GreenAmy

This may be cheesy, but I’m constantly thinking of small things people can do to be more environmentally friendly, so I thought I’d share one every Tuesday (you know, cause then it’s an alliteration) and see how it goes.

Our first tiny piece of enlightenment is about saving water and energy. When adjusting the water temperature in your sink or shower, instead of turning water flow up to the desired temperature, try turning it down. So, if the water is too hot, turn down the hot valve rather than turning up the cold. This small action saves water by keeping the flow at minimal levels and can save energy by limiting the load on hot water heaters.

Todd Woody, aka Green Wombat, has written a couple really interesting posts about Abu Dhabi’s initiatives for sustainable development, including its research and development plans for Masdar City, and more recently the announcement of Torresol Energy, solar power plants in Australia, Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and the U.S. with Sener. Given that the UAE is one of the largest oil exporting countries, it’s quite a contrast to hear such grand plans for an environmentally responsible future. Nonetheless, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, CEO of the Masdar Initiative, explained the green ambitions to Green Wombat.

• Sultan Al Jaber said the big-picture intention is to “cover the whole value chain – from research to labs to manufacturing to the development of technologies.”
• Masdar City is collaborating with U.S. and European universities, including M.I.T. and Columbia, to develop a research institute.
• The Masdar Clean Tech Fund has invested $250 million in renewable energy ventures.
• Masdar will offer complete elimination of taxes for green energy manufacturers, including those that make polysilicon, a key component of solar panel construction. Al Jaber continued, “We’re no longer interested in only being a consumer of technology or an off-taker of specific equipment. We want to transform ourselves into a more knowledge-based economy.”
• Reducing energy requirements for Masdar City – expected to have a population of about 50K – from 820 megawatts of power to 220 megawatts by implementing sustainable materials and energy efficient infrastructure from day one.

Thanks to Green Wombat for interesting and enlightening posts from an international perspective that, as he puts it, point out the irony: “A leading oil producer invests billions in carbon-free energy while a leading consumer of fossil fuels - the United States - continues to subsidize Big Oil while offering only tepid support for green technology.” Well said.

I don’t know much about GOOD magazine, but from what I’ve seen, it has great graphics (not to mention a catchy slogan: “media for people who give a damn“). While checking out the site, a colleague of mine came across this diagram of “vampire energy,” or wasted standby energy, to show how household electronics are constantly using power when the appliance is turned off but still plugged in. The greatest offender is the plasma TV (already known to be quite the energy hog), which is costing you about $160 and using 1,452 kilowatts annually. All in all, plugged appliances cost U.S. consumers an estimated $3 billion a year when they’re just sitting there, turned off. That’s enough to make you want to pull the plug.

At LaunchSquad, we’re obviously big fans of technology. We opened our doors with three shiny new PowerBooks and have since collectively acquired more Apple laptops, desktops, iPods, iPhones and Airport base stations than we can track. Not to mention PDAs, smart phones, digital cameras, printers, routers and other gear. Over time, a lot of this technology has broken or become obsolete.

Rather than throw out our old equipment, we started a small technology museum at the office. It’s not exactly the Tech Museum of Innovation, but it’s getting close.

We started the museum because throwing away all this once-great technology didn’t feel right, and there was no other option – throw it away or keep it. So we’ve kept it. Plus, there are just too many memories (pardon the pun) with these devices as they hearken back to the beginning of our company – early client wins, first big media hits and other major milestones, which all took place on, near or with these machines.

Sentimentality aside, throwing these electronics away is extremely harmful for the environment. The Green Design Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University projects that 50 million old computers will be landfilled in the coming years. That’s why a handful of companies have made safe and environmentally friendly electronics disposable their mission.

In case you don’t have the space for a museum like ours, here are a few options worth exploring:

• Green Citizen: Offers Drop-Off Centers in San Francisco and Palo Alto that are open daily to take all your electronic recyclables from batteries and printer cartridges, to TVs and computer systems.
• Costco Trade-In and Recycle Program: Costco has partnered with GreenSight to buy used electronics (via Green Daily). LaunchSquad partner Jason “Throck” Throckmorton recently traded in an old Treo650 and a second generation iPod for $140 in Costco gift cards. GreenSight’s recycling program employs a zero tolerance landfill policy meaning all of the material that is subject to recycling is disassembled by hand, carefully separated and eventually utilized as feedstock for various raw material extraction processes (including smelting and refining).
• Electronics Recycling: A database of U.S. electronics recycling companies, categorized by activity type and geographical location to help you find a center in your area. Other sites to help you find an electronics recycling resource include Earth 911 and E-Cycling Central.

First off, let me apologize for such a long absence on the blogging front. It’s been a busy and exciting time with a lot happening in all areas of going green, so I’m glad to be back.

Last week I had the privilege of attending the Oakland Lecture Series to hear architect and designer William McDonough speak about his philosophy of sustainable design. McDonough discussed how we can create an environmentally and economically intelligent future by rethinking and restructuring the way in which design interacts with our natural environment.

