Connecting you with designers, engineers and business people who share a common interest in developing smarter, more sustainable products. Be part of the solution!

  • TRIP REPORT: Sustainable Minds @ the IDSA 2008 National Conference, with Autodesk

    by Terry Swack on September 26, 2008

    Left: GREG CANAVERA, SM’s Director of Software Design manning the demo station. Right: DANE WESENBERG, our ASU intern, spreading the word about SM.

    Our first trade show!
    This was a very special event for us in many ways. We announced the big news about our strategic relationship with Autodesk, who made it possible for us to be at the show by providing a demo station in their booth. We are truly honored to have this special relationship with Autodesk, the only design and engineering software company out there actively building tools that enable their customers to design greener buildings and products.

    I wrote in my first post, Part 2: The genesis of Sustainable Minds ― Things happen in threes, about the events that inspired me to start this company. This was one:

    “In November, 2006, while attending the U.S. Green Building Council’s national GreenBuild conference, Autodesk announced its partnership with the USGBC to integrate LEED into their product, Revit® Architecture. I thought it was brilliant to integrate new knowledge with the software tools professionals are already using.”

    That said, it was a profound experience for me to be at the IDSA national conference just shy of two years later, effectively working to accomplish a similar result for people who design and make products.

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    The results: We had great conversations with people from design firms, manufacturing companies and colleges and universities and were gratified to get the feedback that people are excited about, and looking forward to using our software. Watch for our beta release later this quarter!

    Panel session: “Sustaining Sustainable Design: How can we do it?”

    Panelists from left: WILLIAM BULLOCK, professor and chair, Industrial Design Department, University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign; ERIC BENSON, asst. professor of graphic design; University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign; PETER FINE, asst. professor of graphic design, New Mexico State U.; JOHNPAUL KUSZ, associate director, Center for Sustainable Enterprise, IIT; MELANIE WIESENTHAL, design director, Martha Stewart OminiMedia; PHILIP WHITE, asst. professor, Industrial Design Department, Arizona State U. and chair, IDSA Ecodesign Section; DION Zuess, creative director, EcoLingo

    I attended several conference sessions, the most on-topic was this one. An excerpt from the description in the program read:

    “… the notion of sustainable design is finally receiving the attention it deserves. Despite the attention, the movement still lacks universal acceptance, a scientific metric to gauge success and, most importantly, a functioning system of reclamation and capture for it to work as conceived. In order to sustain sustainable design, we must first determine a universally accepted definition of what it is currently and also what it will need to be in the future. We must then ask ourselves, what can professional designers do to help build and sustain this current sustainable design momentum? What are our new challenges as leaders in this burgeoning field? Besides product and graphic designers, will the immensity of sustainability force us to be the champions of better systems design? Are we ready to make a collective effort in tackling this problem? And finally, how do we prepare your current and future designers to be ready for future environmental and societal issues? The panel will address these and other important issues including sustainable design education, assessment strategies and tools, and the need for a sustainable design aesthetic.”

    This was quite an ambitious agenda for a one-hour panel with seven participants! It started with each panelist telling a bit about themselves, and how they acquired the sustainable design knowledge to be doing what they’re doing. This was interesting, as I like hearing people’s stories about the arc of their career. Following this was some structured Q&A, and then the moderator, Eric Benson*, posed the question: “What’s stopping us from designing greener products?”

    The ensuing discussion was indicative of the problem. There’s no common language for, and no agreement on what are the most important problems to be addressing, and then how to take action. Because the panel was made up of graphic and industrial designers, the responses ranged from tactical ideas to broader questions regarding each type of design. One audience member passionately held a mini-discussion on why graphic designers shouldn’t worry about specifying recycled paper, or using less toxic inks – neither of those things will have as much impact as using their design skills to communicate messages about sustainability.

    The simple answer to Eric’s question was actually contained in the session description. For designers and manufacturers to make greener products, they need:

    • sustainable design education,
    • assessment strategies and tools, and
    • a scientific metric to gauge success.

    And that’s why we started Sustainable Minds.

