Over the summer, New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg outlined a 33-point plan to improve the MTA’s efficiency (making crosstown buses free, installing “countdown clocks” on subway platforms, creating integrated and contactless “smart cards” for transit riders…). The MTA has now announced plans for more improvements to its bus system.
The MTA will purchase super-stretch buses and will create dedicated bus lanes on First and Second Avenues. Borrowing some bright ideas from the successful TransMilenio bus system of Bogotá- read our profile of TransMilenio from July- the MTA will install curbside MetroCard readers, allowing riders to swipe their cards at bus stops, helping to speed up the boarding process. The city also plans to revamp streets to be “generally more friendly towards pedestrians, buses and bikers.” Included in the proposal is mention of a wireless technology to change red traffic signals green when the bus approaches an intersection.
Time again to give thanks- should there really only be one day set aside for that?- and we’re certainly grateful for the tremendous feedback we’ve received since launching Love Tomorrow Today. As always, we invite you to let us know about programs and people making a difference or tips to incorporating simple change into our daily lives.
Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving! This weekend, remember to reduce, recycle, reuse and…relax! Don’t forget, eating leftovers (delicious, food coma-inducing leftovers) is good for the planet!
A White House official has announced that President Obama will, after all, be attending the global climate conference in Copenhagen next month. The official says the president will attend the conference before heading to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.
As we noted in a post last week, Obama has acknowledged that securing a legally binding climate deal in Copenhagen is very unlikely. The president favors, instead, plans to delay until next year at the earliest. Some have suggested Copenhagen comes one year too soon for Obama, but it’s hard not to see the summit as another occasion in which we’ll talk the talk and not walk the walk.
The administration says it plans to present a target for reducing carbon dioxide emissions in Copenhagen, but it has resisted talking specific numbers without the backing of Congress, which is not expected to pass climate legislation until next year at the soonest.
This time next week, I’ll be just starting to emerge from a turkey coma. Ah tryptophan! My favorite of the essential amino acids! Thanksgiving is, for my money, the best holiday of the year. It’s one we all share- as Americans- and, without the stress of having to find the right presents, the focus is food, family and gratitude. But the holidays can also present certain challenges to sustainable living. For starters, Thanksgiving is the busiest time of the year for US travelers. With all that travel, shopping, cooking and eating…it’s a holiday that produces a lot of waste.
With a few tweaks to your normal routine, it’s possible to save time, money and waste this Thanksgiving. Often, simply being conscious of your consumption guides you towards responsible decisions. According to the Nature Conservancy, an estimated 96 billion pounds of food are discarded nationally every year, 5 million tons of trash during the holiday season alone. So, maybe if no one really finished your homemade pumpkin pie last year, make less this time around! I know, I know, you mistakenly put in a cup of salt instead of a cup of sugar, but, seriously, back away from the stove…!
What’s our point? Well, while some green sites might suggest things like a vegan menu, we know, in reality, you’d probably get expelled from all future family events for a stunt like that. And why drastically change one of the greatest days of the year? As you’re thinking about Thanksgiving, consider all the little decisions that go into the day, and then consider tweaking them. Carpool to your Aunt Barb’s house, or, if you’re flying somewhere, consider offsetting the carbon (roughly $12 for a cross-country flight), where possible buy products with less packaging, and don’t forget the best part of Thanksgiving…leftovers!
Can a green technology co-op with powers to direct a global transition away from carbon-heavy technology be successful? That’s one of the questions participating countries will wrestle with at next month’s climate conference in Copenhagen. Much of the focus in Copenhagen, and beyond, will center on the need to slash CO2 emissions, but the path to achieving those goals must eventually lead through this complex gateway, a worldwide transition to green technology (such as wind power, solar, energy efficiency/waste prevention measures).
How does such a transition take place? Some are suggesting a new central executive, political body, within the existing UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, should have powers to command a coordinated clean tech roll out.
Not surprisingly, the United States and many European countries want any such body to be an advisory committee. As Alok Jha explains in The Guardian, “their main concern is that a strong political body may end up channeling funds into state enterprises rather than keeping a level playing field for all businesses.” Meanwhile, Jha writes, “developing countries say an advisory body would have little power to drive the dramatic changes needed.”
The momentum (at least rhetorical momentum) for battling climate change has gone global. What remains, however, is for the world to formulate a coordinated plan for phasing out high-carbon economies and transitioning towards greener ones. Expectations are low, but we’ll be watching closely to see if any progress is made in Copenhagen.