McDonough, named a hero of the planet by TIME magazine in 1999, practiced and preached sustainable development long before it was fashionable. He built the first solar-heated house in Ireland in 1977 (which he joked spoke to his optimism since there is no sun in Ireland) and requested carbon offsets of a developer in Poland back in 1989, asking for 10 square miles of trees to offset the impact a new skyscraper would have on climate change. Eighteen years ago such an unusual proposition made headlines in the Wall Street Journal reading, “Will Poland plant a forest to satisfy a U.S. architect?”

McDonough’s more recent projects include an office building for Gap Inc. in San Bruno, Calif., which has a roof planted with native grasses and wildflowers, and the Ford Motors Rouge Center in Dearborn, Mich. that incorporates tree-lined public streets and stormwater collection.

One of McDonough’s major principles is the Cradle to Cradle (C2C) concept. Our current development and consumption process is one of cradle-to-grave in which materials end up in landfills and oceans. McDonough suggests a process that mimics the lifecycle of the natural world so that, for example, when a chair has reached the end of its useful life, the pieces aren’t thrown away, but reused to become another chair or object, creating a closed-loop cycle of development and eliminating additional waste. Manufacturers such as Steelcase and Herman Miller are C2C certified and we can expect to see more C2C products in the future across various industries. Requirements for C2C certification include manufacturing processes that are least harmful to the environment and using materials that are healthy and safe for humans and the earth.

McDonough’s presentation was enlightening and stimulating and I hope his earth-saving ideas continue to spread. The planet certainly needs a hero and he might just wear a bow tie.

Lights Out San Francisco is a project to get City dwellers to turn off all non-essential lights for just one hour on October 20th from 8-9pm. They have participation from the Bay Bridge, Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz and the TransAmerica Building. The project encourages participants to install at least one CFL in their homes on that day. Go here to pledge your support. This is a great opportunity to get away from electronics and make a statement about energy conservation. And what will we do for that dark hour? The San Francisco Restaurant Association is organizing candlelight dinners and there will be celebrations in the park. For a stay at home night, have a glass of wine on the roof, read a book by candlelight, we might even see a star or two. Perhaps we should try this lights out thing more often.

Our client Adify is powering a few green online advertising networks, including Matter and SustainLane. Each network is led by experienced publishers in the green space that are also behind some great green Web sites.

Matter covers “What Matters” in green business and technology. The site is a combination of original content from its creators – Michael Penwarden and John Gartner – as well as aggregated material from respected green business and tech sites across the Web. The site is addressing important areas of green business and helping fuel the industry from an economic standpoint. Information ranges in topic from the “At Home” section – covering small-scale solar panels, wine corks and eco-friendly fashion – to exploring eco-business perspectives on “Energy,” such as biodiesel fuel sources and reviving the electric car.

I’ve been working with Matter to help launch the business and have had a number of conversations with Penwarden. He views Matter as the first practical, mainstream green community saying, “Matter is focused on economic and tech solutions, finding ways to enrich the world while also reducing our impact.”

Penwarden and Gartner have found a compelling niche with Matter. There seems to be a lack of editorial resources for entrepreneurs and business people who also care about the environment without having to sift through existing business publications for green topics.

Green entrepreneurs at SustainLane are behind the U.S. Green City Rankings, SustainLane.com online directory of sustainable products and services and The Unsustainables, original animated episodes of an urban family trying to live green. The online product directory is a great resource that should be bookmarked in everyone’s browser. On the site, users can pass on product knowledge and reviews about everything from organic milk and non-toxic nail polish to eco-friendly clothing and environmentally safe dry cleaning services. With a quick search on the site I uncovered this great paper and printing location, New Leaf Paper, that’s literally right around the corner from our office.

SustainLane Green Ad Network was built after talking to large brands and marketers interested in the LOHAS market (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability), realizing that companies want to advertise on green business-to-business sites, but in reality there are very few as we’re still in the early stages of the green movement. The network was a natural extension of the business, given SustainLane’s experience in the green market and longtime relationships with advertisers. The company is able to intelligently advise mainstream advertisers on how to be authentic in green ad campaigns so products and messages strike the right chord with green consumers and achieve maximum effectiveness.

Matter and SustainLane are great examples of how our increasing interest in all things green is creating a burgeoning ecosystem of entrepreneurs, marketers and consumers that want to live, work and communicate in the green market.

UPDATE: SustainLane Green Ad Network launched this week and got this great story on Adotas!

Fast Company’s September cover story, “Working With the Enemy,” is about environmentalist Adam Werbach, who, through his company Act Now, is working with retail giant Wal-Mart to make sustainability part of its everyday business. The article explains Werbach’s early activism - a “rainbow warrior” for Greenpeace at 13, a political lobbyist for California’s “Big Green” initiative in high school, founder of Sierra Student Coalition at Brown University and the youngest Sierra Club president at just 23 years old in 1996 - to his present situation of aligning with Wal-Mart even though many of his former colleagues and friends refuse to speak to him.

