According to Ikea’s CEO, Anders Dalhvig, “there’s no longer any doubt about whether taking environmental and social concerns seriously is good for business.” They’ve banned plastic bags, power many of their stores with the help of renewable energy and can transport six times the inventory in one truck (saving time, money and emisssions) thanks to their flat boxes (disassembled furniture).

And now Ikea has launched a new program that offers used IKEA pieces online, with plans to extend this idea to foreign outlets. As Peter Agnefäll, CEO of IKEA Sweden, explains,

“It is about taking an environmental responsibility for how our products are used in the longer term and making it easier for our customers to do their part for their responsibility towards the environment.”

This isn’t necessarily a new concept. Apple, for example, has been selling “refurbished” products for years, but this move by Ikea could be another trend-setting moment for the innovative retail giant.

[Source: Time, via Inhabitat]

Related LLT posts:

IKEA’s Flat Boxes Actually A Good Thing?

Retailers Explore Renewable Energy

Every so often, the e-media vs. paper-media debate flares up again. We’ve covered it a few times on this blog, including a One Degree TV clip of our conversation with Brad Robertson of GannettLocal. Earlier this year, in a post about the growing landscape of E-readers, we noted that it was easier to measure the considerable environmental impact of the publishing world, from deforestation, to waste water and carbon emissions. Measuring the relative impact of E-readers (from manufacturing to daily use) was, at least then, more difficult. Last week, Brian Palmer examined this question in his piece for Slate, Should You Ditch Your Books for an E-reader? As the infographic (left) suggests, the planet might prefer you to read your books electronically.

Palmer explains, ”environmental analysis can be an endless balancing of this versus that. Do you care more about conserving water or avoiding toxic chemical usage? Minimizing carbon dioxide emissions or radioactive nuclear waste?” But, in quoting Cleantech, which aggregrated a series of studies on this subject, Palmer delves into the numbers that shapes this debate.

A few excerpts from Palmer’s piece for Slate:

A single book generates about 7.5 kg of carbon dioxide equivalents—the value of all its greenhouse gas emissions expressed in terms of the impact of carbon dioxide. That includes production, transport, and either recycling or disposal. (Attention students: Your textbooks are particularly bad, releasing more than double the CO₂ equivalents of the average book.)

Apple’s iPad generates 130 kg of carbon dioxide equivalents during its lifetime, according to company estimates. Amazon has not released numbers for the Kindle, but independent analysts put it at 168 kg. Those analyses do not indicate how much additional carbon is generated per book read (as a result of the energy required to host the e-bookstore’s servers and power the screen while you read), but they do include the full cost of manufacture, which likely accounts for the lion’s share of emissions. (The iPad uses just three watts of electricity while you’re reading, far less than most light bulbs.) If we can trust those numbers, then, the iPad pays for its CO₂ emissions about one third-of the way through your 18^th book. You’d need to get halfway into your 23^rd book on Kindle to get out of the environmental red.

Water is also a major consideration. The newspaper and book publishing industries together consume 153 billion gallons of water annually, according to the nonprofit Green Press Initiative. It takes about seven gallons to produce the average printed book, while e-publishing companies can create a digital book with less than two cups of water. (E-book publishers consume water, like any other company, through the paper they use and other office activities.) Researchers estimate that 79 gallons of water are needed to make an e-reader. So you come out on top, water-wise, after reading about a dozen books.

E-readers also have books beat on toxic chemicals. The production of ink for printing releases a number of volatile organic compounds into the atmosphere, including hexane, toluene, and xylene, which contribute to smog and asthma. Some of them may also cause cancer or birth defects. Computer production is not free of hard-to-pronounce chemicals, to be sure, but both the iPad and the Kindle comply with Europe’s RoHS standards, which ban some of the scarier chemicals that have been involved in electronics production. E-readers do, however, require the mining of nonrenewable minerals, like columbite-tantalite, which sometimes come from politically unstable regions.

