Business Idea of the Day

Bill Stevenson believes he has found a winner. In late March, Stevenson, 62, was awarded a U.S. utility patent for his SuperStake product, a stake-and-base support system to allow people to securely grow items such as tomato plants in planters, The News Journal reports. A good idea only comes along once or twice in a lifetime,” Stevenson said in a recent interview

According to the Gazette-Times , Kaichang Li, a professor of wood science at Oregon State University, receives a dozen calls each day from businesses interested in his laboratory’s latest invention: an inexpensive adhesive made of natural materials. He said they’re interested in the adhesive’s use of simple, reusable ingredients, including vegetable oil, which keeps costs down. “If I gave you the recipe, you could cook it in your kitchen at home,” Li said

In a matter of weeks, Stanford University graduate students have built an electric car they hope will make daily travel more environmentally friendly, efficient, and fun. The WENG—” W here E veryone N eeds to G o”—is built for short-range, low-speed drives and may soon be the cool new way to cruise the neighborhood—and possibly the antidote to the fully enclosed automobile. via HolyKaw From Business Opportunities Weblog .

Known by friends as “The Slug Man,” Callum Davis is on a quest to help you in the garden according to Guardian.co.uk . Davis is still a month shy of his 20th birthday but his company, EcoCharlie, employs five full-time staff and is set to turn over £150,000 this year in sales of a fast-expanding range of “natural” garden products, including a garden watering system – which can be used with most mineral water bottles – sold through Oxfam. The aim is simple, he says: “To manufacture products which are natural, ethical, recycled, eco-friendly, sustainable or support a good cause.” As gardening enthusiasts turn their attention to the Chelsea Flower Show next week, many will doubtless do so dreaming of new, green-fingered careers. Davis is one of a wave of British entrepreneurs who are achieving commercial success after developing innovative, niche gardening products – often to meet consumer demand for environmentally friendly and ethically produced items not available from mainstream manufacturers

StarTribune.com : As a Target executive, Joseph Mudd helped small companies pursue business opportunities with the giant retailer. That experience triggered an “entrepreneurial itch” that inspired Mudd to start his own company, which he launched in 2008 after 13 years at Target.

Trendspotter Springwise reports that the average person uses between 2,400 and 3,000 paper towels each year just at work, so it’s no real surprise that more than 3,000 tons of paper towel waste are produced every day in the U.S. alone. Hoping to tame that mountain of methane-producing trash, PeopleTowels has developed a very simple solution: personal hand towels that can be reused again and again. The Japanese (amongst others) have been using personal hand towels for decades, and now California-based PeopleTowels hopes to spread the habit worldwide. In November it launched its pocket-sized, quick-drying hand towels made from 100 percent organic Fair Trade cotton

When it comes to sharing a special moment with friends and family or just letting someone know you care, nothing will ever replace the traditional greeting card. Unless, of course, you replace it with one that is earth-friendly. Launched by husband and wife team, Tom and Rene’ Bross, My Good Greetings has given them the opportunity to leave the corporate world behind. They are also able to offer a variety of products that will help their customers celebrate all of the great moments in their life, in an eco-friendly way

The billboard systems provide a new unique outdoor advertising format to reach audiences in any coastal location or waterfront event. “It’s the only product of its size and kind that works. It’s never missed since you have no visual competition out on the water” says Peter Fleck of Sliders Inc. Mitsubishi, McDonald’s, Disney, and Red Bull are just a few advertisers who have recently utilized bbi Display systems on the water

As the era for electric transportation begins, Mahi Reddy hopes to fill in a big piece of the electric car puzzle, reports The Washington Post . Sure, homeowners can run a cord from an outlet to the environmentally friendly vehicle, but what if you don’t have a garage? What if you live in an apartment and the landlord is not willing to pay larger electricity bills, as residents start clamoring for parking spaces near the power outlet? That’s where Reddy’s new company, SemaConnect, comes in, with a meter designed to measure the amount of juice cars take to power up

But trash cans are supposed to be dirty. That’s what entrepreneur Warren Bishop hears nearly every time he explains how his fledgling, Point Loma-based trash-can-cleaning company turns filthy, germ-filled waste bins on wheels into sanitized receptacles, according to a story in the San Diego Union-Tribune. Why bother? “Flies lay eggs in there on food and animal feces, then they go into your house and land on your utensils and food