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    *Check out Eric Benson’s site renourish, a resource for the graphic design industry. “At renourish, we're helping to start the conversation on green graphic design by providing definitions, tips, and links to sustainable resources designers can use to make their work a little greener.”
     

  • A letter to the big guys: join us

    by David Laituri on September 26, 2008
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    This is a letter to the big guys: Nike, Dell, Sony, Apple, Microsoft, Motorola and HP, to name a few – the Fortune 100, companies with scale and financial clout; companies who can drive change overnight with a single request. I’ve worked with many of you over the years, I’ve seen first-hand what you can do – and I sure could use your help.

    There are just three of us at Sprout Creation at the moment, but like most start -ups, we’re idealistic, ambitious and full of enthusiasm about leading our category in sustainable product development practices. We want to change the world. Even though we’re small, we use the same factories in Asia as you do. We’ve seen your product samples in their show cases, your parts on their lines and your boxes on their loading dock. We’re always impressed by what can be accomplished with big-company resources like yours with some of these ‘average’ factories in terms of quality, fit and finish. A single project from you can really put a factory on the map, and they know it.

    One of our main criteria for selecting the factories we work with is that they are actively producing products for a company of your size; we benefit considerably from all that you demand of them. Our packaging is printed along side Nintendo Wii packaging, our molder produces enclosures for Apple from time to time and our wood manufacturer has Philips as a client. These factories will do back flips to accommodate your every request – they’ll push smaller projects like ours aside, they’ll invest in new equipment and training, even build whole new facilities for you – anything to keep you, their big customer, happy and ordering from them again and again. It’s amazing, we’ve seen it happen; you have no idea how influential you are.

    Our orders are quite small by comparison, and when we ask for a simple change to a less toxic material, or for the way that something is assembled or for a cleaner version of a paint, we’re usually met with blank stares, are given a polite ‘no problem’ or are ignored completely. Reducing the environmental impact of our product is a constant uphill battle for a company of our size. Our orders are simply not large enough to force the kind of changes that really need to be made. We’ve set huge goals for ourselves to produce the cleanest product on the market and have made some solid progress, but we just can’t get there by ourselves.

    You, however, with your scale and your order sizes, could make huge changes with a single request. You could eliminate the use of VOC solvent-based paints, EPS foam packaging and plastic bags. You could boost the use of post-consumer and recycled content in your packaging, make soy-based printing inks a standard, change they way dissimilar materials are assembled forever and permanently drive down the cost of energy-efficient components. For instance, if each of you decided to reduce your packaging sizes just 5% by switching to pulp paper instead of EPS foam, whole FLEETS of container ships would be idled. If you request it, your factories will go out of their way to accommodate you. The big win for the environment: thousands of smaller companies like ours would also benefit.

    What do you say – care to join us? We could sure use the help!

    Image Credit: David Laituri

  • Green Seal standards keep up with product evolution

    by Linda Chipperfield on September 19, 2008

    As an independent non-profit organization dedicated to safeguarding the environment, Green Seal’s science-based certification standards help to promote the manufacture, purchase, and use of environmentally responsible products and services.

    But products change, taking advantage of market trends, new technology, and consumer demand. An important part of Green Seal’s work is to constantly update and add new ‘GS’ standards to stay current with a constantly changing world. Please visit Green Seal to view all our current environmental standards.

    You might also be interested in some of the standards in development we have recently revised or are working on revising. Consider this a snapshot in time of where sustainability standards were in the latter half of 2008.

    GS-5: Compact Fluorescent Lighting

    Major technological advancements have taken place since our first CFL standard was published in1997. Reduced mercury content, increased performance and recyclability improvements have made CFLs an even better choice for protecting the environment. In order to acknowledge this new technology and include life cycle issues other standards don’t, we are in the process of updating the standard. Although other energy efficient lamp options, such as LED, have also advanced, the standard will focus on criteria only for fluorescent lamps. We anticipate publishing this standard later this fall.