For these posts, we try to search the world for innovative green ideas so you don’t have to. Every once in a while we’ll come across something that doesn’t necessarily fit our charge but, as with the above video, catches our imagination nonetheless. The two minute commercial for Honda’s Accord station wagon (which, incidentally, isn’t available in this country) is entitled “cog“, and features over 85 individual parts of the Accord which precisely and intricately “knock on to” and interact with one another to form a complex chain reaction. From ad agency Wieden + Kennedy UK Ltd, the spot dates back to 2002 and has since picked up a long list of industry accolades.
Where’s the green angle? Is it a stretch to say this campaign, that Wieden + Kennedy called Honda’s ‘Power of Dreams,’ captures the precision and creative spirit of the brand? Is it a stretch to suggest it’s that same spirit that fuels green innovation at Honda (see our numerous posts on the Japanese automaker, including First Hybrid Under $20K, Demand For Hybrids Keeps Honda & Toyota On Toes, Honda’s Self-balancing Unicycle)? It might be. So, just enjoy the video.
John Cusack has been in some good movies. Grosse Pointe Blank, High Fidelity, Better Off Dead, Being John Malkovich, all very solid. He’s also been in some real clunkers (Pushing Tin anyone?). His new movie 2012, based on the purported ancient Maya prediction that the world will end on December 21, 2012, just opened and seems to have hit a nerve.
When it comes to the environment, pessimism abounds, and worst case scenarios are often described to ward off indifference and inaction. The National Geographic Channel has specialized in the ‘life after mankind’ sort of shows that depict those outcomes in entertaining (and frightening) ways. But what about this Mayan myth of the apocalypse? And does anyone care about the new John Cusack movie?
The answer to the second question is, apparently, lots of people. 2012 had the biggest box office opening of the year, despite the fact that the film seems to be a melding of the director’s previous movies (The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day). What does it say that so many people are drawn in by 2 hrs and 38 mins about the end of the world? Is it the wall to wall special effects- which look like popcorn spectacular at its popcorniest? Or could it be that people are genuinely sensitive to the planet in decline?
Getting back to the question about the actual myth…, could the world really meet its end in 2012—”drowned in apocalyptic floods, walloped by a secret planet, seared by an angry sun, or thrown overboard by speeding continents?” The good people at the National Geographic Channel are helping debunk the myth.
They went to people like David Morrison, senior scientist with the NASA Astrobiology Institute, for answers. People are “genuinely frightened,” says Morrison. “I’ve had two teenagers who were considering killing themselves, because they didn’t want to be around when the world ends,” he said. “Two women in the last two weeks said they were contemplating killing their children and themselves so they wouldn’t have to suffer through the end of the world.”
Ok, these people are crazy. Just putting it out there.
With the help of scientists like Morrison, NatGeo explains away six of the predicted 2012 cataclysms.
Skeptics of green innovation (and, yeah, somehow there still are a few of those) often point to the bottom line as a reason for questioning sustainability’s ‘bang for the buck.’ For those people, we present the following example; researchers in Scotland have engineered bacteria to detect land mines.
Data suggests that 20,000 people are killed each year by land mines, scattered in over 87 countries worldwide. Securing these land mines is a dangerous and painstaking process, but more dangerous is the fact that many of them remain hidden. Researchers at the University of Edinburgh are modifying strains of bacteria that can detect the presence of explosives.
The bacteria glows green- so, this really is ‘green innovation’- in the presence of explosives, easing detection. The research team states that after a few hours of spraying affected fields, the bacteria starts to glow showing the presence of explosives.
In an effort to give fledgling ‘plug-in’ technology a fighting chance, a group of industry CEOs are supporting a proposal to roll-out electric vehicles in eight cities to demonstrate viability in those markets.
The so-called Electricifcation Coalition, which includes the CEOs of Nissan Motor, FedEx, PG&E, and battery maker A123 Systems, held a press conference in Washington, D.C. on Monday to make their that light-duty electric vehicles are the only technology that can cut oil imports and reduce carbon emissions in the near term. The group laid out a roadmap (click for link) prescribing what’s required to make electric cars available at large scale.
The Electrification Coalition calls for a “foothold strategy.” Up to eight cities would create a number of incentives for electric vehicles, such as preferential parking and public charging stations. They would apply for government incentives and then test out the system to help bring electric cars to “critical mass,” explained David Crane, the president and CEO of power generator NRG Energy.
In addition to existing federal tax credits, the coalition wants to provide incentives for cities dedicated to bringing in electric vehicles.