[Source: Slate]

In the late 1980’s, Kelly LeBrock starred in a series of Pantene print and television ads* with the slogan, “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.” We didn’t. And now Proctor & Gamble, which makes Pantene, could run with “Don’t hate me because I’m sustainable.” The beauty giant has announced that beginning next year, the company’s Pantene Pro-V, Cover Girl and International Max Factor product lines will feature packaging made from renewable sugarcane-based plastics. The new packaging will be made by Brazilian plastics manufacturer Braskem, consisting of sustainably grown Brazilian sugarcane. The plastic will also be 100% recyclable.

According to Gina Drosos, Group President, Global P&G Beauty, “As we talk with women around the world, they tell us that they want to make themselves more beautiful without making their environment less beautiful. With this new packaging innovation, women can have confidence that their favorite brands are helping to make a difference.”

[Source The Living Principles via PSFK]

*By the way, everything is on YouTube these days.

Related “sustainable packaging” posts from LTT:

Brands: Curtis Packaging

When a company “goes green,” does motive matter?

Brands: Frito-Lay’s Compostable Bag

Dupont’s Awards For Packaging Innovation

Pre-Consumer Sustainability?

Yesterday’s post sparked some interesting emails. The post- on Cleveland’s plan to monitor how much its residents recycle and to fine those who do not- raises the question ’should government force people to go green?’ We’ve examined this question from a few angles on this blog, but our focus has always been on individual responsibility. We seek to answer the question “what can I do, today?” We know “living better” begins with the countless little decisions we each make throughout the day. But is that enough? Should good intentions be ushered by good policy? Should individual progress be spurred on by legislation that rewards our better choices and punishes our “lesser” ones?  California legislators could be voting tomorrow on a bill that would do just that.

The proposed bill, AB 1998, would prohibit stores from providing plastic carryout bags to customers. Similar “plastic bag bans” have succeeded in places all over the world. China, of all places, banned plastic bags two years ago, a measure that has saved an estimated 100 billion plastic bags from landfill or worse.

For our California readers, here’s what the bill says:

This bill would…on and after July 1, 2011, prohibit a store, as defined, from providing a plastic carryout bag to a customer. The bill would require a store, on and after July 1, 2011, with regard to providing carryout bags to a customer at the point of sale, to either make reusable bags available for purchase by the customer or provide a paper carryout bag that is subject to the green bag fee that would be imposed by the bill. The bill would require a store to charge a green bag fee of not less than $0.25 for each paper carryout bag distributed at the point of sale. The bill would establish the Paper Bag Pollution Cleanup Fund in the State Treasury and would require a store to remit these fees, less a specified amount, to the State Board of Equalization for deposit in that fund.

Read more: http://plasticbagbanreport.com/ab1998-california-assembly-bill/#ixzz0xeX3ZpDJ

Starting next year, the city of Cleveland will introduce a $2.5 million hi-tech recycling monitoring system that has residents divided. Is it an example of forward-thinking city governance, nudging residents towards habits that serve the greater good? Or is it an invasion of privacy?

Here’s how it works, according to a recent piece in Fast Company; “chips embedded in recycling carts will keep track of how often residents take the carts to the curb for recycling. If a bin hasn’t been taken to the curb in a long time, city workers will go rummaging through the trash to find recyclables. And if workers find that over 10% of the trash is made up of recyclable materials, residents could face a $100 fine.”

According to Cleveland.com, the city has actually been testing the system since 2007. As Fast Company explains, “if the chip system works in a city as big as Cleveland, other small to medium sized cities will probably take note.”

What should a city’s role be in fostering better habits among its residents? San Francisco has made composting mandatory, for instance, and threatened to fine residents who don’t comply. What role should government play in making sure we love tomorrow today?

[Source: Fast Company]

These days, going green is fashionable. Literally. In recent years, an increasingly vocal segment of the fashion industry has been quietly experimenting with innovative design techniques with the aim of achieving ‘zero-waste design.’ The idea is to create clothing patterns that leave “not so much as a scrap of fabric on the cutting room floor.” Last week, Stephanie Rosenbloom profiled this “fashion-forward” trend for the NY Times. “This is not some wacky avant-garde exercise, Rosenbloom explains, “it’s a way to eliminate millions of tons of garbage a year. Apparel industry professionals say that about 15 to 20 percent of the fabric used to produce clothing winds up in the nation’s landfills because it’s cheaper to dump the scraps than to recycle them.”