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    GS-16: Reusable Bags

    Since the issuance of GS-16 in January 1994, reusable bags have increased exponentially both in volume and types that are commercially available. To establish leadership in the reusable bag category, additional environmental and social issues not covered by the original standard will be included. The scope of this standard will include single-use plastic bags at grocery stores, retail pharmacies or general retailers, produce bags, lunch bags, bank security or deposit bags, postal bags, dry cleaning bags, garment bags or other single-use plastic bags that can be addressed by a reusable option. This standard is in the final stages of development and will likely be released in the coming month.

    GS-33: Lodging Properties – Provisional Revision

    After reviewing our Green Lodging Program and the progress it has made over the years, Green Seal has decided to propose a provisional revision of GS-33 primarily to enable properties to be certified at three different levels to reflect the range of performance and to encourage continuous improvement toward achieving a high level of sustainability in the industry. The changes being proposed are the inclusion of an entry level of challenging but more readily achievable requirements comprising a subset of the criteria that is selected from the existing standard, and a third, elite level to recognize and reward truly outstanding environmental performance. The second level comprises all the criteria currently in GS-33. We anticipate the final standard will be released next month.

    GS-44: Soaps, Cleansers, and Shower Products

    In the past few years there has been an increasing consumer demand for natural personal care products. To help manufacturers meet this demand Green Seal has recently issued a proposed standard to cover environmentally preferable soaps, cleansers, and shower products. A Green Seal certification would provide clarity on which products are environmental leaders and assist consumers in their purchase decisions. The public recently reviewed Green Seal's proposed standard and Green Seal is currently reviewing comments on the Proposed Standard. The standard will be updated and open for a final review by the Registered Stakeholders with the final standard planned for issuance in late September.

    GS-49: Residential Cleaning Services

    The cleaning industry is a $48.4 billion dollar industry with expected annual growth of 5.3% through 2011. Accompanying the increase in the demand for residential cleaning services is a surge in associated environmental impacts. These environmental impacts mostly result from incorrectly dispensed cleaning products and the absence of simple, low cost practices that reduce dirt. Poor quality indoor air linked with improper residential cleaning practices can produce health effects ranging from headaches and dry eyes to nausea, dizziness, and fatigue. Those at risk from these effects are the workers and inhabitants of the residential facility, particularly vulnerable populations like pregnant women, babies, and children. With these critical needs in mind, Green Seal is proposing a standard for residential cleaning services, with an expected publish date of March of 2009.

  • Finding a sustainability consultant you can trust

    by Eric Brody on September 19, 2008
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    After working in sustainability at two amazing companies (Nike and Nau) for the last decade, I decided it was time to launch a sustainability consulting business. As someone who used to select and hire consultants to assist in projects, I have tried to take those lessons learned to provide excellent service in my own practice. Sustainability may sound easy at first, but when companies start to dive in they realize the ’devil is in the details‘ and that due diligence is where a consultant can really help.

    The challenges come in all shapes and sizes. Examples include quantifying sustainability metrics for products and production in meaningful and relevant ways, tracking and verifying material claims through the supply chain (which, for many companies, means diving much deeper in their supply chain than they ever have before), and communicating corporate initiatives to customers who are becoming more savvy.

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    Now that sustainability is the ‘new black,’ many have entered the field. However, they may not have relevant experience, or they may charge a small fortune for meager results. For example, it is critical to know how to communicate with suppliers of various sizes and cultures, how to roll out programs that will result in buy-in, or how to integrate sustainability into a product without jeopardizing the performance or significantly impacting the costs.

    Here are a few tips to help weed out inexperienced consultants from the valuable experts:

    Know what you want — the more you know about the subject, the more able you will be to ask the right questions, have reasonable expectations, and find credible expertise. Talk to your suppliers to understand what other customers are asking of them. To find out the latest trends, challenges and accomplishments in the industry, speak to companies and organizations, such as BSR and GreenBlue, involved in industry working groups tackling sustainability issues.

    Ask around — talk to people in your networks and ask for recommended consultants. Speak to the same groups mentioned above for recommendations. In the arena of sustainability, companies and individuals are more apt to share information and even help out competitors. For example, if you are looking at green building consultants, the U.S. Green Building Council has a large network of professionals. For packaging consultants, the Sustainable Packaging Coalition is a great way to network with professional at all levels of the supply chain.

