I was planning on making a comparison of how environmentally friendly a factories are compared to how well they hold up in a failing economy, but I can't figure out how to gather the info. I would need a list of factories with some sort of rating of how "green" they are and whether they are making or loosing money or even having to close. I can't find anything like that. SO, now I'm thinking that maybe I should do something different.

I really want to do something that will prove how important it is to be environmentally friendly, but I have to have enough info. I figure that most of the folks in the Castle are pretty environmentally savvy, so I was hoping someone might have an idea of a topic. Preferably something that will be fairly easy to gather information on. Otherwise I might get stuck comparing how many green M&M to how many blue M&Ms in a bag.

I appreciate any ideas and thanks a ton!

Going with the environmentally savy ideas, what about the 'greenest' state for self-produced electricity incentives compared to the percentage of the state's population that is actually producing their own electricity.

The first part is fairly easy to find with google.  I had written a term paper recently concerning the benefits of self-produced solar energy and had sited several states having a variety of incentives ranging from buying surplus energy to grants to convert your house to solar energy.

Because every state will buy surplus energy from individuals, I figure you should be able to interpret a population percentage from the amount of energy the utility companies report as created from outside sources.  This is where the brunt of the research would be.  Most of the utility companies are publicly traded companies and are therefore required to report such things.  You would have to find out what company services what major city(s) and then check out their quarterly/annual reports and compile this information on a state by state basis.

Not as easy as buying a shit load of M&Ms, but much more enlightening for 'going green' on a personal basis.

That could work!! Thank you so, so much. That's exactly the direction I wanted to go in. I'm going to look online right now and see what I can find out. I'll update in a little bit to let you know what i find.

UPDATE ->  OK. I've decided to compare how "green" each state is - there incentives for both businesses and individuals - to the rate of unemployment. Rather than compare to just the rate of unemployment, I will compare "green" incentives to rise or drop in rate of employment over the past eight years or so. If I can find the information I might also compare unemployment to the actual number of businesses that take advantage of green incentives as well as to the number of incentives that exist. I might also add the changes in incentives that have taken place over the years if I can find it. BUT, at least for now I have something to work with, and since my instructor wants us to submit our theme in about. . .40 minutes, that's a good thing!

Thank you again, you saved me!

Goddess willing I will remember to post the information I gather on here for others to learn from, at least my final project.

Best of luck WS...let us know how it goes