However, this was the first ever survey of green goods and services jobs, so we don’t yet have something with which to compare the results. Out of the total 3.1 million jobs categorized as green, the private sector provided the most green employment opportunities. The public sector contributed 860,000 jobs.
It is still hard to define and measure green jobs, as this Washington Post article points out:

In the past, employment in this field has been hard to measure because there’s been no consensus on what constitutes a green job. For its assessment, the Labor Department counted certain jobs in manufacturing, construction, utility and other sectors in which the primary function was to contribute to a green product or service. That includes the manufacture of hybrid vehicles, the production of solar power and construction projects such as weatherization. It did not include, for example, jobs in grocery stores or restaurants that primarily sell organic food.

President Obama has been championing green jobs as a growth area for post recession recovery. These numbers should not be used to tout his policies or refute them as the report does not include any growth figures and does not show how the numbers changed over time.

Among the private sector, manufacturing accounted for the greatest number of green jobs. Construction also contributed significantly with 372,100 jobs and professional, scientific and technical services added 349,000 jobs.
Perhaps not surprisingly, California had 340,000 green jobs in 2010, more than in any other state and the District of Columbia, equalling 2.3 percent of total employment.

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Back to the top 10 green power purchasers, here is the top 10 as calculated by the EPA. Parentheses contain percentage of overall power, and amount of green power used annually:

1. Intel Corp (88%; 2,502,052,000 kWh)
2. Kohl’s Department Stores (100%; 1,524,656,000 kWh)
3. Walmart Stores/California and Texas Facilities (28%; 872,382,088 kWh)
4. Whole Foods Market (106%; 800,257,623 kWh)
5. Johnson & Johnson (52%; 553,565,521 kWh);
6. City of Houston, TX (35%; 438,000,000)
7. Starbucks (52%; 421,921,000 kWh)
8. City of Austin, TX (100%; 406,000,000 kWh)
9. Staples (52%; 341,509,408 kWh)
10. Hilton (94%; 315,000,000 kWh)

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At nearly 14 percent, food waste in the U.S. now represents the single largest component in the municipal solid waste stream. In 2010, this amounted to 34 million tons of food, less than 3 percent of which was recovered or recycled. This staggering amount of food waste is driven not only by individual households, but also restaurants, including those which cater to travelers.

Over the past two years, HMSHost, a subsidiary of Autogrill, has been working with its vendors at Tampa International Airport to reduce the amount of food they discard. Over the past two years, more than 64 tons of day-old prepackaged food—including sandwiches, salads, fruits, cheeses and yogurt—have been donated instead of being thrown away. Feeding America picks up the food on weekdays and delivers it to after-school programs at the YMCA and local Boys and Girls Clubs. On weekends, Pinellas Hope serves the food to the homeless. In a January press release, HMSHost estimated the value of the unsold food to be roughly $12,000 per month.

More than just a great example of humanity and corporate citizenship, donating food, rather than throwing it away, is much better for the environment. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says that when food is disposed of in a landfill, it quickly decomposes and becomes a significant source of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Furthermore, its isolation from natural land deprives it from feeding the soil. Donation also ranks well on the EPA’s Food Waste Recovery Hierarchy (think of it as the six “R’s” for food), coming in second place after source reduction. Though ideal, source reduction above a certain threshold is not always feasible for restaurants due to demand fluctuations.

Since being implemented in Tampa two years ago, 13 other airports have adopted similar programs. According to Perry Kranias, director of food and beverage operations for HMSHost in Tampa, collecting the unsold food “required retraining staff, but not a lot of extra work.”

Uniiverse, which launched earlier this week, bills itself as the “first online platform to take an offline approach for its users.” The service works by its users offering services or activities for others, some for free and other for a fee. The takes a similar idea to that of Craigslist and classifieds and adds the human component. This marks yet another move in the direction of collaborative consumption, a trend that has gained quite a bit of traction lately.

A proliferation of sites offer “collaborative living”, as Uniiverse refers to it. Car and Bike sharing programs have become increasingly popular, especially in denser, urban areas where these modes of transportation supplement public transit and walking. Collaborative consumption helps reduce waste and over consumption, both of which benefit the environment and bottom line. Uniiverse goes one step further by encouraging face-to-face interactions, moving closer to the triple bottom line, or “People, Planet, Profit.”

For more information, see the video below.

Uniiverse – why are we here? from uniiverse on Vimeo.

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