    Look for relevant expertise — sustainability means different things to different people and spans such topics as energy, water, construction, packaging, and product design — to name just a few. Make sure the person you work with has relevant industry experience and not just theoretical knowledge. Sustainability is not rocket science (unless you are working to make the space shuttle more sustainable), but it does get complex when you start talking about integrating sustainability into business operations, data management, reporting systems, supply chain, products and logistics. For example, many companies are creating balanced scorecards that integrate sustainability metrics with quality, delivery and cost metrics. Identifying the appropriate items to measure and then how to report it in a way that is meaningful to the decision makers in the business is critical to success.

    Get references — talk to as many people as you can who have worked with the consultant. Ask what types of problems they were engaged to solve, what types of projects, and what the outcomes were. This will be your most valuable source of information for how well the consultant works with teams — and how effectively.

    Start small and test the waters — this is not always possible depending on the timeline and needs of your company, but if you can start on a small project this allows you to see what kind of results you get, and how well you and the consultant work together.

    Finding the right consultant can make a big difference in the success of your sustainability effort. He or she can flatten your learning curve, reduce confusion and costs, and ensure that the entire organization will begin to move toward sustainability seriously — because your project was successful. Feel free to enter your question in the response box below, or share your experiences with consultants.
     

  • “Conservation is not done with the pen…it’s done with an axe.”

    by Scot Herbst on September 15, 2008

    Think about that for a second. It was written in 1949 by the seminal figure in ecological conservation, Aldo Leopold. It’s quite a powerful phrase, the simple articulation that man must consume and build. There is no greater asset than our ability to create. It comes at a great cost, but without question, we’re all beginning to better define the ‘right’ manner for this process of creation.

    At the heart of the issue lies one fundamental truth: less is more. Less material. Less packaging. Less harmful content. Less shipping footprint. Less impact. Less, less, less… How paradoxical is it, then, that the U.S. Census officially predicts nine billion people will inhabit the planet by 2050 – one third more than currently exist. By definition, that’s a lot more stuff. More products. More packaging. More shipping. More consumption, on the grandest of scales.

    At every point, the symbiotic act of creating all of this content will require the skilled designer and engineer: those members of the creation chain endowed with the knowledge and privilege to conceive of, form and specify the manner in which all of this stuff is brought to life. The great ‘axe holders’ of the future.

    A few months ago I was having lunch with perhaps the most powerful of the axe holders, Warren Haug, former Vice President of Research and Development, Proctor & Gamble. I asked the pressing question, ”How does P&G deal with the subject of sustainability?” His answer was brilliant in its simplicity: “The public is on board with green as long as two things happen: one, it doesn’t degrade the product and two, it doesn’t affect the price.”

    That’s it. That’s the world that P&G and most retail and consumer products live in.

    The designers and engineers are then given the mind-bending task of making more attractive goods and making them more cheaply – all while wielding the axe of responsible creation. Sounds daunting, but it’s being done.

    Last year HP asked Lunar to breathe new life into the home computer. “Make it more compelling. Give us something iconic…and help us cut costs!” We did all of this, and built sustainability into the equation by consolidating components and simplifying the product architecture.

    Three weeks ago HP started delivering the Touchsmart PC,  a gorgeous piece that exudes ‘less’ while offering the consumer ‘more.’ We shed the oversized metal box and integrated the CPU and display into a single compact gesture that reduces part-count and shrinks the shipping footprint considerably.

    Most notably, the product reduces material usage by 50% (primarily plastic and steel). It has also successfully helped catalyze a paradigm shift in consumer perception of size and desirability. HP is now defining this emerging category as the Single Volume Product (SVP). SVP is a more dynamic solution to the part and feature consolidation that was originally introduced in the All-In-One computer (i.e., Apple IMac).

    We’re proud of the work we’re doing, and though it’s never easy, responsible creation can happen when sustainable thinking meets creativity that makes a difference.

    Image Credit: © Hewlett-Packard, 2008

  • Are we prepared for the DTV switch? Do we understand the bigger-picture impact?

    by Richard Kubin on September 15, 2008
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    As most people in the United States are aware, February 17th, 2009 marks a landmark event in the history of broadcast media – the switch from analog to digital signal broadcast for ‘free’ television. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) provides the following explanation to the question “Why Is The Government Switching to Digital?”

