Promising - but not sure how stable it’ll be - or how practical for schlepping around town with bags and stuff. I’d love to test one out.

“[The Fixers] are a Brooklyn based group that gets together once a week to repair and repurpose all kinds of broken things – shoes, radios, lamps, clocks – anything is game.”
http://www.psfk.com/2009/10/repair-and-repurpose-the-fixers-collective.html

http://fixerscollective.org/main/

New York Times Article

Walmart’s Sustainability Website

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.

I attended this morning’s session of the Greener By Design conference (shared a pass with a colleague of mine at Autodesk).

Here is a copy of my notes, all in a pretty accessible mindmap format. And below are some quick impressions of some of the presentations.

Tom Szacky - CEO of TerraCycle (pictured above) - I was impressed with Tom’s presentation. I’m familiar with them from their worm poop/plant food product (I always lament the limited production capacity of my own worm composter), but I wasn’t aware that they’re working on several fronts to productize other waste streams. TerraCycle is actually trying to become the go-to solution deriving value from non-recyclable waste streams (i.e. CapriSun packages turned into bags/wallets). They’re partnering with big companies and engaging “brigades” of consumers to help them collect and separate usable waste streams (their raw materials). With my long-standing interest in closed-loop production cycles and reverse supply chains, this is definitely a company I’ll be watching. (check out the notes for more from Tom’s preso)

Packaging Outside the Box - Wendy Jedlicka from o2, Uri Kogan from HP, and Tony Knoerzer from PepsiCo. This was an interesting and diverse panel. Uri talked about HP’s laptop-bag as packaging experiment with Wal-Mart (nice idea, but perhaps just another bag to collect dust in the long run), Tony talked about Sun Chip’s new compostable bag, and Wendy talked about systems thinking and the practice of sustainable package design. Wendy’s a wealth of information about the nuts-and-bolts of sustainable package design. A few of the high-level slides she showed are below:

GreenOps - A project from Waste Management that involves consumers returning their recyclables to kiosks in stores like Whole Foods, having visibility into the content and volume of their recycling, and getting reward points for it (like RecycleBank, it seems). A cool idea in some ways, but my gut reaction is that it’ll be difficult to gain traction on a large scale. We’ll see. Below is an image of how the system works. (Update from after the Sustainable Brands Conference (6/1/09): GreenOps presence at SB ‘09 left a really bad taste in my mouth. It seemed like all marketing hype for a fundamentally flawed system. They attracted attention to themselves by having attractive young women wear skimpy dresses made from recycled plastic. All spin and no substance. My two cents.)

Stay tuned for more scanned mindmaps from the past year or so (Net Impact conferences, Fortune Brainstorm Green, etc).

Today’s Fresh Air program on NPR featured James Balog, a nature photographer and the founder of the Extreme Ice Survey, a project to document the changes occurring on some of the planet’s most remote glaciers. Basically, they are melting right before our eyes. As Mr. Balog said in the program, this isn’t about climate models and projections - this is about putting us face-to-face with the change that is going on right now.

The program was excellent - and Mr. Balog just seemed like a really cool, genuine guy. I recommend you give it a listen. Also, this work is going to be featured on PBS’s NOVA program on March 24th. I’m sure it will be breathtaking (and scary).

Reading Bill McDonough & Michael Braungart’s book, Cradle to Cradle, has been one of those defining moments in my career journey. The huge task of re-vamping our production cycles to make them more environmentally sane seemed like just the kind of big, hairy problem I wanted to apply my business, engineering, and design skills to. About five years have passed since I read the book and, looking around, I haven’t seen the idea gain much practical traction - despite all of the hype and excitement surrounding it. The idea that Waste=Food is a beautiful concept… and I hope it doesn’t have to remain just a concept.

That’s why I was excited last month when I exchanged a few preliminary e-mails with a big electronics OEM that was thinking of exploring and implementing a Cradle-to-Cradle initiative. Unfortunately, due to the state of the economy, it doesn’t look like the project is moving forward… which is a shame because, in my opinion, it’s only through tackling problems like this that are going to shift our economy onto the right course in the long term.

In the process of getting my head around what might be involved with such a project, I took another look at the state of things. Some thoughts and useful links are below:

• First of all, Fast Company ran a brilliant and brutal exposé on Bill McDonough & MBDC late last year: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/130/the-mortal-messiah.html.
• True Cradle-to-Cradle is more complicated than just improving e-Waste management and take-back programs… but better take back programs that get consumers to shift their perceptions about their products at the end-of-life is a requisite first step for C2C. Some big players have been working on this but it has a long way to go (and probably requires stronger legislation in the USA that goes beyond voluntary take-back, which consumers often have to pay for).
• For example, both Herman-Miller chairs and USPS Tyvek envelopes have Cradle-to-Cradle certification. But neither, to my knowledge, have the robust reverse supply chain that’s necessary to actually put industrial nutrients back into the supply chain. In HM’s case, consumers don’t have an easy way to return the items and there isn’t enough volume.  In Tyvek’s case, it’s also hard to actually return the product back to the manufacturer - and, even when it is returned, most of it ends up being downcycled.
• Best Buy seems to be shoring up it’s e-Waste recycling capabilities, a great initiative: http://www.bestbuyinc.com/news_center/02-19-09/best-buy-electronics-recycling-program-now-available-all-us-stores
• The facts that consumers always want new items and that businesses have gotten use to quick product cycles as an engine for growth are huge barriers for strategies like upgradeability, reparability, and durability. (Again, a shift in consumer perception is required).
• Folks have been thinking about this idea for a long time, even before popularized by C2C (and big industry trade groups exist like the Reverse Logistics Association).
• Further reading…
• The October 2008 issue of the International Journal of Production Economics has an article entitled “Cradle to cradle: Reverse logistics strategies and opportunities across three industry sectors” by Sameer Kumara and Valora Putnam.
• Reverse Logistics In the Computer Industry (2005) - Lays out the issues and a few solution strategies:
• BOOK: Environment Conscious Manufacturing (ECM)
• http://ewasteguide.info/ and  http://www.step-initiative.org/ - e-Waste sites with best practices, case studies, and information about initiatives.
• For information (and graphic images) about the eventual fate of our current e-Waste stream, check out this GreenPeace e-Waste site.

