Martin Melaver, author of the new book, Living Above the Store, is something of a rarity for an author of a sustainable business text: someone who actually has decades of experience doing the work to create a socially-responsible business. Which is very lucky for us, because while many books claim to be able to teach us how to do it, very few can do so with the wisdom of experience on their side. The result is an honest and forthright look at what it really takes for shape and maintain values-based business in a very traditional industry.
Melaver is CEO of Melaver, Inc.-a third-generation, family-owned company based in Savannah, Georgia. Through a series of personal anecdotes, Melaver explains, in detail, how a small corner grocery store evolved into a major regional chain, eventually transforming itself into a real estate company focused on sustainable development and management. The fact that this happened was not by accident: all along its seventy-year history, the company chose to pursue a values-based path, even when it meant making difficult choices.
It’s amazing how cheap. diposable products and waste have crept into even our oldest traditions. It’s insidious. I’m talking about the commencement ceremonies that are happening at every high school, college and university at this time of year. Even my own graduation, a ceremony meant to celebrate the achievement of people dedicated to sustainability and building a world that works for future generations, was rife with single-use items that were never intended to be that way.
I don’t blame the institutions, which, by necessity, are obligated to provide their students and their loved ones with a ceremony befitting of their hard work and investments in time and money. I don’t blame the students, faculty, family and staff who have these expectations either. We certainly should not be in the business of sacrificing the things that mean the most to us in the process of achieving a sustainable world.
It all comes down to a matter of perceived cost. Most of the items currently used are very cheaply made because graduation is seen as a very rare occurrence: why spend a lot of money on something that will only happen once a year for the institution, and only a handful of times for the graduate?
Not to mention the fact that the regalia is not exactly everyday wear. Even a bridesmaid’s dress might be remade into a cocktail dress that might get worn after the big day, but graduation gowns are never seen outside of a graduation ceremony.
One of the more interesting themes at the Greener by Design 2009 Conference is how some companies are reducing waste by turning their product packaging into reusable products. From the manufacturer end, Hewlett-Packard is leading the charge, with unique packaging solutions for its Voodoo line of high-performance laptops and for a line of products being sold at Wal-Mart.
Voodoo, recently acquired by HP, delivers ultra-high-performance gaming machines with a slick, minimalist aesthetic reminiscent of Apple products. Hewlett-Packard Creative Director Mark Solomon explained that the company wanted to design a unique packaging solution that would reduce waste while also increasing the value of the open-box experience for their customers. They wanted a solution that was as unique as the laptops themselves.
Ford Motor Company announced that it is investing $550 million to transform its Michigan Assembly Plant into a lean, green and flexible manufacturing complex that will build Ford’s next-generation Focus global small car along with a new battery-electric version of the Focus for the North American market. The plant, formerly the production site for Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigators SUVs, is one of three North American light truck plants Ford is retooling to build fuel-efficient small cars in the coming years.
This transformation will not only be a shift in the plant’s focus from large SUVs to small cars, it will also include more efficient assembly methods, more ergonomic design to improve working conditions, and an agreement with the United Auto Workers that implements new operating practices to improve quality and efficiency based on joint problem solving and continuous improvement .
Citizen journalism, open government, status updates, community building, information sharing, crowdsourcing, and the election of a President.
Editor’s note: This is the first guest post from Max Gladwell.
Our children will inherit a world profoundly changed by the combination of technology and humanity that is social media. They’ll take for granted that their voices can be heard and that a social movement can be launched from their laptop. They’ll take for granted that they are connected and interconnected with hundreds of millions of people at any given moment. And they’ll take for granted that a black man is or was President of the United States.
What’s most profound is that these represent parts of a greater whole. They represent a shift in power from centralized institutions and organizations to the People they represent. It is the evolution of democracy by way of technology, and we are all better for it.
For most of us, social media has changed our lives in some meaningful way. Collectively it is changing the world for good. Given the pace of innovation and adoption, change has become a constant. Every so often we find the need to stop and reflect on its most recent and noteworthy developments, hence the following list.
Please note this is not a top-10 list, nor are these listed in any particular order. It’s also incomplete. So we ask that you add to this conversation in the comments. If you’d like to Retweet this post or take the conversation to Twitter or FriendFeed, please use the hashtag #10Ways.