    • "For improved public safety for everyone. The transition to digital will help police, fire, and other public safety departments to communicate more easily with each other during emergencies.
    • "For you, digital TV offers better picture and sound quality, as well as more channels and programming choices.”

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    Perhaps I am being a little skeptical, but I was not aware of any major breakdown in the communications capabilities of our emergency services – maybe this has been kept a secret to avoid widespread panic. As for the second point, it assumes that you will be replacing old analog TV sets with new digital sets to take advantage of the improvements, or at a minimum, acquiring an additional set-top “converter box.” I suspect that there are some additional reasons for the government mandating the change, which may or may not involve strong industry lobbying groups.

    Don’t get me wrong, I am in favor of improved picture and sound quality, which I am fortunate enough to have already (including 1080p resolution with full surround sound where available) through exorbitant monthly fees from my local cable provider. Extending these improvements to all viewers is a noble cause, provided they can afford the new equipment. To help compensate, the FCC is providing $40 coupons to go towards the price of the converter box ($40-$70 retail) to any household that requests one. However, this just allows you to watch the new digital broadcast through the same old TV set – not really much of an improvement.

    So let’s dig a little deeper into the potential environmental impacts. For those without the disposable income to purchase a digital TV, they will now be required to add a converter box. The joint FCC/EPA fact sheet on DTV and recycling recommends the following: “When buying a digital-to-analog converter box, look for one with the ENERGY STAR label. Converter boxes that are ENERGY STAR-qualified use less energy than conventional converter boxes. If all of the digital-to-analog converter boxes sold in the U.S. met the ENERGY STAR specification, we would save 823 million kilowatt-hours every year.”

    Two observations spring to mind:

    1. If the potential energy savings of ENERGY STAR models is that high, then the overall additional energy requirements for adding these boxes is a multiple of that number.
    2. Why wouldn’t the government require that all converter boxes for sale in the US meet ENERGY STAR ratings?

    So let’s look at the situation for those who will replace their TV sets with new digital versions. On the plus side, the newer LCD sets do use less energy. But what happens to all of the useless analog tube sets? One might expect that the EPA would establish a well organized, efficient and environmentally friendly US-wide recycling scheme to support the transition. From what I can tell, that is not the case. While they do recommend recycling and offer three links for more information (Earth 911, National Recycling Coalition, My Green Electronics), they also provide the following disclaimer: “Identifying resources and locations for electronics recycling does not constitute EPA’s endorsement of the services.”

    When I checked options on Earth 911 for TV recycling options in San Francisco I got a significant number of hits, but at least 20% of them were for Goodwill or Salvation Army. Something tells me that they are not likely to want the burden of dealing with many tons of useless tube TVs. As we know, there are varying degrees of conscientiousness within the e-waste recycling industry – chances are that many will end up in containers sent off to Asia for less than health-friendly recycling.

    Then there are all of the handheld and small battery-powered analog sets that would fit very easily in the garbage can.

    The point I would like to leave you with is that while it may be difficult to plan for forced obsolescence on this scale, it is not as though we didn’t know it was coming. I think that the FCC and EPA could be taking a more proactive role. But then I guess the entities that will benefit most (certain electronics manufacturers, retail stores and cable/satellite companies) provide much of the ad revenue to the networks, which in turn may or may not fund the lobbyists and ‘special interest groups’ in Washington.

  • How product design can promote sustainable consumption

    by Inês Sousa on September 5, 2008

    In my previous post I told you about my work on a new approach based on learning algorithms to performing approximate life cycle assessment during the early stages of product development cycles. Now let’s go beyond ecodesign focusing on technical and engineering variables (e.g. use of life cycle assessment, materials optimization, design for disassembly and recycling) and look into different product design strategies addressing the other side of the equation – sustainable consumption.