From Fashion Tries on Zero-Waste (NY Times), on these innovative ideas that are “starting to penetrate the mainstream’:

Next month, Parsons the New School for Design — which inspired a generation of would-be designers through the television series “Project Runway” — will offer one of the world’s first fashion courses in zero waste. The book “Shaping Sustainable Fashion: Changing the Way We Make and Use Clothes,” by Alison Gwilt and Timo Rissanen, zero-waste pioneers, will be published in February by Earthscan. And an exhibition of zero-waste fashions, curated by Mr. Rissanen and another zero-waste designer, Holly McQuillan, will be held in New Zealand next spring and in New York the following fall. Also in March, an exhibition, “No Waste/Zero Waste” will open at the Averill and Bernard Leviton A + D Gallery in Chicago, part of Columbia College Chicago.

“Clearly this is an idea whose time has come,” said Sandra Ericson, founder and director of the Center for Pattern Design, which studies and educates about historical and current trends in pattern making, in St. Helena, Calif.

One way to eliminate waste is to create a garment pattern — with gussets, pockets, collars and trims — that fits together like a puzzle. Such designers favor certain cutting techniques with names like the “jigsaw cut” (from Mr. Liu) and “subtraction cutting” (from Mr. Roberts). Mr. Rissanen put his on a blog, zerofabricwastefashion.blogspot.com. Another method is to simply not cut the fabric at all, but drape it directly onto a mannequin, then tuck, layer and sew.

Click here to read more.

Not Far From The Tree - a slideshow history from Not Far From The Tree on Vimeo.

As the saying goes, nothing is certain but death and taxes. Really? What about crab apples? They have become the bane of my existence, thanks to a tree in our backyard that seems downright spiteful. Every morning, I find dozens of fallen apples littering my yard, more, somehow, than the previous day. And like Sisyphus pushing that boulder up the hill only to watch it roll down again, I’m starting to wonder if I’m bound to repeat this throughout eternity. Do residential fruit trees provoke rage-filled skyward fist shaking and overly-dramatic comparisons to Greek tragedy? Then you might also find a glimmer of hope in hearing about ‘Not Far From The Tree,’ a Toronto “residential fruit-picking program.”

Not Far From The Tree sends out teams of volunteers to pick fruit from neighborhood trees that would otherwise go to waste. “We help fruit tree owners make use of the abundance of fruit,” the group explains on its site. “One third goes to the fruit tree owners, another third goes to the volunteers for their labour, and the final third is distributed (by bicycle or cart) to community organizations in the neighbourhood who can make good use of the fresh fruit.”

Pounds of residential fruit picked in 2010 (so far):

3344 (includes sweet cherries, sour cherries, mulberries, plums, apples, crab apples pears)

Pounds of residential fruit picked in 2009:

8135 (includes sweet cherries, sour cherries, serviceberries, mulberries, apricots, plums, crab apples, pears, sumar, elderberries, apples, black walnuts and ginkgo nuts)

We don’t often repost entire articles, but after we read Nature’s series ‘Can Science Feed The World,’ we’re doing just that. As the science mag explains, “more than one billion people go hungry today, and the vast majority of them are in low-income countries. Increasing yield sustainably — using less water, fertilizers and pesticides — is going to be a crucial part of the solution.” In the series- highly recommended reading- Nature asks what role science has to play in securing food for the future.

Thanks to Dan’s Plan for bringing this series of articles to our attention. And here’s an article entitled ‘Food: The Growing Problem.’

more…

The Chinese household appliance giant Haier has unveiled a new system at SinoCES that harnesses waste heat from shower water and transfers energy to the hot water tank. The PowerPad, as it’s called, captures 15% of the energy from the tap, which, according to the company, will be improved to up to 30% when it goes on sale 6 weeks from now.