So, I guess at this point I can’t answer the question posed in the title of this blog entry. But one thing’s for sure, we can sure improve a whole hell of a lot… and I’d love to dig in and start trying.

I’ve been meaning to post the slides on visual recording and graphic facilitation that I prepared for a guest lecture I gave to CCA’s DMBA program in October of last year. Click here to download the PDF. It’s a short presentation that:

• Discusses some of the reasons for visual recording at group meetings
• Goes over a few different different situations and forms for recording
• Gives some pointers on the mechanics of recording (colors, fonts, etc)
• Offers suggestions for what content to capture (choosing form, using short-term memory, etc)
• Has examples of some simple fonts and graphics
• Suggests resources for further information

…and I gotta give props to Jump Associates - where I learned most of this.

I just submitted the above 3-D rendering to the Treasure Island Bike Rack Design contest. This concept is based on re-purposing old car parking meters to be used for bike parking.

This idea is particularly relevant to Treasure Island due to the redevelopment plan’s focus on sustainability, car independence, and pedestrian access. The out-of-context use of parking meters (i.e. in parks, on pedestrian walkways) serves as a constant reminder to Treasure Island’s residents and guests that we, as a society, need to get over our addiction to the automobile - and that biking is a viable option for transportation that is healthier and more environmentally conscious. Re-using our car parking infrastructure for bike parking makes an elegant statement about not only this shift in mindset about our mobility, but also about the potential to creatively re-use our waste.

As a San Franciscan who bikes everywhere, parking meters are already my preferred bike rack. I get frustrated with over-engineered bike parking solutions (i.e. the bike racks at GG Park’s Botanical Gardens and at the Legion of Honor) - so, with this contest, I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel too much. My original idea was simply to create a grid of parking meters. However, this does not meet the contest’s requirement of being able to secure bikes using all types of locks. If someone only had a loose cable lock, the bike could slip over the top of the meter.

I ended up with two complementary no-nonsense designs, both based on old parking meters and both designed to be functional/durable in demanding urban environments. The first is simply welding, or otherwise fastening, a cross-bar between two old parking meters to create a variation on the popular and functional U-rack design. This design allows both wheels to be securely locked to the rack. The second design is to fasten a closed metal loop to the parking meter pole, which allows a cable lock to be threaded through. While this design does not allow both wheels to be fastened directly to the rack (as the contest rules stipulate), most bikers don’t lock their bikes this way currently. From my observation, it’s more common to lock both wheels by running a cable through the front wheel and securing that cable with a single U-lock fastened to the frame/back wheel. These single meter/racks  have a smaller footprint and could more easily stand-alone at various places throughout the island.

The 3-D rendering was created with Google Sketch-Up. The quality of this rendering was limited both by my novice Sketch-Up skills (first ever!) and my computer’s processing power - but I think it conveys the idea pretty well.

(Or, referencing the top-notch Treasure Island music festival, they could go with David Byrne’s sweet bike rack designs for NYC: http://www.davidbyrne.com/art/bike_racks/index.php)

I was sickened by an article in this morning’s NYTimes about how Frito Lay is trying to target their products to women: Frito-Lay tries to Enter the Minds (and Lunch Bags) of Women. It is basically about a big new campaign that Frito Lay is launching to get more women to buy their junk food:

Women are snacking more than men, but are not eating as many Frito-Lay snacks…“So if it’s, you’re snacking two times as much, but you’re not snacking with us, why, and what can we do for you?” …men’s growth in salty snacks is far outpacing women’s.

They’re pretty worried about the women they studied feeling guilty (as expressed in a logbook study):

According to their logs, the women felt guilty about quite a lot, whether it was snacking, not seeing their children enough, or not spending enough time with their husbands…”So the question for us was, how do we not trip her guilt?”

And their answer to this is:

Toning down the packaging and showing off healthy ingredients in the snacks…Baked Lay’s will no longer be in a shiny yellow bag, but in a matte beige bag that displays pictures of the ingredients like spices or ranch dressing.

Pretty much NO thought given to the products themselves. When are we going to step up, stop putting up with this crap, and get better than this? Imagine how many millions of dollars were spent on this campaign. Imagine how many (wo?)man hours were wasted on this…and imagine how sad it is that the people who were working on this probably genuinely wanted to be helping people.

The problem is that Frito Lay has millions to spend to pay people to do this less-than-meaningful work. While some of the only people trying to address the root of these womens’ guilt (by encouraging and emboldening them to actually spend time with their children and families, for example) - are working for some non-profit for peanuts.

…and one more thing…

They’re also back-handing women with the good ‘ole “hate your body” routine:

In one of the webisodes, two of the women stand with a swimsuit saleswoman, who is reviewing a chart of what bikini works on women with different body types — a trope familiar to readers of women’s magazine summer issues.

“Where’s the one that takes a middle-aged mom with some unwanted bulges and a chest that’s seen perkier days and makes her look like Cindy Crawford?” a character asks.

(check out http://www.awomansworld.com/ and watch the video on the NYTimes site if you can stomach it)

I thought we were heading in the right direction with campaigns like Dove’s Beauty campaign. I guess not.

…okay, I’m done now…