    Today’s patterns of consumption are increasingly offsetting the eco-efficiency created by clean production and ecodesign. Given a growing population with increased quality-of-life expectations, achieving sustainable development will require addressing and changing both production and consumption patterns. Indeed, sustainable consumption has been addressed by a number of United Nations and international agencies and governmental and non-governmental organizations. The goals have been to improve understanding of global consumption patterns and their environmental and social impacts, develop policies and programs to change unsustainable consumption patterns, and promote sustainable and equitable consumption for human development.

    If you’re looking for a good introductory overview of thinking and action on issues of sustainable consumption, try Sustainable Consumption: Global Status Report 2002, UNEP, by Chris Ryan, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, and the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics, Lund University, Sweden, produced for the UNEP Division of Technology, Industry and Environment.

    Transforming design approaches, products and services has been part of the thinking and action addressing sustainable consumption. The history of product design has shown us that designed products have played an increasingly important role in shaping users’ awareness, desires and behaviors. How can this role be further leveraged to influence users towards sustainable consumption? Here are some avenues I’ve been looking into:

    Sustainable consumption by participatory ecodesign
    What are appropriate strategies and tools that help design teams create users’ ‘sustainability demand’ and integrate their participation and creativity in the ecodesign process?

    Sustainability is not achievable with today’s consolidated strategies and behaviors. It will require “jumps” to radically new systems of production and consumption and changes in industry, government and society1. Chris Ryan proposes the EcoLab2, “a paradigm creator to help our under-resourced and locked-in industry venture into hitherto unthinkable territory”. I further argue that EcoLab’s eco-innovation in “step-changes” can become more powerful and make more of an impact with “participatory eco-design” – by actively involving users (e.g. domestic consumers, business-to-business buyers and government purchasers) who are normally outside the design process. Inspired by this trend in design, referred to by Anton Andrews and Marco Bevolo (Philips Design) as “co-creative, participatory design”3, I believe that “co-creative, participatory ecodesign” could better capture each user’s needs, values and socio-cultural context, and therefore truly engage them towards creating, promoting and demanding new sustainable systems of production and consumption.

    Sustainable consumption by user interaction
    How can product design drive sustainable consumption through user interaction, by intuitively communicating sustainability values in the way products are used?

    Raising users’ awareness can ultimately influence sustainable behavior and consumption4. There’s an emergent body of research and experimentation looking into using product design to influence sustainability awareness and related consumption behaviors.

    One example I find inspiring focuses on the user’s interaction and the visual representation of consequences of personal energy consumption when using the product. It’s the Power-Aware Cord5, created by the Swedish STATIC! project among other energy awareness new devices. The ‘Power-Aware Cord’ is a re-designed electrical power strip that represents electricity consumption through glowing pulses, flow, and light intensity. Electroluminescent wires are shaped into a transparent electrical cord and produce dynamic patterns of glowing and pulsating colors to indicate the level of energy being used at a given moment. The intent is to inspire consumers to explore and reflect upon the energy consumption of electrical devices in their home. It’s now commercially available in Europe!

    Other favorites by Static! include an Erratic Radio that ‘untunes’ when there are too many appliances in the room consuming energy, and the Flower Lamp that rewards energy behaviors with form changes - the lamp “blooms” when energy consumption has been low for some time: a change in behavior is required “to make the lamp more beautiful”.

    Joana Hipólito from the New University of Lisbon, Portugal, has been experimenting with and developing new concepts and techniques in non-traditional pervasive computing to create interactive products that inspire people to become more environmentally aware and responsible. She’s been working on the Wall Illuminated Light Switcher Tool6 to promote energy conservation behavior in an intuitive way through visual or sonic representations of consumption time or energy quantity. Tracy Bahmra and colleagues from Loughborough University in the UK focused on identifying, evaluating and applying design approaches to reduce ‘undesirable behavior’ in the use of mobile phones. They both presented at the Changing the Change design conference held in July in Torino, Italy. Check out their abstracts.

    For too long we’ve been hearing about the ‘vicious cycle’ that modern societies have created, encouraged by planned obsolescence and resulting in unsustainable consumption patterns. Isn’t it possible that design approaches and products like those I’ve presented, powered by new forms of collaboration and creativity and raising a growing awareness of sustainability, can begin to create a compelling ‘virtuous cycle?’ Or, in fact, that it’s happening already?

