recyclebank acquired GreenYour, a Web-based guide that offers tips on living green. According to a June regulatory filing, RecycleRewards, of which Recyclebank is a subsidiary, secured $2.1 million in equity. Since its inception Recyclebank has raised … Next Page »

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Yesterday we published Part 1 of a Q&A with Danny Kennedy, the former Greenpeace activist and administrator who founded Oakland, CA-based Sungevity in 2007. The company’s mission is to make it easier and more affordable for homeowners to reduce their monthly utility bills by installing rooftop photovoltaic panels. The main strategy: computerize as much of the solar installation process as possible. For example, Sungevity has developed Google Earth-like tools that allow it to generate accurate cost estimates without having to send technicians to customers’ homes. Homeowners can apply for low-cost leases online, and the company manages the local permitting and other red tape involved in solar installation behind the scenes.

Sungevity thinks of itself as the “Amazon of solar electricity,” Kennedy says. By that he means the company has designed its systems to accommodate millions of customers while keeping the company’s own overhead low and profits high.

The focus on profits may be new for Kennedy, the former Greenpeace activist, who once led a campaign that helped to bring key solar installation rebates to the state of California. But to him, it’s all just another form of social entrepreneurship. While he’s working hard to make the 90-employee company succeed, he says his bigger goal is to help more homeowners bypass the fossil-fuel-powered electrical grid, make a real dent in carbon emissions, and blunt the impact of global climate change.

“Sometime in the next century or two we will make [the] transition from this dumb experiment from digging up sunlight and burning it to using fresh sunlight,” Kennedy says. “I am trying to usher in that transition faster than the current economy would have it happen.”

In the second part of our conversation, transcribed below, Kennedy and I talked about his history at Greenpeace, his transition to the startup world, how Sungevity stands apart from its competitors, and (for a bit of dessert) what he thinks about Bill McKibben’s latest book Earrth and President Obama’s record so far on energy.

Xconomy: What motivated you to leave Greenpeace and become an energy entrepreneur?

Danny Kennedy: I have been passionate about global warming and climate change for 20 years or more. I felt like we had turned the corner in 2005, where we had finally convinced the majority that there was a problem, and then there was Gore’s Nobel Prize and all these other things. Suddenly we were no longer arguing that there was a problem, but what are the solutions. In my theory of social change, it is actually incumbent on social movements to start demonstrating that there are solutions. Groups like Greenpeace are great at knowing what they are against, but not as good at knowing what they are for.

I had done a bunch of renewable energy campaigning, for Gray Davis’s Renewable Power Authority, and solar bonds in San Francisco, and other things in Europe and Australia and China. But I wanted to get more involved and roll up my sleeves and build a business that was leading by example. Deeds, not words. Then I partnered with these two great entrepreneurs, Andrew Birch [Sungevity's CEO] and Alec Guettel [senior vice president of corporate development]. Andrew is a serial entrepreneur and Alec was an old friend from 20 years ago when he was a student activist.

In 2006 and 2007, as we were coalescing around the plan, our common sense was that the industry was too fixated on the hardware. There were a bunch of geeks engrossed in their gadgets, but the gadgets were commoditizing before the market had matured. The customer is what matters. So we decided to build a business not on the hardware side but downstream, focusing on … Next Page »

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The flailing economy is already hurting consumer electronics sales—and no one thinks things will get better soon. But will a slowdown in purchases of new gizmos and gadgets spur sales of used electronics as people look for bargains? Or will it diminish the supply of previously owned electronics as people hold onto their goods longer? Maybe the supply of used electronics will go up—as belt-tightening consumers take advantage of services that pay them cash for their old gear instead of simply throwing things out. And then, of course, there’s the green movement that encourages recycling.

Second Rotation, whose online service Gazelle offers consumers cash for their used cell phones, laptops, digital cameras, game consoles, and other products (or helps them recycle them properly), sees the demand for previously owned stuff going up, up, and up—or maybe, around, around, and around is a better way to put it. Largely to help it develop and expand Gazelle, the Waltham, MA-based company announced today it has secured $6 million in new funding in a Series B round led by RockPort Capital Partners of Boston and backed by previous investor Venrock Associates, as well as angels Austin Ligon and Henry Vogel.

We last profiled Second Rotation in July, when the two-year-old startup announced it had rebranded its service under the Gazelle name (“Don’t Just Sell It, Gazelle It,” the company extolled). At the time, the iPhone 3G was just coming out. And as iPhone-packing Wade wrote to would-be purchasers: “But what to do with your old, perfectly functional iPhone? You can sell it on eBay, if you want to go through the hassle. Or, starting today, you can just go to Gazelle, which will not only make you an instant cash offer for your device, but will send you a box and a pre-paid shipping label. It’s zero-friction gadget recycling—and if you’re feeling socially conscious, you can even have Gazelle send the check to your favorite charity.”

