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  • Branding alternative fuels? Raise Hell.

    by Lorne Craig on June 26, 2009
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    Reading through Hot, Flat and Crowded, by Thomas Friedman, I came across an interesting description of clean fuels vs. dirty fuels, by Rachel Lefkowitz, from Pro-Media. In a flash of brilliant simplicity she describes them as ‘Fuels from Heaven or Fuels from Hell.”


    The Fuels from Heaven include wind, tidal, biomass and solar power. These all come from above ground, are renewable and produce no harmful emissions. (Presumably the CO2 from burning biomass is just releasing carbon that was already captured from the atmosphere – part of the cycle).

    As opposed to the Fuels from Hell – coal, oil and natural gas. All are sourced from the bowels of the earth, all are exhaustible and all add to the overall CO2 content of our atmosphere.
Now there’s a branding angle worth exploring. Eternal bliss vs. damnation. Do you want your electricity to come from the realm of the Heavenly Father or The Dungeons of Satan? I can hear the radio ad now:

    SFX: Dripping cave combined with factory noises and sounds of human torment. A phone rings.

    Annoying Switchboard Operator: “Hell Fuels, how may I direct your call? Oil spills? Certainly. One moment. (click)
    Good morning, Hell Fuels. Strip Mining Department? Would you like Coal or Tar Sands? One moment. (click)

    Hell Fuels, how may I direct your call? Missing Species Department? I’m sorry, their line is still busy. Please Hold. (click)

    Good morning, Hell Fuels. The Global Political Instability Department? One moment please. (click)

    Hell Fuels, how may I direct your call? Global Warming Department? I’m sorry, that doesn’t exist. Yes, I know the liberal media is full of lots of cute stories, but I can assure you… You want to talk to my supervisor? The President of Hell Fuels? The Lord of Darkness? Why sir, who did you think you were speaking with? (voice changes to deep bellowing evil laugh, then back to annoying switchboard operator) Buh bye now. Good morning, Hell Fuels….”

    Announcer: “There’s got to be a better way. Fuels from Heaven – wind, tidal, solar.”
    
SFX: Angelic music
    
Announcer: Let’s put our energy investment above the ground.

    Okay, so it’s a 67-second radio spot with no client. But it’s a powerful metaphor that not only clearly points out the differences in fuel technology, it also has implications for our individual behaviour.
    Every time you make an energy choice, who’s side are you on?

  • Systems thinking and the inevitability of ‘green’

    by Jim Hall on June 22, 2009
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    A green destination is inevitable for every American company. How that is achieved is the point of this blog post. At the outset, I’ll just say this: those companies that follow the defined path toward sustainability may survive, but those that chart their own course will become leaders, and thrive in the new business environment that is upon us.

    It’s easy enough to find the soon-to-be well-trodden path; a Google search or quick meeting with a consultant will reveal literally hundreds of cases, articles and essays that can be used to put your company on the path of sustainability. However, the fact is that the optimal path is different for every company. Organizational drag, budgetary considerations, and the technologies employed will affect the complexity of the mission to make the company and its products more sustainable.

    A basic law of the organization is that it makes its own survival paramount. In that, it’s no different from any evolutionary model. For that reason, it is vital to understand the organizational landscape in order to accomplish anything worthwhile. Understanding this landscape provides a starting point, a direction, and a route, highlighting obstacles and opportunities along the path to sustainability. In short, the organization is its own environment, within the larger environment we all inhabit.

    GTI (General Theory of Innovation) is a powerful tool that offers a unique perspective for understanding the corporate sustainability landscape. Through GTI, we perceive everything to be a system. An organization’s products, markets, employees, and even its bureaucracy are all seen as systems according to GTI. In fact, everything that makes up the corporate environment can be thought of as a set of systems and subsystems, organized into a hierarchy whose collective purpose is to produce goods or services.

    According to GTI, every system contributes positively and negatively to the organization’s environment, and requires organizational resources. A machine contributes work (positive) and emissions (negative), and in exchange requires energy, maintenance, and other resources.

