Adam Menter’s Blog

Net Impact SF helped convene and facilitate the UnConference portion of Sustainable Brands ‘09. The UnConference ran parallel to the main conference sessions on Monday, June 1st. The idea was to help curate more in-depth conversation around the topics that were at the top of conference-goers’ minds.

I led a session about reverse logistics and the materials flows in our economy. I had initially entitled the session “Making Cradle to Cradle Work” because I wanted to prompt a deeper discussion about C2C and put it in context with other forms of recycling and reverse logistics. C2C is such a compelling idea - but I hear a lot of hype and not a lot of new case studies or more advanced thinking. I was fortunate that Mike Biddle from MBA Polymers was interested in joining the conversation. We ended-up co-leading the session. MBA Polymers recycles plastic from e-Waste. They are using processes that are similar to mining to ‘upcycle’ a complicated, mixed stream of waste (grade/use of original plastic = grade/use of recycled plastic). It’s pretty cool. Mike showed a video, which I can’t find online (but here’s a shorter one).

Going into the discussion, I created a the following visual aid to show some of the the material flows in our economy. I couldn’t find an existing diagram that showed the flows the way I wanted (feel free to re-purpose/re-use or suggest improvements)…

I used this diagram in a quick and dirty slide deck with some thought-starters and discussion prompts. The slides provided a nice reference point to help frame the discussion. It allowed the conversation to be organic and I thought it was a nice balance between winging it and actually preparing a presentation. All of the slides can be viewed online below or downloaded as a .ppt or .pdf.

One of the points I wanted to make in the session - was that there is a lot that each of us can do to reduce our environmental impact by how we choose to aquire, care for, and dispose of our stuff. Specifically, I wanted to talk about buying used stuff (re-using) and repair. These are two aspects of responsible consumption that I don’t hear enough about. You get a lot of eco-cred for buying a brand new Toyota Prius, but not necessarily for buying a used Ford or Honda. It seems that people show-off products like the Prius as eco-badges that prove their commitment to the cause. I wanted to create something similar for used and repaired items, so I whipped up some EcoBadges on Zazzle. These are stickers that you can put on your used or repaired items to start a conversation about the importance of extending the use phase of the stuff that’s already in our economy. I handed some out at the UnConference and now anyone can order them online. (I borrowed this idea from WattzOn). Below is an image of the two stickers I created.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 6th, 2009 at 9:12 pm and is filed under Design, Business, Green. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.