Paper or plastic? Diesel or hybrid? Extrude or blow-mold? Some of the most difficult problems in designing sustainable products involve making the right choices in materials, processes and transportation methods. However, choosing the options that will actually have a lower environmental impact is much more complex that one would think.
Deciding what metrics to use, where to draw the boundaries and how to compare wildly different materials is a highly involved and technical art known as Life-Cycle Analysis, or LCA. Sustainable Minds, a Boston-based software company, is making LCA much more accessible to designers with its new web-based software service. I was recently able to see the software in action at a seminar entitled, “Mastering Environmental Impact Assessment in the Design Process”
As Pratt Institute professor and ecologist Christopher X J. Jensen, Ph.D., explains, while quantitative methods, such as LCA are the best ways to measure the environmental impact of a product, these methods need to be applied by scientists, and do not jibe well with the qualitative methods generally used by designers to evaluate the aesthetics of a product design.
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.
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.
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.
A new report by The Climate Group on behalf of the Global eSustainability Initiative (GeSI) suggests that global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can be reduced up to 15% over “business-as-usual” by applying Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to the power generation and transportation sectors.
This show seems really interesting, and timely. I hope we get to see it in the U.S., or at least I can order it from Netflix.
“Burn Up” is a high stakes conspiracy thriller set against the backdrop of the oil industry. It is a story that mirrors the world in which we live and where we struggle to be both economically successful and globally responsible.”
“Burn Up” is a Trojan horse of a story. It delivers an eviscerating tale where the stakes are terrifyingly real and the climate issues, the intrigue, the global politics, the back room dealings and the espionage are happening today in our world.”
In the book ” Collapse“, Jared Diamond outlines 12 major problems which threaten human civilization: destruction of natural habitats, depletion of wild foods (fish, etc), loss of genetic diversity, soil erosion, fossil fuel depletion, shortage of fresh water, the photosynthetic ceiling (100% use of the sun’s energy for human purposes), pollution from toxic chemicals, species transfer, global warming due to human activity, population growth and the rising per-capita impact of population. He goes on to state that “our world society is on a non-sustainable course, and any of our 12 problems of non-sustainability…would suffice to limit our lifestyle within the next several decades. They are like time bombs with fuses of less than 50 years.” No one problem stands out as greater than all of the rest. “If we solved 11 of the problems, but not the 12th, we would still be in trouble, whichever was the problem that remained unsolved. We have to solve them all.”
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...
Some of the most difficult problems in designing sustainable products involve making the right choices in materials, processes and transportation methods. However, choosing the options that will actually have a lower environmental impact is much more complex that one would think.
Martin Melaver, author of the new book, 
Tropicana is attempting to put the squeeze on rainforest logging with its 
In the book ” 