    Now here’s where it gets interesting. The evolution of all systems is governed by a set of natural laws that are consistent whether we are talking about the organization, or the world at large. One of these natural laws, the law of evolution, states that evolution has order and does not occur randomly. In other words, when a system evolves, it has a predominant direction. All systems strive to evolve, to deliver more functionality and require fewer resources from their environments.

    Because all systems are subject to natural laws, the evolution of any system is inevitable. Evolution requires that the environment seek to reduce the price it pays for the services of the system. Furthermore, the environment will also seek to eliminate any system that harms it.

    What this suggests is that none of us has control over the move towards a sustainable existence. In fact, the sustainability movement was inevitable and the result of a natural and predictable evolution.

    Sustainability is simply a natural evolutionary cycle that is attempting to create efficiency in and remove cost from the environment. Fortunately for businesses, the consequences of participation in this evolution can also be greater efficiency and reduced operating expense. It’s safe to say that tomorrow’s Green Economy will continue to be a reflection of these natural laws from which no organization can escape if it desires to survive. Sustainability at its core is nothing more than a “natural” reaction to increase efficiency and drive out costs.

    One final point: if you apply these same GTI principles to GHG emissions, then the impending regulatory requirement to reduce GHG emissions may just be natural laws at work. In this scenario, the environment is seeking to eliminate the systems that are causing it harm. We are all part of that evolutionary effort.

    In my next blog, I’ll explore how the concept of GTI can be applied to your organization, to ensure its own survival.
     

  • Six ways to build momentum in a down market

    by David Laituri on June 12, 2009
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    I recently attended a small but enthusiastic gathering of sustainable design practitioners at the Designer’s Accord town hall meeting held in Boston. There was no shortage of passion in the room and there were plenty of good ideas to share, but the consensus amongst all was clear: if sustainable design was challenging to practice in a good economy, it’s even more difficult in a bad one.

    Whether a consultant outsider or a corporate insider, everyone I spoke to seemed to feel an increased sense of powerlessness to affect the kinds of changes that need to be made. Faced with much tighter project budgets, most find that emphasis on project cost reduction is quickly eclipsing emphasis on sustainability.

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    Securing strong commitment from the top, getting buy-in from ‘gate keepers’ like a client’s engineers, and even waiting until the economy improves to resume the effort were brought up as solutions to this dilemma. Not enough, in my opinion.

    Having split my career between both corporate and consulting environments, I could empathize with the group. As a design consultant in a competitive market with an urgent charge like sustainable design, I know that it would be tempting to call the activity out in a capabilities presentation or proposal or even frame it as a separate phase with its own methodology.

    The irony is that the more it’s separated from the standard design process, the easier it is to eliminate sustainable design when budgets are tight. Like the finished products themselves, though, sustainable design really shouldn’t add cost to the product, cost more to execute as a project or require its own phase. It should be baked in.

    There are plenty of unconventional, out-of-the-box ways to build momentum in sustainable design, even when you haven’t been asked specifically to do so. Try to think of it as just another design challenge.

    • Cover the basics – It goes without saying -- make sure you fully exhaust the options that are completely within your control first. Everything you do should follow sound material choice and design for disassembly practice: specify screws vs. adhesives or snaps where possible, mechanically separate dissimilar materials, choose materials with the most robust recycling infrastructure, mark all your parts, etc. This is well-understood territory and a fundamental part of any good sustainable design methodology. The more that sustainable thinking is designed in, the greater the likelihood that it will actually be implemented.
       
    • Regulations are your friend – EU standards are often higher the US standards (ie: RoHS, WEEE) and even some California standards are set higher than the rest of the country (ie: energy consumption requirements and air quality requirements). Regardless of where the product is ultimately sold, specify adherence to the strictest standard or regulation in any category. They are powerful, clearly defined and easy to test for compliance. Not adhering to the highest standard now, it could be argued, could mean increased cost and loss of access to some markets down the road. When you adhere to the highest standards, everybody wins.
       