President Obama threw in the towel over the weekend. He (and, to be fair, other world leaders) acknowledged that securing a legally binding climate deal at next month’s Copenhagen summit wasn’t likely, favoring plans to delay until next year at the earliest.
After months of politcal wrangling had watered down the ultimate goals of the summit, the announcement is hardly a surprise. Back in July, we attended the Gund Institute’s Solutions conference, a gathering of some of the country’s leading climate change experts (Bill Becker of the Presidential Climate Action Project, Jon Isham of Middlebury College, Hunter Lovins of Natural Capital Solutions and others), many of whom spoke skeptically about the likelihood of achieving a meaningful pact in Denmark.
Instead, we can expect lots of strongly worded proclamations about the importance of curbing emissions, the dangers of ignoring climate change, while diplomats aim for a “politically binding” agreement.
Michael Froman, US deputy national security adviser for economic affairs, explained, “there was a realistic assessment … by the leaders that it was unrealistic to expect a full internationally legally binding agreement to be negotiated between now and when Copenhagen starts in 22 days.”
As Bryan Walsh writes in his piece for Time, “the reason is simple: the deadlock between developed nations and developing ones. Developing nations refuse most responsibility for climate change, arguing that warming is primarily the fault of rich industrialized countries, and want the developed world to take on strict short-term emissions reduction targets. Developed nations, led by the U.S., argue that fast-growing developing nations like China and India will emit the vast majority of future carbon emissions, and that any deal that exempts them from action — as the Kyoto Protocol did — is a farce. Despite months of negotiations in Barcelona, Bangkok and other world cities, that gap remains vast.”
[From The Guardian, Obama says no deal at Copenhagen: 'What's needed is a strong political signal']
Denmark’s prime minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the host and chairman of the climate talks, flew to Singapore to meet with leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit (APEC) and urge them to consider Copenhagen as an important stepping stone towards firmer action.
Froman said Obama supports Rasmussen’s proposal to delay and cautioned the group not to let the “perfect be the enemy of the good.”
While some have suggested Copenhagen comes one year too soon for Obama, it’s hard not to see the summit as another occasion in which we’ll talk the talk and not walk the walk.
We’ve written a number of pieces on the growing range of green initiatives within the U.S. military, from Air Force Academy cadets developing fuel efficient wings to the Army building a massive solar installation in the Mojave Desert. The latest green move comes again from the Army, who has awarded Axion International Holdings a $957,000 contract to provide two bridges made from a thermoplastic composite and recycled plastic.
The two bridges, 40 and 80 feet long respectively, are replacing old wooden ones at Fort Eustis in Virginia and will be made entirely of a plastic composite of recycled materials from consumer and industrial plastic waste.
As Candace Lombardi writes in her piece on CNET, “the location is significant. Fort Eustis is home to the U.S. Army Transportation Corps, the branch of the Army responsible for coordinating the movement of personnel and cargo. The Fort Eustis motto is Einstein’s famous quote “Nothing happens, until something moves.” It’s also the location of the U.S. Army Transportation Museum.”
Axion had previously built plastic bridges for Fort Bragg and Camp Mackall in North Carolina.
Bamboo is one of those enigmas of the environmental movement. Lauded by many as an eco-friendly fabric for it’s fast-growing nature- some types of bamboo can grow a foot per day- bamboo is finding its way into an increasing number of products. Critics of bamboo, however, are quick to distinguish between the growing of bamboo and the manufacturing of bamboo into fabric, in which strong chemical solvents are used to cook the bamboo plant into a viscose solution that is then reconstructed into cellulose fiber for weaving into yarn for fabric. As Warren Mclaren has written in TreeHugger, “very, very little bamboo clothing would qualify as sustainable or organic clothes.”
In her recent piece for the Wall Street Journal, Christina Binkley pokes holes in the green image of “Bamboo Couture.” As she explains,
“Bamboo shows up in clothes sold in Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue, as well as sheets sold at Target, and it bears such deluxe labels as Ermenegildo Zegna, Rag & Bone and Ralph Lauren, as well as more eco-focused brands. Because it is so exotically soft, bamboo is often marketed alongside luxury fibers like silk and cashmere.
Bamboo’s story sounds clear and appealing: like hemp, the plant grows quickly without the irrigation, pesticides or fertilizer often used to grow cotton. It’s often sold as “biodegradable,” and the plant’s antimicrobial properties have been used to market athletic clothes made from the fiber. “People are switching from cotton to bamboo,” says Aarti Doshi, regional manager for bamboo-fabric distributor Doshi Group, based in Mumbai, India.