1. Take Social Actions: The nonprofit organization Social Actions aggregates “opportunities to make a difference from over 50 online platforms” through its unique API. It recently held the Change the Web Challenge contest in order to inspire the most innovative applications for that API. The Social Actions Interactive Map won the $5,000 first prize. The result is a virtual tour of the world through the lens of social action. “People are volunteering, donating, signing petitions, making loans and doing other social actions as we speak — all over the world. To capture the context of the where, this project uses sophisticated techniques to extract location information from full text paragraphs.” You can also join the Social Actions Community, which is powered by Ning…which now boasts more than one million individual social networks.
2. Twitter with a Purpose: This list could be exclusive to Twitter. The micro-blogging sensation was featured on our first two lists (a three-tweet), and it’s certain to be a fixture. From Tweetsgiving, the virtual Thanksgiving feast, to the Twestival, which organized 202 off-line events around the world to benefit charity: water, it’s become the de facto tool for organizing and taking action. Tweet Congress won the SXSW activism award, and celebrity Tweeps Ashton Kutcher and Kevin Rose Tweeted their two million followers about ending malaria. Max Gladwell recently initiated the #EcoMonday follow meme as a way to connect and organize the Green Twittersphere.
3. Visit White House 2.0: Inside of its first 100 days, the Obama administration has managed to set the historic benchmark for government transparency and accountability. The President’s virtual town hall meeting used WhiteHouse.gov to crowdsource questions from his 300 million constituents, complete with voting to determine the ones he’d have to answer. All told, 97,937 people submitted 103,978 questions and cast 1,782,650 votes. The White House continues to raise the bar with its official Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter channels. In so doing President Obama is not just setting the standard for state and local government in the U.S. He’s establishing the world standard. The Obama administration is spreading democracy not by force but through example. Because you don’t have to be an American citizen to be a friend or follower of White House 2.0.
4. Claim your Zumbox: What happens when all mail can be sent and delivered online to any street address in a paperless form? That’s the big question for Zumbox, which has created an online mail system with a digital mailbox for every U.S. street address. And while the answer to that question remains to be seen, it promises to be as liberating as it is disruptive. A key quality for Zumbox is that it’s closed system much like that of Facebook, only instead of true identity it’s true address. This will enable people to better connect with their communities including their neighbors, local businesses, and the mayor’s office. The primary agent of change, though, might not be that this uses street addresses but that it enables direct and potentially viral feedback, which is a virtue that e-mail and the USPS do not offer. The first methods are to request exclusive paperless delivery and to block a sender, but others are certain to evolve such as real-time commenting and ways to share mail with friends, family, and colleagues. Welcome to Mail 2.0. (Disclosure: Zumbox is a client of Rob Reed, the founder of Max Gladwell.)
5. Host a Social Media Event: This is the year of the social media event. No meaningful gathering of people is complete without an interactive online audience, especially when it’s so easy and cost effective to pull off. Essential tools include a broadband connection, laptop, video camera, projector, and screen. Add people and a purpose, such as entrepreneurship. Promote it through social media channels, and you have a social media event. A recent example in the green world is the Evolution of Green, which was hosted by Creative Citizen, a green wiki community. It celebrated the launch of a new Web property, EcoMatters, while also establishing a new Twitter tag. By posing the question, “How can we go from green hype to green habit?” and including the #GreenQ hashtag, it sparked a conversation between attendees and the Twittersphere in real time. Thus was born a new mechanism for getting answers to green questions via Twitter.
6. Travel the World: More than anyone else, Tim O’Reilly knows the potential for social media to change the world. In his opening keynote at this year’s Web 2.0 Expo, he called for a new ethic in which we do more with less and create more value than we capture. This provided the context for SalaamGarage founder Amanda Koster, whose presentation followed O’Reilly’s. The idea is that social media has enabled each of us to have an audience. Whether through Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, or a personal blog, each of us can have influence and reach. What’s more, it can be used for good. SalaamGarage coordinates trips for citizen journalists (that means you) to places like India and Vietnam in conjunction with non-government organizations like Seattle-based Peace Trees. The destination is the story, as these humanitarian journalists report on the people they meet and discoveries they make. Their words, images, and video are posted to the social web to gain exposure and because these stories just need to be told.