    I would love to learn more and hear from those who have been exploring these and other ideas! Please add your comments below.

    References

    1. Ryan, C. (2002). EcoLab, Part I – A Jump toward Sustainability. Journal of Industrial Ecology 5(3): 9-12.
    2. Ryan, C. (2002). EcoLab, Part II – Learning from the Information Technology Revolution. Journal of Industrial Ecology 5(4): 6-9.
    3. Andrews, A. & Bevolo, M. (2004). Understanding Digital Futures. Design Management Review, Winter 2004: 50-57.
    4. Velden, R. V. d. (2003). Using Awareness in Product Design to Influence Sustainable Behaviour, Department of Product Design, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway.
    5. Gustafsson, A. & Gyllenswärd, M. (2005). The Power-Aware Cord: Energy Awareness through Ambient Information Display. Ext. Abstracts CHI 2005, ACM Press, 1423-1426.
    6. Hipólito, J. (2008). Designing Environmental Behavior Sensorial Feedback Tools. Proceedings of Persuasive 2008 – Third International Conference on Persuasive Technology, June 4-6, Oulu – Finland.

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  • Patagonia Footprint Chronicles – step in the right direction or sneaky sleight-of-foot?

    by Lorne Craig on September 5, 2008
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    What happens when a giant of the corporate eco-movement opens some of its processes to full public scrutiny, with a tone that verges on self-flagellation? Depending on your love for the corporation in question, it’s either another reason to love them or a shameless marketing bauble designed to keep your eye off more pressing issues.

    The green giant is Patagonia, and The Footprint Chronicles is their latest underbelly exposé.

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    This interactive mini-site allows you to track the impact of ten specific Patagonia products from design through delivery. A small but varied sampling, including shirts, shoes, pants, shorts, a dress, a jacket, a vest and a sweater, are tracked across the globe from design to drawer. A set of four icons lets you see distance traveled, carbon released, waste generated and energy consumed for each. The site is a clean, classy web experience (would we expect anything else?) and the tone is so transparent I occasionally felt like averting my eyes.

    One of the things the site does well is to keep the door open for customer feedback. Through the Patagonia blog, The Cleanest Line, comments have been flying fast and furious, ranging from fawning (“I love Patagonia and what it stands for...”) to fuming (“Considering China's record on environmental issues, it seems hypocritical for Patagonia to outsource to the most polluted country on the planet.”)

    As an eye-opener into the world of clothing manufacture, this site should be required viewing for all teenagers who think they need a new wardrobe every season. But does it do enough to move the green needle on clothing manufacture?

    Patagonia turns over a lot of rocks in their system to let us see what’s underneath. Clicking on the individual processes of the 9 Trails Shorts, for example, leads to such treasures as a slideshow from inside a Vietnamese sewing factory and a video of Patagonia Designer Bryn Pitterle, taking us through every stitch of her journey to “design the ultimate short”.

    But for me, this is where Patagonia starts to become a victim of their own style. Not to pick on Ms. Pitterle, but footage of her trail-running through the California hills and shooting her titanium compound archery bow make me wonder if the world really needs another ‘ultimate running short’, no matter how apologetic the manufacturer is for their environmental impact.

    But enough crabbing. The Footprint Chronicles are so far ahead of what almost anyone else is doing in terms of honesty and transparency that Patagonia deserves our respect for the effort. I just wish it were more systemic and less symbolic.

    Perhaps, instead of of a rich media showcase of carefully selected products, the next version could be an automated web-based application that provides the transportation, carbon, waste and energy info on every Patagonia product at the catalog level, driven from the database up.

    Just a thought.

    P.S. I sincerely hope I haven’t offended California’s trail-running bow-hunter community. Honest.
     