Werbach’s first initiative for the largest retailer in the world is the Personal Sustainability Project (PSP), encouraging Wal-Mart employees to identify an aspect of their life that’s unsustainable or unhealthy and consider how they might correct it, from quitting smoking to losing weight to turning a family farm organic. The idea behind the PSP is to make environmentalism personal and attainable, and avoid scaring people with unrealistic and difficult demands on what it takes to live green.

The concept of personalizing sustainability is one that Werbach has supported for years, and one that hasn’t made him many fans in some environmental circles. In a speech to San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club in December 2004, Werbach let the leaders of environmentalism know that their movement was ineffective and their ideas outdated. Needless to say his comments were not so well received, but were noticed by Andy Ruben, Wal-Mart’s recently hired VP of sustainability. Werbach and Ruben had several meetings before the former Sierra Club president was finally convinced by the massive audience Wal-Mart could reach.

From Fast Company: “He found himself thinking about how environmentalism has been aimed mostly at ‘people in big cities, coastal towns, and college towns. But Wal-Mart speaks to 90% of the American public every year.’”

Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott announced an ambitious green push in fall 2005, saying the company would pursue plans to produce zero waste, use 100% renewable energy and supply customers with sustainable products. And more recently, Wal-Mart promised to donate $1.5 million to the University of Arkansas for a study on how retailers can cut greenhouse gases and be more environmentally friendly, the largest donation ever for academic research on sustainability issues.

Of course we’re all skeptical of Wal-Mart’s intentions given their record on labor practices, which prompted Web sites like Wal-Mart Watch (funded by the Sierra Club) and Wake-Up Wal-Mart. But if Werbach can help even a portion of Wal-Mart’s stated environmental goals come to fruition, the impact could be tremendous. With 1.3 million employees and 127 million weekly customers, the company has great potential and power to drive change.

It seems to me that an essential step in the greening of America is for someone from the Green Team to infiltrate the greatest influencers in rural, less environmentally aware America, and that’s definitely Wal-Mart. No one seems to question Wal-Mart’s power and influence - Environmental Defense opened an office in Bentonville (where Wal-Mart is headquartered) to work with the company, though it takes no money, and Al Gore has also made visits to meet with executives and even played An Inconvenient Truth for the group - but Werbach believes that by taking a paid position he’ll earn more access and more respect within the company. He believes it so much that he’s risking his reputation and lifelong career. I have to say, I respect the sacrifices he’s made to pursue such unfavored yet ambitious goals and I hope we see at least some of them achieved.

This is such a cool idea, and a great example of how technology, creativity and social media can help raise awareness for the environment. Blog Action Day is one day - October 15th - that will unite all bloggers and ask them to write about environmental topics. Every blogger will post about the environment in relation to their own blog focus and interests. The event is being organized by a team of bloggers and Eden Creative Communities. Currently, there are 2,272 bloggers signed up to participate that reach an estimated audience of 1,126,690. That’s a strong voice with an important message to communicate. To register your blog and get involved, click here.

Shopping with reusable bags has become quite chic these days! TIME magazine’s August 13th issue has a great article on using eco-friendly designer totes as replacements to the plastic shopping bag, as does a recent Seattle Times article. Even fashion-focused magazines such as Vogue, Vanity Fair and Domino have recently included features not only about eco-friendly fashion and furnishings, but on the very practical practice of bringing your own reusable bags on shopping trips to the mall, grocery store and on everyday errands. While I’m not embracing the idea of spending $1,700 on a Louis Vuitton tote bag, I do think it’s great when cool designers like Stella McCartney get on board to make environmentalism fashionable and approachable for a wider audience. Though I still prefer my super stylish Trader Joe’s canvas bag.

TIME’s article shared some enlightening statistics on plastic bag usage:
• The average U.S. family of four uses 1,460 plastic bags every year.
• 88.5 billion plastic bags were consumed in the U.S. last year.
• 12 million barrels of oil are used to make the plastic bags consumed in the U.S. annually.
• An estimated 500 billion plastic bags are sold worldwide every year.
• Less than 1% of all plastic bags are recycled in the U.S.
• Plastic bags take an estimated 1,000 years to decompose.

I sure hope numbers like these encourage consumers to reuse and recycle bags more often. I try to bring my own containers for shopping and takeout dining, use my own coffee mug for my daily latte, bring a plastic bag to pick up lunch – we all have them lying around our home and office – and use a washable water bottle instead of regularly buying bottled water… Of course, these are little things, but can help offset our massive consumption. Some companies are compensating consumers for their environmentally friendly efforts, like when you bring your own bag to Trader Joe’s you’re entered into a raffle for a $50 gift certificate. And, my favorite lunch spot, SF Soup Company, sells reusable bowls and gives $.20 off your soup purchase when you bring it back for a refill. Not a huge incentive, but we don’t do it for the kick back.