7. Build It on Drupal: You may not have noticed, but the open-source Drupal content management system (CMS) has quickly become the dominant player on the social web. While we still prefer WordPress as a strict blogging application, Drupal has emerged as the go-to platform for building scalable, community-driven Web sites. It powers Recovery.gov, a key part of President Obama’s commitment to transparency and accountability. PopRule uses it as a social news platform for politics. And Drupal will soon become the platform for Causecast, a site where “media, philanthropy, social networking, entertainment and education converge to serve a greater purpose.” This is especially significant because Causecast CEO Ryan Scott is transitioning the site off of Ruby on Rails because Drupal has proved more efficient, user friendly, and cost effective. (Disclosure: Max Gladwell founder Rob Reed is co-founder of PopRule.)
8. Green Your iPhone: Looking for an organic diner within biking distance that has a three-star green rating? There’s a app for that. It’s called 3rd Whale, and you can download it for free. (Except that the star rating is actually a whale rating.) Complete with Facebook Connect, this iPhone app locates green products and businesses in 30 major North American cities. It uses the iPhone’s dial function to select a category (food), sub-category (restaurants), and distance (walking, biking, or driving). In Santa Monica, this might give you Swingers diner for its selection of veggie and vegan fare. You could then get directions from your current location using the iPhone’s built-in Google map, rate your experience on the three-whale scale, and write up a quick review. 3rd Whale recently released a new feature that integrates green-living tips, which can show how much energy or waste you’ll save by taking a given action.
9. Unite the World Through Video: Matt’s dancing around the world video inspired many to tears. Today, more than 20 million people have viewed his YouTube masterpiece, where he performs a kooky dance with the citizens of planet earth. The most recent example of this approach is Playing for Change, which connects the world through song. The project started in Santa Monica with a street performance of the classic Stand By Me and expanded to New Orleans, New Mexico, France, Brazil, Italy, Venezuela, South Africa, Spain, and The Netherlands. The project was superbly executed via social media, complete with a YouTube channel, MySpace, Facebook, and Blog. It’s received tremendous mainstream media exposure and also benefits a foundation of the same name.
10. Rate a Company: The conversation about corporate social responsibility (CSR) takes place across the social web on blogs, Twitter, and YouTube, but a central hub for this information and opinion is still to be determined. SocialYell seeks to address this by building an online community around the CSR conversation, where users can submit reviews of companies together with nonprofit organizations and even public figures like Michelle Obama. The major topics are the Environment, Health, Social Equity, Consumer Advocacy, and Charity. The reviews are voted and commented on by the community in a Reddit-like fashion with both up (Yell) and down (shhh) voting. The site is relatively new and still gaining traction, but there’s no question that a resource like this is needed to shine a bright light on CSR and and other related issues.
11. Publish a collective, simultaneous blog post on a universal topic: As Nigel Tufnel might say, this list goes to eleven. Let the #10Ways conversation begin…
Final note: This is Max Gladwell’s third list of “10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media.” The first was posted a year ago today on Sustainablog.org, and the sequel followed five months later. If a single headline can capture the Max Gladwellraison d’etre, this is it.
Making your life more eco-efficient is kind of like losing weight: you have to stay motivated until you start to see results. If you are not seeing results, you are likely to get discouraged and eat the next doughnut that comes along. When that happens, you need someone to remind you to get back on track. When it comes to sustainability, Going Green Today wants to be your personal sustainability coach.
The mission of Going Green Today is simple: get 35% of the U.S. population to make lifestyle changes: “Why 35%?: If 35% of the U.S. population participates in the GGT green coaching program, we can reduce our nation’s emissions to the levels the Kyoto protocols asked for without government and big business.”
But the company actually takes it one step further than that: 50% of the $29 enrollment fee is donated to organizations working to stop global warming. What do you get for $29? The company promises that, if you complete the coaching program, you will save at least $2000 dollars this year. Recipients of the donated funds currently include organizations like the Rocky Mountain Institute, Conservation International, The NRDC, Co-Op America and The Gifford Pinchot Task Force. Customers get to choose which organization their fees go to.
GGT’s philosophy is that you don’t need to change everything to make a difference in your environmental footprint. You only have to change a little bit. The company helps customers figure out what they need to change, and then guides them through the process.