Details of how exactly it works haven’t been provided, but observers say the 30% efficiency rating, though difficult to achieve, doesn’t seem to break any laws of thermodynamics.

Here at LTT, we love examples of harnessing wasted energy (see our posts on the dance that floor that captures the kinetic energy of dancers, the supermarket that captures the energy of cars entering and exiting its parking lot, and more). Solar, wind, geothermal, tidal…and now shower power.

The PowerPad is expected to hit the Chinese market soon at a price of about $600.

[Source: EcoFriend]

In 1967’s The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman’s Benjamin gets cornered by a family friend and told the future is all about one word. “Are you listening?” Mr McGuire asks again. “Yes, I am,” says Benjamin. “Plastics.” An awkward pause before Benjamin asks, puzzled,  ”Just how do you mean that, sir?” It’s one of the great random movie quotes. It’s not just an iconic scene from Mike Nichols’ classic, but it serves as a time capsule before the whole world did, in fact, become dominated by plastics. On LTT, we’ve covered the enormous issue of plastic waste, like the Texas-sized swirling mass of garbage in the Pacific Ocean. But scientists in Germany may have the 21st century answer to plastics. It’s called ‘Arboform.’

Arboform is a renewable plastic with wood-like qualities, yet can be formed into any shape. This “liquid wood,” as it’s called, is derived from wood pulp-based lignin and can be mixed with a number of other materials to create a strong, non-toxic alternative to petroleum-based plastics.. When combined with resins and flax, the “bio-plastic mass” looks and feels like wood and can be used to make several products “such as furniture, toys, loudspeakers and even car interiors.”

And, with all that plastic clogging up our oceans, Arboform looks like a compelling alternative. It is totally biodegradable and its raw material lignin is available in abundance, making it an environmentally friendly material that can potentially save significant natural resources.

[Sources: ISDA, PSFK]

Designer Tim May is asking ‘Can Cardboard Cut it?’ That’s the name of his recent project, which includes an innovative furniture design made of 100% recyclable and already-recycled corrugated cardboard and stainless steel threaded rods and bolts. The chair and the stool/coffee table fits together, and all are covered with a clear varnish to enhance and protect.

As much as we love the Taiwan Cardboard Restaurant, this may be our new favorite ‘cardboard fabulous’ design. Can a place on the Ikea showroom be far off?

[Source: Yanko Design]

Other LTT cardboard-related posts:

Taiwan’s Cardboard Restaurant

Thinking inside the box: Is Boxed Water Better?

The story of Burt’s Bees is a remarkable one, from humble beginnings in the backwoods of Maine where apiarists Burt Shavitz and Roxanne Quimby slept in an 8′x8′ turkey coop…to today’s success as one of the leaders in natural personal care products. The company has helped shape a movement, along with the likes of Seventh Generation, Tom’s of Maine, and Ben & Jerry’s (interestingly, all born in New England), that saw social responsibility as central to brand identity.

That brand identity was pummeled by skeptics after Burt’s Bees was purchased by Clorox in 2007 for $913 million. But just as Ben & Jerry’s has tried to stay true to its roots after being purchased by Unilever, Burt’s Bees is, by all accounts, still driven by its founding mission: “to create natural, Earth-friendly personal care products formulated to help you maximize your well-being and that of the world around you.” Only now, thanks to deep pockets and Clorox’s distribution machine, it might push the industry towards ‘all natural’ even faster.

Among its recent innovations is a line of six natural toothpastes, all formulated with real Cranberry Extract, known to block bacteria from adhering to teeth and gums, helping prevent plaque formation. The Natural Multicare Toothpaste With Fluoride contains no sodium lauryl sulfate and no artificial colors, flavors, sweeteners or preservatives. Never tested on animals, the products are also free of petrochemicals and synthetic ingredients such as Phthalates. According to the company, the percentage of natural ingredients in the toothpaste is 99.2%.