    • Offer a field trip – We’re big advocates of spending time upstream; hundreds of small but meaningful decisions can only be made on the factory floor. It’s surprising sometimes how quickly decisions can be made there and how the impact reduction can add up. Offer to pick up the cost of a trip and/or offer to absorb all or part of your time to visit the manufacturer, even if they are halfway around the world. In the end, it’s a small investment to assure that the sustainable design effort is actually implemented in full. Some would say ‘our client usually handles that part’ or ‘they don’t usually invite us to come along.’ Be proactive, get your foot in the door, insist on coming along for the ride. If you’re not fully committed to the lower impact solution, why should they be?
       
    • Change the metrics – In a past life, I was able to calculate the difference between using EPS foam packaging (petroleum-based, unrecyclable) and paper pulp trays (100% post consumer, 100% recyclable) over a range of projects to demonstrate that the average 12% difference in package volume could save the company 5 full shipping containers worth of space per year. ‘$20K worth of free shipping’ was far more influential with senior management than ‘100% recycled & 100% recyclable’. Can it save time? Can it reduce returns? Is it less expensive to transport? Can more be fit on a truck? If the direct approach isn’t working, you need to find a more creative, often financially based argument to convince your audience to do the right thing.
       
    • Keep the change – On our first product, we did the quick LCA impact comparison between painting small parts with 20% re-grind ABS and using 100% virgin ABS with molded-in color. Since the factory didn’t have to waste material up front in matching a color standard and could use scrap from other molding projects, the regrind solution came out ahead. However, we still allowed them to charge us the premium for virgin ABS. They saw a chance to make a little extra money on the material and it assured that the lower impact solution would be implemented. A very small victory, but it worked.
       
    • Give away credit – Designers and design firms are usually good self-promoters, but all too often they tend to dominate the spotlight when it comes their way. Try turning some of that self-promotional energy towards highlighting your client’s or your senior management’s sustainability efforts and give them the credit for the results – ALL the credit. Helping to position your client or your senior management as emerging ‘green champions’ can go a long way towards assuring that sustainable design becomes a higher priority the next time around.

    If it seems a bit like gaming the system, you’re right – but there’s nothing wrong with that. It takes more than a bit of persistence, tenacity and big-picture creativity to overcome the roadblocks designers often face.

    Resistance to new thinking should be expected, even anticipated – and sustainable design practitioners need to become experts at working around this resistance. So much progress has been made over the last few years in bringing the need for sustainable design to the forefront, now is not the time to lose momentum.

    Do you have a success story about overcoming resistance? If so, we would like to hear about it. Reply in the box provided below.

  • Pratt Institute professor reviews SM's LCA workshop: "Quantitative Sustainability and the Practice of Life Cycle Analysis"

    by Guest contributors on June 5, 2009
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    This post is by Christopher X J. Jensen, Ph.D. assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics and Science at Pratt Institute. He is also active in Sustainable Pratt's efforts to bring ecologically-conscious practices to the campus and beyond. Christopher was an active participant in Sustainable Minds’ life cycle analysis (LCA) workshop at Pratt Institute on May 23rd, and wrote an extensive review of the event.

    Quantitative sustainability and the practice of life cycle analysis

    Pratt Institute, where my primary duties are to teach students about ecology and evolution, is undergoing a green revolution. In many ways this is not all that remarkable: many campuses are “greening” themselves and at least pitching the idea that they are becoming more sustainable. At Pratt, there’s something slightly different going on: we aren’t just trying to green our campus, we are trying to green our students. Because Pratt is a design school and most of our students are trained to make things (from consumer products to buildings to cityscapes and lots of things in between), we have the responsibility to not just change the way our campus impacts our environment, but also to reduce the impact of our students’ future designs. There’s a tremendous power in that mandate, and also the peril of doing it poorly.