After creating an account, you are guided through an extensive lifestyle survey, with the now-familiar questions about driving distance, lightbulb density, etc. The result is your customized action plan, which you are asked whether you would like to complete your plan in 30, 60 or 90 days.
You can opt to receive daily emails, which remind you to view your personal profile page, which allows you to view statistics on what you have accomplished so far, along with daily, weekly and full views of the plan.
The most important page is “Today’s Action”, which will give you one or two simple actions that you can complete that day, along with some background information on why you should do it, and how much you will save. As you complete each task, you check off appropriate box, and you will see your savings tally go up.
I signed up a few days ago, and my first task was titled “Neighborhood Knowing”, which encouraged me to go to go to WalkScore.com to get the Walk Score for my neighborhood as my first task (unfortunately for me, this only depressed me, because my walk score is 14 out of 100, which means that I can’t walk to anything, something I already knew). This week’s remaining tasks include “Hit the Co-Op”, “Bulk Up” (buying in bulk), “Seasonal Offerings”, “Coffee Without the Waste” and “In and Out” (using less water).
I think that Going Green’s approach will ultimately work, because it does not overwhelm you with too many things all at once. The reminders keep you involved with the process, and have you do a little bit each day. Like the Japanese philosophy of “kaizen” or constant improvement, small changes, consistently implemented, can add up to a lot.
Tropicana is attempting to put the squeeze on rainforest logging with its Rescue the Rainforest campaign and its recently-announced partnership with CoolEarth. To increase awareness of the problem, the company has launched a new flash game called Rainforest Rescue.
The game lets you save the rainforest by playing the role of some very enterprising monkeys who happen to have acquired medieval siege technology (i.e., a slingshot), and have begun bombarding the encroaching loggers with acid-based chemical weapons (i.e., Oranges). Unfortunately for the monkeys, it appears that deforestation has left them with a deformity that causes one eye to be much bigger than the other, messing with their aim. That’s why they need your help. Luckily for you, the loggers are hell-bent on destruction. Like simple-minded storm troopers, they eagerly advance towards their sweet but sticky demise.
Prepare to be frustrated: Actually hitting the loggers is excruciatingly hard at first, but, after a few games gets much easier. Hint: use a shallow angle. All in all, it’s good, clean, juicy, logger-killing fun!
This article was originally posted on TriplePundit.
The annoucement of the new Tesla sports sedan had pundits from across the interweb gushing abut its sleek styling, range, charging times, and cargo capacity. The car sports smooth, aerodynamic curves, with a look reminiscent of high-end BMWs or Mercedes.
According to the company’s technical specifications, the Model S boasts the following:
- 300 mile range: This may be the most impressive and important statistic, but it comes with a few caveats. The lowest-cost Model S will only include a 160-mile battery pack, with 230- and 300-mile packs available at higher cost. However, the company is touting the ability to swap battery packs (”5-minute battery swap”), and may be planning on leasing the packs to customers for longer trips, although details are sketchy. Even a 160 or 230 mile range would make the Model S perfect for all but the longest of daily trips, especially since most drivers will start each day with a fully-charged vehicle, and most trips are well below this range. - 45 minute charging time: According to the press release: “The Model S, which carries its charger onboard, can be recharged from any 120V, 240V or 480V outlet, with the latter taking only 45 minutes. By recharging their car while they stop for a meal, drivers can go from LA to New York in approximately the same time as a gasoline car.” This is not exactly true, at least not in 2009. To achieve the 45-minute charging time, you need a 480V charging station, none of which are publicly available. At the slightly-more-accessible 240V, the charging speed is a more leisurely 4 hours. It seems that Tesla is counting on leasing the swappable battery packs as an interim solution, until public charging stations are as common as gas or diesel. - Seats 7(!): Once again, not really. It’s more like a “5+2 really small ones”. There is space for 2 rear-facing child seats in the rear hatch. While this sounds a little odd, by todays standards, it reminds me of the jump seats in my parents station wagon, and I’m sure the kiddies will love it. - 0 to 60 in “under 6 seconds”: While the Model S will probably not be winning any drag races, one still has to remember that electric motors produce all their torque right away, and the power band is continuous. This should make for quite a nice driving experience. - Storage Space: Locating the drivetrain and battery pack in the floor frees up cargo space where a typical engine would be, and the Model S combines that with a hatchback design and 60/40 split fold down seats. I could not find specific measurements, but the company claims that the Model S can carry a “mountain bike, 50-inch flat-screen TV, full drum set or futon frame”, and has cargo space comparable to an SUV.
