News Service

Viridus News is a service that aggregates news stories at the intersection of business and sustainability (we strip out most non-business green news just the same as business news that isn't related to sustainability).  The goal is to simplify busy daily lives by collecting all of the day’s most relevant, and most interesting green business news and articles on a single page.

Any user can submit a story and users collectively rate the value and hence the popularity of submissions. Of course users can comment as well. In addition to user submissions, Viridus News aggregates stories from a variety of sources (over 100 so far) filtered for stories that focus on green business, so you are certain not to miss important stories.  No more do you have to hunt around looking for stories or tracking RSS feeds full of irrelevant news.

Categories

Viridus News also allows submitted stories to be placed in categories. The categories roughly mirror job functions or interest areas and the benefit of using them is that readers can filter news stories for items of particular interest. For example, a marketing manager might be especially interested in our Marketing & Communication category. And, of course, every category has both "recent" and "popular" views as well as category-specific RSS feeds (located at the bottom of each page).

Search & Favorites

The Viridus News search feature allows users to quickly and easily find green business news stories with a free text search query. No longer will users have to sort through irrelevant Google search results.

With Viridus News search users are querying green business news stories only. Also, users can easily find all of the stories they have voted on (as well as all comments) by clicking on their username in the top right of any page. Users can also see other users comments and submissions by clicking on their username.

RSS Feeds & Email Subscriptions

You can view Viridus News via standard RSS readers such as Google Reader as as a daily email subscription. Below are the available feeds and subscriptions:

Category	RSS	Email
All - Popular	Feed	Subscribe
All - Recent	Feed	Subscribe
Distribution	Feed	Subscribe
Energy / Utility	Feed	Subscribe
Engineering / Design	Feed	Subscribe
Environment, Health & Safety	Feed	Subscribe
Facilities	Feed	Subscribe
Finance / Trading	Feed	Subscribe
GRC & Legal	Feed	Subscribe
Government & Policy	Feed	Subscribe
Human Resources	Feed	Subscribe
Information Technology	Feed	Subscribe
Jobs	Feed	Subscribe
Manufacturing	Feed	Subscribe
Marketing & Communications	Feed	Subscribe
Procurement	Feed	Subscribe
Sales	Feed	Subscribe
Sustainability & CSR	Feed	Subscribe
Transportation	Feed	Subscribe
Waste Management	Feed	Subscribe

All of the feeds (except "All - Recent") are well filtered and are focused on the day's top stories in that category. The "All - Recent" category is for those not faint of heart (it is the raw feed of all stories before the audience votes).

Bookmarklet

A bookmarklet is a special kind of bookmark (that contains a piece of computer code) which allows you to easily submit stories to Viridus News. If you are reading a news story and want to submit, you simply click on the bookmarklet which takes you to the submit form on Viridus News and it pre-populates the story URL and title (most of the time). To install a bookmarklet, drag the link below to your bookmarks bar:

Post to Viridus News

Note: If you use Internet Explorer, you may find that you cannot add bookmarklets by dragging them. Just follow these steps to work around this problem.

1. Make sure your “Links” toolbar is visible, by checking View » Toolbars » Links.
2. Right-click a bookmarklet link, then click Add to Favorites.
3. Click OK if you receive a security alert. This is safe because you know that the bookmarklet is being added and what it is for.
4. Click the “Create In »” button and select the “Links”or “Favorites Bar” folder, and then click OK.

In Internet Explorer 7, you may need to disable the built-in pop-up blocker, or you’ll have to allow the bookmarklet to run each time you use it.

Guidelines for Submission

You should submit any story that deals with business and sustainability (note the "and"). That includes stories dealing with (in no particular order):

1. Greenhouse gas
2. Energy and emissions
3. Green supply chain
4. Waste management
5. Government and policy (as it pertains to green business)
6. Sustainability
7. CSR
8. Building efficiency
9. Green product design
10. EH&S
11. Green transportation

If it is the kind of story that you would likely see on GreenBiz, EnvironmentalLeader, Sustainable Life Media, then it's pretty likely to be appropriate on Viridus News.

What types of stories are unacceptable and will be deleted? Generally speaking if it isn't relevant to both business and sustainability it is likely to be deleted. Be careful with "green living" and other sustainable lifestyle stories that are common on many websites and blogs but are not directly relevant to the business world.

You can find more FAQs about Viridus News here.

Lastly, don't take it personally if your submission is downmoded or deleted. Our goal is to ensure Viridus News is valuable to our readers and communities often have their own personalities.