Green business

CNN SPECIAL

CNN will go beyond the hype of becoming a green business to investigate what is driving and motivating these leaders making their products, and their services more environmentally friendly.

Going Green: Green Light For Business is dedicated to how companies around the world are facing environmental challenges and what motivates them to join the green movement. The special premieres on July 9 at 7:30pm on TrueVisions D52.

Coinciding with the G8 Conference in Italy, where climate change will be among the important issues under discussion, CNN will offer a week of coverage from the US, Europe, Asia and Latin America.

The coverage will culminate with a half-hour special, Going Green: Green Light For Business, which premieres on July 9 at 7:30pm and reruns on July 10 at 12:30am; July 11 at 2pm; and July 12 at 12:30am, 10am, 2:30pm and 11pm on CNN.

Anchored from Hong Kong, California and London, the programme will bring viewers complete reports from across the globe to reveal how environmentally friendly initiatives affect the bottom line as well as the added benefits of going green.

The programme features a profile and interview with leaders who are bringing changes to their industries, including SunTech CEO Zhengrong Shi, Vesta's CEO Ditlev Engel, PriceWaterhouseCooper CEO Samuel DiPiazza and Unilever CEO Paul Polman.

From the US, CNN unveils green plans from big names like Google, and Warner Brothers to discover how serious their claims are. Google, with its goal to become completely "carbon neutral", reports that it is fully running on recycled water and uses recycled materials for its servers.

And similarly, Warner Brothers, the notorious movie powerhouse, is becoming more eco-friendly, with a 72-kilowatt solar panel. So how is it all working for them? Are they setting a standard that other companies will want to follow?

Across the Atlantic, CNN unveils an innovative plan that promises to help Parisians live in a more eco-friendly way - with 200 miles in bike paths, a carbon neutral hotel, a green restaurant, and a mayor who is trying to make it all happen.

In the UK, CNN explores the technology of green cars as Warwick University develops a new generation car that it hopes to put into action on a racetrack in the near future. The new car takes advantage of waste materials and has bits of vegetable scattered throughout its bodywork and can reach speeds of 140 mph.

CNN will then follow the green footprints to Sweden, where the first passive houses capture the heat from bodies and appliances to cut down on the use of fossil fuels. Hans Eek, one of the architects of this system, will explain how houses stay warm during the harsh Swedish winters.

CNN's team will also visit Vaxjo. A town of 80,000, it is determined to become completely fossil-free by 2050. With a bio-mass plant that generates 90 percent of the city's heating and hot water, experts from all over the world are travelling to learn from this smart Swedish city.

And in Argentina, CNN explores the country's burgeoning fashion industry - where young designers are making innovative and eco-friendly creations, like solar-panelled jackets that power iPods, backpacks made from recycled highway billboards, and wallets fashioned from used parachutes.