  • Part 3: The genesis of Sustainable Minds - How we met Philip White and Okala

    by Terry Swack on September 1, 2008
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    Philip and Terry in front of Philip’s favorite type of cactus – saguaro

    Part 1: The genesis of Sustainable Minds – The conception of ‘learning surrogate LCA’ | Ines Sousa

    Part 2: The genesis of Sustainable Minds – Things happen in threes | Terry Swack

    At the end of Part 2, Ines and I were conducting a round of research that validated there was a real need for greater awareness, education and new design and engineering software tools for sustainable product design. During this research, enough people mentioned Okala that we decided to take a closer look. The learning surrogate LCA was done as research, but Okala was out there in practice. Based on what we learned, we updated our prototype to include concepts from both approaches. This combination really struck a chord with the product teams we met with subsequently.

    We decided to give Philip a call to find out more about Okala – who was using it? How was it being used? What were people doing with the results? Were there plans for the future?

    On this first call with Philip, we learned that:

    • Philip, Steve Belletire and Louise St. Pierre had been working on the methodology and curriculum for a number of years — the first edition having been published in 2003!
    • Many colleges and universities around the world were using it in their design and engineering curriculum.
    • Philip and Steve had been giving workshops and seminars in companies and professional design settings to seed the practice.
    • The Okala Impact Factor single scores are derived from data from 10 individual environmental and human health impact categories. Providing different views of the data could offer product design teams even more insight into which design decisions create which types of impacts — and software was the way to enable this.

    Our goals were clearly the same — to bring sustainable product design to mainstream product design — and they had made a terrific start. What was now required was the ability to scale and to get the information and tools into the hands of product teams in an accessible, empowering, and credible way. We all thought the synergies were there and decided to move forward together.

    So that’s what we’re doing here at Sustainable Minds, beginning with our Industry Blog and Ask the Okala Experts sections. Sign up for our company updates to stay current with our progress!

    Image credit: Naotake Kakishita

  • What I’ll say in China about sustainability and economic opportunity

    by Ken Hall on September 1, 2008

    At a national green building convention in Chicago last year, my ears were tuned for the specific words and phrases that Bill Clinton, one of our great communicators, would say to thousands of practitioners. The point of listening so intently was to hear the messaging and frames in order to better tell our story and tip the scale in favor of sustainability. This is what I heard:

    “… de-carbonizing the economy .. is our single greatest economic opportunity since we mobilized for WWII!”

    Wow! That’s a powerful statement. It builds rapidly from naming the quest to identifying the benefit and concludes invoking values and ideas deeply embedded in the American psyche from WWII – the urgent call to arms to defend the nation, the hero’s quest to ward off evil forces and epic battles that lead to victory. It also invokes the monumental collaborations between governments, military, research and industry that were necessary for the time.

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    This world-changing statement bears repeating and further exposition by others interested in converting our industrial growth economy into a sustainable economy. Other Clinton phrases continue to ring in my ears:

    • “… de-carbonizing the economy will not be easy.”
    • “This will require continued, systematic and intensifying efforts.”
    • “…be relaxed, not everything is going to work.”
    • “We are at the forefront of proving this.”

    This builds an important context for audience of practitioners, but the key take-away was when he said that we are proving this not only for the United States, but also for India and China. This master communicator went on to say (and I paraphrase) that America must lead the way by doing what we do best– by innovating with an entrepreneurial spirit. If we did that, we would be in a position to provide Indian and Chinese people an alternative to the carbon economy they are presently ramping up as fast as possible.

    My thoughts turn back to these statements in a fresh way because I am headed to Beijing in October to give a speech about sustainable design and building information modeling at the 12th International Conference on Computing in Civil and Building Engineering. As I think about what I will say to a Chinese audience about sustainability I am reminded of two aspects of the above messaging that concern me:

    1. the emphasis on nationalism,
    2. and the sole focus on carbon as the issue (although it is very easy to understand why these may nevertheless be the correct frames to invoke.)

     

    Reframing the central message for an international audience, I plan to say:
    “Creating a circular economy is the greatest economic opportunity we humans have ever had.“

    And support it with three additional key points:

    • “failure is not an option.”
    • “we are all in this together.”
    • “time has run out – we must act.”

     

    Reframing the central message this way names a new economy, not simply saying what must be undone in the old economy. It reminds us that our challenge is not just about carbon. It also invokes empathy and rich possibilities for story telling around “we humans.”

    ClintonVideo Image: © USGBC 2008