[Bamboo] fabric is less “eco” and “sustainable” than it seems. The bamboo used in textiles has to be heavily manipulated to go from stem to store. To create fabric, it’s chopped up and dissolved in toxic solvents—the same process that recycles wood scraps into viscose or rayon. Indeed, bamboo fabric technically is rayon.
The Federal Trade Commission sued four small bamboo-clothing manufacturers in August, citing them for false labeling, among other concerns, under the 1958 Textile Fiber Products Identification Act. The companies had used language such as “natural,” “biodegradable,” and “antimicrobial.” But bamboo fabric isn’t natural, the FTC said, since it’s a textile developed by chemists. The agency also said the biodegradable and antimicrobial qualities of the plant don’t survive the manufacturing process.
In a bulletin titled “Have You Been Bamboozled by Bamboo Fabrics?” the FTC said that bamboo fabrics “are made using toxic chemicals in a process that releases pollutants into the air.”
The process used to make bamboo into other products, specifically as a flooring alternative, seems to be less toxic than turning it into fabric. But, it’s clear, the potential for bamboo as a truly sustainable alternative depends, in large part, on these processes being significantly improved. Binkley quotes one designer as saying she is hopeful that the FTC action will encourage scientists to research truly eco-friendly production methods for bamboo, saying, “Bamboo is just in its infancy as a fiber,” the designer tells Binkley, “it’s not even a teenager yet.”
Let’s face it, there’s no good reason to be nostalgic about tape cassettes. It’s like being nostalgic for “life before cell phones.” Nice to contemplate, of course, especially as we wrestle with our gadget addiction, but we’re just better off now. Certainly, without cassettes. I seem to remember always needing a pencil around, to help me uncoil a twisted tape spool. And when one technology becomes obsolete, the question remains as to what to do with the massive Bon Jovi tape collection you own and yet, somehow, can’t fully explain.
We enjoyed finding this creative re-use of old audio cassette tapes- the Sonic Fabric neckties, a limited-edition project from designers Alyce Santoro and Julio cesar. Sonic Fabric is woven from 50% recorded audio cassette tape and 50% colored thread the fabric is actually audible if you run a tape head over it! Check out this video, from alyceobvious, which features a massive antique loom at the small new england textile mill where the ties are woven.
As Santoro explains, “the idea behind the tie is that the wearer becomes a beacon for other-dimensional, intangible, subtle forces of good…much in the manner of a superhero.” You had me at “other-dimensional.”
We think it’s an interesting re-purposing of a medium that would otherwise be tossed.
Our friends at Brighter Planet, a leading carbon offset firm, have launched a new “Sustainability In The Workplace” survey to gather reliable data about what companies are doing to encourage and support greener habits.
As Brighter Planet’s Outreach & Parternship Manager, Robbie Adler, explains, “we are trying to get a better feel for how successful employers and employees are interacting around the issue of sustainability. It is increasingly common for corporations to talk about sustainability initiatives, but how many of them are engaging their employees on the subject, listening for feedback, etc?” Adler continues, “it is our belief that in order for sustainability to be part of a company’s DNA, it must be a principle supported by all levels of employees. Employees are the front-line of any company. If they are not involved in a company’s sustainability initiatives, chances are those initiatives are not having much impact on directing the company’s growth.”
We encourage you to fill out the survey, where, incidentally, you’ll be automatically entered to win $200 cash.
According to the U.S. Department of the Interior, overall water consumption in this country has declined in the past 25 years. Remarkable, especially considering the fact that population has increased 30% and use by individual American households has increased. The study, compiled by the U.S. Geological Survey, suggests that despite significant population growth, greener technologies and conservation efforts can counterbalance increased demand. As Tina Casey writes in CleanTechnica, the data provide “tantalizing clues about the ability of the U.S. to sustain its legendarily consumer-centric lifestyle while stabilizing and ultimately decreasing its contribution to carbon emissions and other greenhouse gasses.”
The rise of water-conserving and more efficient technologies, especially in the industrial and commercial sectors, has significantly reduced waste. As Casey explains, “the real champs in water conservation have been the one-two punch of more efficient irrigation systems and the shift away from once-through cooling technology in electricity generating plants.”
The findings only further highlight the potential of green innovation- energy-efficient appliances, renewables, waste-reducing measures…- in counterbalancing inevitable population growth, where demand rises on diminishing resources. For more, check out Casey’s full article in CleanTechnica.