The $49,000 (after a $7,500 government rebate) price tag may seem pretty high, but Tesla is highlighting the fact that greatly-reduced fuel costs and reduced maintenance costs bring the Model S more in line with vehicles in the $35,000 range.
Leading the Pack
There was another announcement this week that startup Detroit Electric (an ironic choice of names-the company is based in the U.K.) will be partnering with Malaysia-based Proton to deliver a much more basic all-electric car to the US by the end of 1999 and priced under $33,000. Detroit Electric has an aggressive sales projection of 270,000 cars by 2012, and, if it can meet that goal it would certainly be well ahead of the Tesla’s 2011 delivery date and 20,000 unit per year sales target. It would also be definitive proof that the mass-produced, highway-capable electric car is an accepted, mainstream product.
I think that the announcement by Detroit Electric will only help Tesla, and also helps solidify Tesla’s position as an industry leader. Tesla’s strategy has always been twofold: focus first on building cars for wealthy early-adopters, and build cars that capture the imagination of the public through styling and performance. The former helps pay for technology development, while the later builds Tesla’s brand image and creates a new perception of what an electric car can be. Both pave the way for Tesla, and other manufacturers, to be able to sell progressively lower-priced vehicles to a growing cadre of buyers.
Taking into account the bad news about the US auto industry, along with Tesla’s and Detroit Electric’s announcements, we may look back upon this as the week that the internal combustion engine finally “jumped the shark.“
What do you think? Is this week’s news sounding the death knell of the internal combustion engine and the Big Three?
Today, TriplePundit is reporting a potential major breakthrough in Lithium-Ion battery technology, which was published by “Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Professor Gerbrand Ceder and graduate student Byoungwoo Kang”. The technology breakthrough, if true, would represent a huge benefit to electronics manufacturers, especially electronic vehicle producers.
According to the article:
“lithium ions can only pass through tunnels to the active electrode material when they’re perfectly positioned. In the absence of a few good traffic cops, it’s pandemonium. The solution, Ceder discovered, is to engineer the material with a so-called beltway system that guides the ions towards the tunnel entrances at an ideal angle.”
The most exciting part of Ceder’s paper is that, “because only slight modifications to li-ion manufacturing process are required, Professor Ceder is confident that the new battery material could be on the market within two or three years.”
This is very exciting stuff, because it will allow companies like Tesla Motors, Toyota and even Ford to build cars with longer range and longer battery life, both limiting factors in competing with traditional gas-powers cars.
Depending how much more efficient this technology allows lithium-ion batteries to be, it may also allow electronics to become smaller and produce less waste. It may also overcome another potential problem with lithium-ion technology, the scarcity of cobalt.
TriplePundit goes on to explain another very important benefit of this technology as applied to automobiles:
“Battery-powered vehicles…can work as mobile energy storage centers that smooth a potentially-bumpy renewable supply. Millions of these cars and trucks will eventually work in tandem with power companies through vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology, providing energy to the grid when demand is high, and recharging overnight when power generators have excess capacity, but nowhere to put it. Since electricity supply from renewable sources fluctuates by its very nature, PHEVs and EVs will make it easier to plug those power sources into the grid, heralding a era of clean energy.”
This is reiterating one of the central ideas in the Natural Capitalism philosophy. Vehicles become batteries which stabilize and distribute the electric power grid and enable emerging technologies like solar and wind power to become more viable, by allowing them to produce and store power that can not be utilized right away, thus removing one of the major stopping blocks to growth in the renewable energy field.
I view this of one example of how crucial technological innovations are to solving the climate change and other major challenges. By forcing us to innovate or die, past crisises, such as the two world wars. have produced technological breakthroughs that ensured hummanitiy’s survival, and I expect this crisis to be solved in a similar manner.
The appropriately-named Institue for the Future, a future forecasting and trend research think tank, held its first co-working session last Friday, and I jumped on the chance to attend. Not only have I been looking for good places to co-work, so I can be around intelligent, like-minded people, but I am a big fan of IFTF, which is one of two organizations in the Bay area dedicated to helping companies navigate the future (the other being Global Business Network). And, if you know me…I’m all about the future.