The Cloroxes and Unilevers of the world, “faceless multinational, bestriding the globe, selling detergents and cleaning products” may, in fact, be using companies like Burt’s Bees and Ben & Jerry’s as “socially responsible fig leafs.” But that assessment tells only a fraction of the story. As Burt’s Bees CEO, John Replogle, told the NY Times not long after Clorox purchased them, “Don’t judge Clorox as much by where they’ve been as much as where they intend to go.” As Replogle explained then, ”Burt’s Bees’ 380 employees have an opportunity to influence the direction of Clorox, a company that generated $4.8 billion in sales last year and employs 7,800 people.”

To wit, the 2010 ImagePower Green Brands Survey named Burt’s Bees “the #1 Green Brand,” and the company’s green initiatives include an impressive list of achievements. In April, Burt’s Bees accomplished its goal of producing zero waste to landfill, years ahead of schedule. In the last year, the company reduced its energy consumption by 15.3% and saw a 5.5% decrease in non-product water use.

Mr. Replogle and co. hope to reinvent business with an idea they call “the Greater Good,” based on the premise that if companies are socially responsible, profit will follow. Employee bonuses are tied to performance metrics that include meeting sustainability goals.

See some of our other “bee-related’ posts:

German Airport To Use Bees To Monitor Air Quality

UK Supermarket to keep bees

The New York-base design firm, The Way We See The World, has developed a new version of the edible, disposable cups called Jelloware. Made of agar agar, a type of gelatin derived from algae and used in desserts, the Jelloware cups can be made in a variety of flavors to match the beverage.

The idea of an edible cup may strike some as a step into the fringe of the “loving tomorrow today” movement. But if you’ve ever spent time at, say, Ben & Jerry’s, you’re unfazed by the question “cup or cone?” The cone is the precursor to the Jelloware cup, the container that’s not just edible but central to the experience. Will we soon see bars offering Mojitos in mint flavored Jelloware cups? If bottled cereal milk can make it, anything can.

Especially in the summer, the season of the plastic cups at BBQs, we’d like to think the Jelloware cup has a future!

[Sources: The Way We See The World, PSFK, Treehugger]

Just like everyone, LTT enjoys reading about ‘high concept’ innovations- you know, the breakthrough in a lab somewhere that will make it possible to (fill in the blank) someday, the kind we can look forward to a generation from now. For instance, I’m holding out for that all-in-one solar-powered wrist watch cell phone personal computer GPS hair dryer. But what really excites us isn’t the reinventing of tomorrow’s wheel, it’s making today’s wheel better. And when it comes to that, the low-hanging fruit is very often improvements in the supply chain, including the packaging, which is usually the first thing to end up in the trash.

Yesterday, LTT met with Don Droppo Jr, President & CEO of family-owned Curtis Packaging, based in Sandy Hook, CT, to learn more about the ways they are blazing a trail in green packaging. “We’re a true testament to the idea that green business makes economic sense,” Droppo has said. At a time when the U.S. packaging industry has been steadily losing business to overseas competitors, Curtis has seen its annual sales double, thanks in large part to its focus on sustainability.

When cosmetics maker Estée Lauder asked Curtis to package its Origins natural-products line in “the most environmentally friendly paper out there,” Droppo’s research led him to shift the company’s entire business model. “I started to learn about sustainability and asked what my company could do so that we could be as environmentally conscious as possible,” he recently told Fortune magazine.

Curtis began by working with the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) to certify the paper in its packages was only purchased from FSC endorsed paper mills. Next, Droppo says, “we converted all of our energy needs to clean, renewable energy.” Curtis will be buying a total of 4,524,800 kWhs of renewable energy per year for the next 3 years, with the majority sourced through wind power and approximately 30% of the purchase will be a blend of renewable sources including locally generated wind and hydroelectric.

Initially, as you’d expect, Curtis saw its costs rise. But Droppo viewed that extra 10% to 15% in costs as a marketing expense. “Not only are we doing the right thing for the environment, but we’re getting a tremendous amount of exposure because of this.”