The new investment, according to a statement from Second Rotation, “validates Gazelle’s effectiveness in providing consumers with an easy, fast and safe way to get cash for their unwanted electronics or support responsible recycling.” The company says that in addition to expanding and enhancing Gazelle, it will use the funds for branding and marketing. I can just see gazelles bounding across Wade’s iPhone now…

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So, you bought a first-generation iPhone last summer, but now you absolutely must have the iPhone 3G. (Hey, I’m with you, man. I already got mine.) But what to do with your old, perfectly functional iPhone? You can sell it on eBay, if you want to go through the hassle. Or, starting today, you can just go to Gazelle, which will not only make you an instant cash offer for your device, but will send you a box and a pre-paid shipping label. It’s zero-friction gadget recycling—and if you’re feeling socially conscious, you can even have Gazelle send the check to your favorite charity.

If that all sounds familiar to you, it might be because Rebecca profiled Gazelle’s parent company, Waltham, MA-based Second Rotation, back in January. The 25-employee startup has been running a beta version of the cash-for-gadgets service at secondrotation.com since last July, and today it has rebranded and relaunched it under the Gazelle name.

The company picked the new moniker because it’s easier to remember than “Second Rotation” and has clearer, more desirable connotations, according to founder and CEO Rousseau Aurelien. “We want consumers to think of Gazelle as easy, elegant, and speedy,” Aurelien told me last week. “The name tested phenomenally well, and we think it will create a pretty strong household brand.”

It didn’t hurt, either, that “gazelle” rhymes with “sell.” The tag line “Don’t Just Sell It, Gazelle It” will be plastered all over the company’s bright-green shipping packages, which Aurelien hopes will become as familiar as Netflix’s red DVD envelopes.

The name isn’t the only thing that’s new about Gazelle. The company has also expanded the catalog of items that it can offer instant bids on, to include virtually any cell phone, laptop, digital camera, MP3 player, GPS unit, camcorder, game console, satellite radio, or hard drive you might own. (The expanded catalog covers 17,000 SKUs, or stock-keeping units, up from 5,000 for the previous site, according to Aurelien.) Navigation has also been overhauled; pictures of each item make it easier to locate the one you want to sell. And if your gadget isn’t in the catalog, the company will customize an offer for you, then add that item to the database, so that the catalog grows as more users participate.

Free shipping has always been part of Second Rotation’s services, but now 80 percent of transactions on Gazelle will now qualify for free packaging as well—in those bright-green boxes. “All you have to do is put your item in the box and leave it outside your door, and the Postal Service will pick it up,” says Aurelien. (You have to wonder whether that will be entirely safe, though, once it becomes common knowledge that bright green Gazelle boxes probably have valuable electronic gadgets inside.)

The company has also built some basic social-networking features into the Gazelle site. If you introduce someone else to Gazelle, you can get a cash reward the first time they sell something. Users can also set up fundraisers, with the checks for old gadgets sent directly to a non-profit organization such as a school or a scout troop.

Greenness has always been part of Second Rotation’s pitch, and that will continue with Gazelle; the argument is that by selling your gadgets, you’re keeping them out of landfills. The company normally resells the devices users send in through eBay or other marketplaces (indeed, its whole business model is built around knowing how much it can get for each item and offering the seller a somewhat lower price), but if it determines that it can’t resell an item for a worthwhile price, it will dispose of it following “responsible recycling” guidelines like those set up by the Electronics TakeBack Coalition.

To go with its new site, Second Rotation has come up with a new label for the whole process. “We are calling it ‘recommerce,’” says Aurelien. “We think it goes beyond recycling and offers a very strong economic model that allows the consumer to get some cash and allows us to take these products and put them to re-use.”

It’s a clever way to position the startup, which raised $4.4 million in venture capital from Cambridge, MA-, New York, NY-, and Palo Alto, CA-based Venrock and a group of angel investors in January. The “recommerce” message not only offers consumers a responsible way to dispose of their unwanted gadgets, but could also ease their potential guilt about wanting to ditch their current gear for the latest, greatest product models.

Indeed, Aurelien says that one of the biggest revelations from the company’s first year of operations was that most of the products people were sending in were less than a year old, like those first-generation iPhones. “There’s a whole category of consumer we are calling the ‘serial upgrader,’” says Aurelien. “They have 24 gadgets in their house, and every month a couple of them become, from their perspective, obsolete. But they aren’t at end-of-life. They’re just at end-of-use.” And with Gazelle, they can bound back into action.

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