Last year, we wrote about the Brazilian city of Curibita, sometimes called the “greenest city in the world.” Curitiba is often viewed by environmentalists and urban planners alike as a world model of sustainability. Thirty years ago (30!!!), the town implemented the ’Curitiba Master Plan’ to address the problems of urban living through progressive transportation systems and enviro-friendly social programs that address recycling creatively, expand green space and develop industry. Check out Frontline’s great coverage here.
“You have to keep things simple, and just start working … You have a lot of complexity-sellers in this life. We should beat them, beat them with a slipper,” explains Lerner.
His first major coup was pedestrianising the main central shopping street in 1972 – in a weekend.
“We started one Friday night, and finished on Monday morning. If we’d had to stop and do things regularly, I wouldn’t have made it, and I could have been fired. So we took the risk. By the Monday night, business was so good, the head of the local businessmen came to me and he gave me a petition and said: ‘We want the whole street pedestrianised.’”
Lerner heard about a possible protest by drivers who planned to drive through the newly pedestrianised thoroughfare. So, he enlisted hundreds of children, armed them with paintbrushes and paper, and set them to play in the street. The protest never materialised.
Using three-section bendy buses in dedicated bus lanes, the city’s transport system carries passenger numbers comparable to an underground – 2 million a day – but at a cost of $1m per kilometre rather than $100m. Fares are flat, and the city was encouraged to grow along the bus routes, so any Curitiba resident is never more than 400m from a bus stop. Only the cars get stuck in traffic jams
Recycling in Curitiba is perhaps the most radical reform of all. In 1989, residents in a nearby favela were dumping their trash in surrounding rivers and fields, as there were no collections from their narrow streets. Lerner arranged for a truck to visit the favela at fixed times each week, and residents’ rubbish was exchanged for bus tickets, football tickets and shows. Soon, the locals were cleaning the rivers and fields of old rubbish to sell. Schoolchildren were given new plastic toys for old bottles and bags in a scheme called “Garbage that’s not garbage”.
Separation of organic and non-organic waste improved efficiencies further. Local homeless people and alcoholics were employed at the recycling plant, where they also retrained on computers they rescued from the city’s bins. Curitiba’s fishermen were paid to fish for rubbish.
Floodplains surrounding the city were bought up and converted to parks with boating lakes acting as overspill areas. This solution, far cheaper and more effective than culvetting rivers with concrete, increased the green space available for residents from 0.5 square metres each in the 1960s to over 50 square metres per resident today.
Housing was tackled in a similarly simple, revolutionary way. Land next to the electricity company’s lot was converted into housing estates, and residents were encouraged to redesign their interiors, so they felt more pride and ownership over their properties.
Lerners’ reforms have been widely popular and they appear to have improved the peoples’ lot. GDP per capita in Curitiba is 60% higher than the average in Brazil. “Those that were most against us transformed into our greatest supporters – they just needed to see the results. Now they are proud of their city.”
The above video, a talk from TED by designer Stefan Sagmeister about “the power of time off,” is not really about green innovation at all. It’s a stretch, perhaps, to include it here in these pages, where we focus on exciting green ideas and trends. But the parallel Sagmeister draws, between innovation and “time off,” is a fascinating one, and it’s sparked a series of conversations here about the role of new experiences and new surroundings in inspiring new ideas.
Every seven years, Sagmeister closes his New York studio for a yearlong sabbatical to rejuvenate and refresh his creative outlook. As he explains in the video, he saw the conventional career timeline- working until one’s sixties, then retiring- and wondered how his work (and career) would benefit if he took seven of those retirement years and took one year off every seven years during his career.
As he points out, there are some compelling examples of successful (and, importantly, innovative) companies that value “time off” as a key part of their creative process. 3M and Google offer their engineers 15% and 20% “personal use” time respectively.
For more on Sagmeister and his “time off” theory, check out the piece on TED.
A Finnish diver has designed a ocean power conversion device that could lead to make “wave power” a cost-effective renewable energy alternative. Rauno Koivusaari’s WaveRoller is a door-shaped device that can generate up to 300KW of power.
We’ve covered a few breakthroughs in wave power technology (from rolling cylinders that float in the waves, to underwater fans and wheels that turn like windmills on the sea floor). We’re fascinated by its potential, and Koivusaari’s device, in particular, seems compelling.