The event was hosted by Sean Ness, Business Development Manager and the Institute’s Twitter voice. Sean welcomed a diverse group of really interesting people, including Matt Everingham from the California Space Authority. It turns out that Matt works with NASA’s Centennial Challenges program, which “was established to conduct prize competitions in support of the Vision for Space Exploration and ongoing NASA programs.” These challenges are similar to the ANSARI X PRIZE, won by Burt Rutan, which encouraged the first-ever private suborbital space flight. NASA is currently hosting several of these challenges, including the Tether and Power Beam Challenges, both of which are designed to support development of a space elevator, which could be called the “holy grail” of space launch platforms.
Being the geeks-at-heart that we are, this lead to a lively discussion about the likelihood and feasibility of a space elevator. While I am a devout believer that the space elevator is an inevitability, Sean was of the opinion that the technological hurdles are far to great, specifically the problem of where the mass to build the elevator would come from, and whether or not it would need to be built down from a geostationary orbit, or up from the ground. This being one of my favorite subjects, I promised to send him unequivocal internet research that shows just how viable a space elevator is.
For those unfamiliar with the concept, a space elevator is a structure designed to lift payloads from the Earth’s (or other planet’s) surface to space without the use of rockets. While the concept of a tower reaching into space was first proposed by Konstantin Tsilokovsky in 1895, most modern designs center around a super-strength cable or tether which reaches from the Earth’s surface to a counterweight placed in a geostationary orbit.
Imagine a rock tied to the end of a string and swinging it around your head, and you get the idea. By removing the need for heavy rockets and propellants, a space elevator could reduce the cost of lifting a payload into space from approximately $11,000/kg to around $200/kg.
Many were first introduced to the idea of Space elevators by Arthur C. Clarke’s 1980 novel Fountains of Paradise. In 1992, the space elevator played a crucial role in Kim Stanley Robinson’s very popular Mars trilogy, in which space elevators are built on both Earth and Mars. According to Ben Shelef, co-founder of the Spaceward Foundation,
In his last years, Sir Arthur C. Clarke predicted that the space elevator will be built “about 10 years after everyone stops laughing”. I believe people will stop laughing once a proper tether is demonstrated, and we think that this will happen within 5 to 10 years. Hopefully that means about 15 to 20 years before the first launch.
Accepted estimates were that the space elevator could not be built for at least 300 years. Colleagues have stated that based on our effort an elevator could be operational in 30 to 50 years. Our estimate is that the space elevator could be operational in 15 years for $10B. In any case, our effort has enabled researchers and engineers to debate the possibility of a space elevator operating in 15 to 50 years rather than 300…Because of NIAC funding the space elevator is now a viable system that is well on its way to becoming reality. The return on the $570k NIAC investment could eventually become trillions of dollars annually and provide an energy-starved world with clean unlimited power, dramatically improved communications, new resources, new worlds to live on and the ability to understand our planet and the solar system around us at a level impossible with conventional rockets.
The main reason that constructing a space elevator on Earth is not currently possible is due to the fact that no material exists in quantity that is strong enough to build a cable that can withstand the enormous forces. However, it has been proposed that a cable constructed out of carbon nanotubes would be strong enough. Carbon nanotubes have been created in the laboratory and are only now being produced in industrial quantities. Demand for carbon nanotubes is expected to increase 178% from 2004-2011.
Now that sufficient quantities of carbon nanotubes are becoming available, the next step is to produce a composite material from them which is long enough to work work with. Carbon nanotubes, by themselves, are too short to be woven into a cable. Therefore, they will need to be formed into a composite material similar to carbon fiber, but much stronger. This goal appears to be well within the reach of our current scientific capabilities, and, once achieved, the door will be wide open to complete the space elevator.
This scientific article outlines, in detail, the feasibility requirements for building the space elevator. The conclusion: a space elevator is very difficult to accomplish, but feasible.
How would it be built?
The proposed design for the space elevator would consist of a very thin ribbon of carbon nanotube composite material, 62,000 miles long, 8 inches wide and as thin as paper. According to Edwards’ research, construction of the ribbon is the most critical piece, and, while it would be a major engineering achievement, is not beyond current technologies. The ribbon would be launched into orbit via four expendable rockets, and then attached to the orbital platform.