The innovations from Curtis now go well beyond “green paper.” The company’s R&D has led to innovations in materials and processing that have lowered cost and reduced environmental impact. “We have signed up new customers because of our ‘green’ commitment,” Droppo explains. “Hopefully after hearing the positive impact this has had on our business, other business owners or corporations may follow suit to do their part to help sustain the environment.”

Companies like Curtis Packaging are, in many ways, the unsung heroes of the sustainability movement. An innovation in screen-printing on compostable foil isn’t quite as sexy as a breakthrough in photovoltaic technology, but its measurable impact on our lives is considerably larger, at least today. We’ll continue to keep our eye on Curtis and other leaders in this space.

Some other recent posts on eco-friendly packaging:

Eco-Friendly Packaging Replaces PVC With Cardboard

Aveda’s New Bottle Cap Recycling Plan

Pulp Lamp: when packaging becomes the product

Brands: Frito-Lay’s Compostable Bag

Innovation at its most satisfying is often about presenting a new idea in the simplest of contexts. We spotted this product, from miniwiz, that does just that. The Solarbulb screws into any plastic bottle, and, voila!, you have yourself an upcycled lamp. The Solarbulb allows you to repurpose that plastic bottle (remember, 45 billion plastic bottles end up in U.S. landfills each year). All you’ll need is three or four hours of sun, and the solar bottle lamp thingy will provide up to five hours of uninterrupted LED illumination.

More info: secure.ultracart.com

Ahhh, July 4th weekend. If you’re lucky, you avoided traffic, ate an entire watermelon, didn’t blow a finger off lighting a bottle rocket and- if you’re really lucky- didn’t have to look at your watch once. For most people, having a vague sense of the time- as in, “I think it’s roughly 11-ish”- is directly linked to feeling relaxed. Here’s an interesting design, from Andreas Dober, that manages to capture that “approximate time,” while blending a mechanical art aesthetic with a spirit of sustainability.

The Catena Wall Clock is literally upcycling. A vertical bicycle chain, attached with brass numbers, rotates in a clockwise direction. At the top of every hour, the time appears at the zenith of the rotation. As the picture shows, you’ll know when it’s “roughly 11-ish.”

The only drawback to the Catena- which, incidentally, gets its name from the Latin word for “chain”- is the price tag. This clock can be yours for a cool $2300.

[Source: Spot Cool Stuff, Unica Home]

The plucky South Koreans were overwhelmed yesterday by Argentina, 4-1, under the incessant drone of the vuvuzelas. In South Africa, Maradona’s side is the class of world soccer. Eight thousand miles away, in Seoul, the Koreans are showing leadership in another area, urban renewal. The World Cup Park, built as the center piece of the 2002 World Cup, co-hosted by South Korea, is a shining example of urban transformation. Sky Park - one of five areas that make up World Cup Park - was once a garbage dump. As Jennifer Chen writes in TodayOnline, the area is no an “enlightened hilltop oasis.”

“Looking at the vast stretch of grass that leads the eye to pale, distant buildings,” Chen writes, “you wouldn’t for one moment suspect the park’s humble history.” Chen continues,

Having been converted from a landfill into a usable public space, the park is an example of up-cyling. What’s more, the area’s energy is supplied by a sustainable source - in this case, graceful wind turbines that meld into the landscape. Classical music is played from the sound system.

There will be more of these spaces as Seoul transforms itself into a model of green living. Spearheading the developments is the city’s newly-re-elected mayor and environmentalist Oh Se-hoon. In the long term, the city plans to replace all its buses and taxis with electric or hybrid vehicles. More parks and green trails linking major landmarks will be created.

One of Seoul’s premier green attractions, however, can be enjoyed now. Like Sky Park, Cheonggyecheon Stream works its magic slowly, and so best appreciated with a cuppa and snack in hand.

Cheonggyecheon Stream is much more than its name suggests. It’s not just a body of water, it’s a lush garden-cum-creek situated below street level that stretches for 5.8km through downtown Seoul. And like Sky Park, it exhibits a breezy loveliness that belies its dirt-filled origins.