    Continue reading
     

  • What is Sustainable Interaction Design? Part Three: Renewal and Reuse

    by Guest contributors on June 1, 2009
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    This is the third of three blog posts by our managing editor Jeff Binder exploring the concept of sustainable interaction design as put forth by Eli Blevis of the School of Informatics at Indiana University, in a paper entitled Sustainable Interaction Design: Invention & Disposal, Renewal & Reuse.* In the first he reviewed the basis of sustainable interactive design and the second examined the principle of linking invention and disposal.

    According to Eli Blevis, that’s the second principle of interaction design -- promoting renewal and reuse. Blevis gives us an example in a familiar product:

    “As an example, newly introduced GPS navigation devices that come with all of the maps and mapping software pre-loaded … have displaced older models which required users to download the maps on an as needed basis or mapping applications targeted at PDAs. It may be possible that the appliance metaphor once in peoples' consciousness means that renewal by means of software updates is too onerous a process, since it is not part of the typical cognitive model of an appliance.”

    A personal navigation system is a relatively non-essential gadget, says Blevis. However, the GPS device he cites – the Garmin nuvi 350 – has properties that make it both a bane and a boon to sustainable behavior. Among the cons: the device must be connected to a computer to be updated, which may seem like more trouble than just buying a newer model. In addition, following its directives may distract the driver, creating a safety hazard.

    Of all the possible positive sustainability impacts – which include shortened driving time due to better directions, as well as the option to reload the device with newer maps – the fact that the GPS allows older vehicles to include the navigation features of newer vehicles is one that Blevis finds most beneficial and the key to consumers’ embracing renewal and reuse:

    “The environmental benefits of renewing and reusing older vehicles may possibly outweigh the environmental benefits of substituting old vehicles with newer ones, even when the newer ones use cleaner technologies – the environmental costs of disposal and manufacturing need to be taken into account. Furthermore, if the means of renewal and modernization are available to consumers for some things and consumers come to demand a culture of renewal and reuse, perhaps manufacturers will concentrate on marketing those very same cleaner technologies as updates to existing vehicles rather than incentives for the purchase of the new and the disposal of the old.”

    However, one of the most powerful technological allies for renewal and reuse, Blevis points out, is the Internet. One web site, freecycle.org, posts unwanted items to be given away instead of throwing them out, another enables users to get printer cartridges refilled, and still another remanufactures laptop computers for resale – with a warranty. Conceding these efforts are small relative to the stronger trend toward consumption and disposal, Blevis still sees in them a consumer vote of support for sustainable interaction design.

    But that support must swell rapidly to stem the tide of invention and disposal that threatens to flood the world with discarded tech devices if other countries follow US patterns of consumption. Determining how to make consumers view restored devices as desirable or more desirable than new products is a part of Blevis’ ongoing work.

    “There are aspects of style, status, and self-image that affect such preferences as much as issues of form and function. This seems to be even more true of information appliances than other products, since information appliances have particularly rapid depreciation and face early retirement from service due to frequent obsolescence.”

    The key, he sees, is promoting superior functionality for the long run, so the device may change hands and still perform:

    “If things are designed and constructed with sufficient quality and modularity, people may be inclined to look after them and selectively update them creating the effect of achieving longevity of use. Furthermore, quality things provide equality of ownership to those who may not be the first owner of such things. This is especially important not just as an issue of renewal & reuse by the affluent, but also as it concerns the conscientious redistribution of older technologies in global terms.”

    So in the end, Blevis charges product designers with the responsibility to lead by creating information appliances that can adapt, withstand the test of time, and persuade consumers those features are the true measure of value.

    There is at least anecdotal evidence that manufacturers and consumers are getting the message. TeleNav, a Sunnyvale, California-based company, provides software that turns any cell phone into a GPS device – which not only finds new uses for existing devices, but eliminates the need for a dedicated gadget altogether.

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    * -- Blevis, E. (2007). Sustainable interaction design: invention & disposal, renewal & reuse. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (San Jose, California, USA, April 28 - May 03, 2007). CHI '07. ACM Press, New York, NY, 503-512.

    Paper available for download from the ACM digital library: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1240624.1240705

    Publications list for Eli Blevis: http://eli.informatics.indiana.edu/selectedpublications.html