Green Career Trends: Dow Makes Solar Roof Shingles, Lipton Tea Factory Now Zero-Landfill Waste, Largest Wind Farm in Texas

Dow Chemical has turned the ordinary asphalt shingle, commonly used on home roofs, into an electricity generating solar shingle.  Working with Global Solar and a grant from the Department of Energy, Dow has created thin film or CIGS shingles that can be palletized, walked on, and installed using nails by a roofing contractor.  An electrician is needed to install an inverter and to connect it to a homes power system, but costs of installation are expected to be lower than using current solar panels. (Dow has job openings.)

Lipton Tea (owned by Unilever) has joined Subaru of Indiana in claiming zero-landfill waste from its manufacturing plant.  Using recycling, composting and reusing a portion of the waste to generate electricity, Lipton has eliminated waste formerly headed to a landfill.  They have diverted some waste into energy to generate steam and electricity that is sold to the grid.

Covering 100,000 acres, the world's largest wind farm is now operational near the west Texas city of Roscoe.  Containing 627 wind turbines built by companies like GE, Siemens and Mitsubishi, the farm has the capacity to generate 781.5 megawatts of power, enough to power 230,000 homes.  Most of the turbines are on leased land from dry land cotton farmers who will continue growing their crops.