Glossary of Common Sustainability Terms (The F’s)

GreenBusinessOwner.com’s green glossary is an ever-growing list of constantly updated key sustainable business terms for sustainability professionals (so don’t mind the date and time stamp above).

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Fair Trade – a term used to describe products that provide a living wage to workers. Jewelry and agricultural products are the most prevalent Fair Trade items in the world.

Feed-in Tariff – a program that allows people and companies that produce more electricity than they need (typically with solar installations) to sell that power back to the grid so that their neighbors can use it. The utility benefits in that it gets to purchase power at one house and sell it, effectively, at the next door neighbor’s house, and the person/company benefits by being incentivized to be very energy efficient and make extra money when they produce more than they use.

Fossil fuel – a general term to describe fuel such as coal, oil, and natural gas that was once living matter but has been decomposed over millenia and subject to geologic pressures that have fundamentally changed their composition.

Footprint – the area taken up by a building…a useful term for urban planning.

Fuel cell – a clean technology wherein hydrogen produces power. The byproducts of hydrogen combustion in a fuel cell are oxygen and water. Finding a source of hydrogen is the challenge which has kept fuel cells in the background as a technological wonder with little practical application….so far.