With grants from the European Union, Koivusaari’s company, AW-Energy, is building the first full scale demo of the device, which he has been perfecting for the last fifteen years. The full scale device will weigh 20 tons, can be linked in threes to make up about a 1MW unit. It would be positioned on the sea-floor 21 feet to 75 feet below sea level so as not to interfere with shipping traffic.
The WaveRoller uses the roiling currents under the sea to make energy from the repetitive surge motion at the sea floor in what Koivusaari calls the surge zone. That kinetic energy is collected by a piston pump and can be converted to electricity by a closed hydraulic system in combination with a hydraulic motor/generator system.
The NY Times had an interesting update last week about Paris’s bike share program. Back in September, we wrote about the city’s “Vélib’” rental program, which provides bikes at hundreds of ’service points’ around the city and allows Parisians and tourists alike a green and convenient option for getting around town. It costs €1 for a day ticket or €5 for a seven-day ticket, and riders can return the bike at any other Vélib’ station.
Sounds great, right? That’s what we thought, but, as Steven Erlanger explains in the NYT piece, officials are finding “this latest French utopia has met a prosaic reality: Many of the specially designed bikes, which cost $3,500 each, are showing up on black markets in Eastern Europe and northern Africa. Many others are being spirited away for urban joy rides, then ditched by roadsides, their wheels bent and tires stripped.”
Eighty percent (80%!!) of the initial 20,600 bikes have been stolen or damaged, and, Erlanger suggests, as the city-subsidized budget sky-rockets, it’s been a major “blow to the Parisian psyche.”
“The symbol of a fixed-up, eco-friendly city has become a new source for criminality,” Le Monde mourned in an editorial over the summer. “The Vélib’ was aimed at civilizing city travel. It has increased incivilities.”
Erlanger writes,
The heavy, sandy-bronze Vélib’ bicycles are seen as an accoutrement of the “bobos,” or “bourgeois-bohèmes,” the trendy urban middle class, and they stir resentment and covetousness. They are often being vandalized in a socially divided Paris by resentful, angry or anarchic youth, the police and sociologists say.
Used mainly for commuting in the urban core of the city, the Vélib’ program is by many measures a success. After swiping a credit card for a deposit at an electronic docking station, a rider pays one euro per day, or 29 euros (about $43) for an annual pass, for unlimited access to the bikes for 30-minute periods that can be extended for a small fee.
Daily use averages 50,000 to 150,000 trips, depending on the season, and the bicycles have proved to be a hit with tourists, who help power the economy.
Still, last year, the police saw a 54% increase in Vélib-related theft and vandalism. As Erlanger notes, the bicycle rental system that was to inspire “a new urban ethos for the era of climate change” is being tested. We’ll be interested to see how the city responds.
“There is no such thing as a green product,” Sustainable Minds co-founder and CEO Terry Swack reminds us at the start of her walk-thru of her company’s new life-cycle assessment (LCA) software. Swack explains, “all products use material and energy and create waste. There is no explicit definition of what “green” means. The best we can do is make products “greener” than the ones we made today.”
Sustainable Minds’ new Web-based program is aimed at doing that, helping companies make greener design choices and understand the impacts of products and their parts. Swack says, “typically 75% of manufacturing costs are committed by the end of the concept phase. These same decisions often lock in the environmental performance of the product.” Through methodical life-cycle assessment, like the sort in SM’s software, it’s possible to provide “real time analyses that allow users to make informed trade-offs between standard product design criteria such as performance, cost, and aesthetics, with environmental impact - well before product design is complete, and before changes are costly or impossible to make.”
Users can assess entire products, assemblies, sub-assemblies and parts. By using current products, users can set benchmarks to compare new designs against.
The software analyzes impacts from manufacturing, use, end of life and transportation, using the Okala Methodology, which evaluates 10 environmental impact categories: global warming/carbon footprint, acid rain, ecotoxicity, ozone depletion, water eutrophication, photochemical smog, human respiratory, human toxicity, human carcinogens and fossil fuel depletion. The software is optimized for household appliances, housewares, consumer electronics, industrial and commercial equipment, and outdoor and sporting equipment.
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Highlighting innovative ideas, profiling difference makers and reflecting on the issues that will shape our tomorrow, we provide daily fodder for creative minds. We seek to aggregate inspiration and fuel a lively conversation.
Over the summer, New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg outlined a 33-point plan to improve the MTA’s efficiency (making crosstown buses free, installing “countdown clocks” on subway platforms, creating integrated and contactless “smart cards” for transit riders…). The MTA has now announced plans for more improvements to its bus system.