Although I could not find many specifics on construction, most literature suggests that it would be lowered through the atmosphere from the space station to the Earth. According to the LiftPort Group:
Once the initial “seed” ribbon is in place, the system will bootstrap itself by lifting new ribbon into orbit and adding it to the initial ribbon. This process will take at least 16 months to scale the ribbon up to a commercially useful capacity.
This method is analogous to how suspension bridges are constructed. The ribbon would be attached on the Earth to a custom-built ocean platform, located near the equator.
Once built, robotic “climbers” would ascend the cable and would be powered via a laser, which would send a highly focused beam of light to solar panels located on the climber (The laser is to be focused in a such a way as to be harmless to birds or aircraft). Being freed of burden of carrying their own fuel is what makes the whole thing work: climbers are low-mass and high-efficiency. They are expected to carry 13 tons each trip, and each space elevator will carry around 1,000 tons of material to space each year.
Why do we need one?
The space elevator promises cheap, easy access to space. This can be utilized in any number of ways, such as the following:
Of course, I have to point out the sustainability and environmental benefits from all of this. My personal favorites are orbital solar power stations and removing space debris. But there are a few more. How about reducing emissions from rocket launches? While not a huge factor now, reducing rocket emissions will becomes important as more and more private companies, such as Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and SpaceX, enter the market for space. A space elevator would render rocket-based technologies economically uncompetitive.
Perhaps the biggest benefit, and the most long-term, would be making space available to the average person. Once the price of access to space comes down to a certain range, people will begin to think about the possibility of colonizing places such as Earth-orbiting space stations or Mars. Since the biggest factor contributing to biosphere degradation is population, giving human beings somewhere else to go can create a sort of “relief valve” for the planet. Not to mention the fact that, as Stephen Hawking has suggested, it wouldn’t hurt to have a second human-inhabited planet, just in case some unknown catastrophe does come to pass on the first one.
The bottom line
It’s interesting to note that this space elevator proposal is a real design that can be implemented with technology expected to be available within a few short years, and for only $10 billion dollars! There are real companies, such as the LiftPort Group, working right now to make it happen. As outlandish as it may sound, a space elevator is an elegant, efficient, reliable and safe choice for lifting cargo into space. My feeling is that NASA and other space agencies should cease pursuing 1950s-era rocket-based solutions in favor of a space elevator. As with many ideas that started off in a science fiction story, this one is quickly becoming science fact.
Steve Puma is a sustainability and strategy consultant, technologist and writer. He lives with his wife Cori and pug dog Miles in Northern California. More...
Martin Melaver, author of the new book, Living Above the Store, is something of a rarity for an author of a sustainable business text: someone who actually has decades of experience doing the work to create a socially-responsible business. Which is very lucky for us, because while many books claim to be able to teach us how to do it, very few can do so with the wisdom of experience on their side. The result is an honest and forthright look at what it really takes for shape and maintain values-based business in a very traditional industry.
1. Take Social Actions: The nonprofit organization 
2. Twitter with a Purpose: This list could be exclusive to 
3. Visit White House 2.0: Inside of its first 100 days, the Obama administration has managed to set the historic benchmark for government transparency and accountability. The President’s virtual town hall meeting used 
4. Claim your Zumbox: What happens when all mail can be sent and delivered online to any street address in a paperless form? That’s the big question for 
5. Host a Social Media Event: This is the year of the social media event. No meaningful gathering of people is complete without an interactive online audience, especially when it’s so easy and cost effective to pull off. Essential tools include a broadband connection, laptop, video camera, projector, and screen. Add people and a purpose, such as 
6. Travel the World: More than anyone else, Tim O’Reilly knows the potential for social media to change the world. In his opening keynote at this year’s 
7. Build It on Drupal: You may not have noticed, but the open-source 
8. Green Your iPhone: Looking for an organic diner within biking distance that has a three-star green rating? There’s a app for that. It’s called 
9. Unite the World Through Video: Matt’s 
10. Rate a Company: The conversation about corporate social responsibility (CSR) takes place across the social web on blogs, Twitter, and YouTube, but a central hub for this information and opinion is still to be determined. 
Tropicana is attempting to put the squeeze on rainforest logging with its 