The stream used to be polluted, so was covered with concrete to make way for roads. It was cleaned up and opened in 2005 by then-mayor - and now South Korea president - Lee Myung-bak. Lee received “Hero of the Environment Award” from Time magazine for the project.

Sky Park and Cheonggyecheon are pleasant diversions. So, too, a liberating bike ride along the banks of the Hangang, which divides the city into north and south. On a typical day, the stretch fills ups with locals indulging in all manner of activity - from rollerblading to jetskiing, to children splashing in the public pools.

The river area is set to change dramatically by 2030 as part of the Hangang Renaissance. When completed, there will be three artificial islands offering gardens, cafes and cultural venues; and eight waterfront towns connected by river taxis.

This year, [Seoul] was named World Design Capital 2010, allowing it to highlight its urban projects and design plans. The centrepiece is Dongdaemun Design Plaza and Park by renowned architect Zaha Hadid which will merge architecture and nature into one seamless whole.

[Sources: TodayOnline, VisitSeoul]

Kids, go play down near the old train tracks! Hardly sounds like good parental advice, but thanks to an initiative by a Spanish collective called Basurama, kids in Peru are doing just that. Basurama- derived from the Spanish word basura, meaning trash- has reclaimed some long abandoned industrial land in Lima and turned it into a re-purposed amusement park.

In 1986 a large strip of land was side aside for what was to be Peru’s new electric train. The project was halted and the partially constructed concrete columns became part of the sad industrial landscape of this neighborhood. That is, until Basurama came up with a way to turn this once forgotten urban space into an amenity for the people. And then earlier this year, the Ghost Train Amusement Park was born.

Says Basurama,

Our aim is to study those phenomena inherent in the massive production of real and virtual trash in the consumer society, providing points of view on the subject that might generate new thoughts and attitudes. We find gaps in these processes of production and consume that not only raise questions about the way we manage our resources but also about the way we think, we work, we perceive reality.

What to do with all our trash! It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it. But Waste Management CEO David Steiner thinks it can actually be a lot cleaner. Under his leadership, WM has invested in a variety of techniques and technologies that go beyond landfills and garbage incineration. He hopes his company will begin turning garbage in renewables, like ethanol, bio-diesel and natural gas. ”We don’t want to play just in the picking up and delivering,” says Steiner in a recent interview with Forbes. “We want to own conversion, too. We want to own the technology.”

We’ve covered a number of WM’s projects, from their BigBelly Solar Trash Compactors to their quest for “black gold”- sewage to biofuel. As Jonathan Fahey writes in his piece for Forbes, Steiner has “made four investments in startups and joint ventures that are experimenting with techniques like incinerating trash with a plasma, speed-composting organic waste and using heat and chemicals to turn trash into ethanol. Waste Management is even dabbling in the front end of waste production: In May it invested in a company that is developing a technology that aims to reduce the amount of plastic needed to make packaging, appliances and electronics.”

Like Wal-Mart, which has surprised many with its heavy investment in green technology and protocols, Waste Management sees the value in “going green.” Customers increasingly “want to be able to say they produce no waste, a scary proposition for a company named Waste Management. Municipalities are requiring that garbage be separated into a larger number of different piles (plastic here, glass there). Competition for the job of processing the sorted waste is coming not just from other waste companies but also from technology companies that think they can transform this trash into higher-value materials.”

As Fahey explains, Waste Management recently invested in a company near Boston called Harvest Power, which aims to cut composting time to six to eight weeks, from twice that, by creating optimized temperature and moisture environment for the bugs that break down organic matter. With cities like San Francisco forcing residents to separate compostables from other trash, this could be a big market for WM. “Now 98% of the nation’s food waste goes into landfills, according to Harvest Chief Executive Paul Sellew.”

All these efforts, Fahey suggests, provide a way “to position Waste Management as a green company and entice investors with its prospects for higher growth.” And WM has some money to experiment. “In 2009 the company earned $994 million on $11.8 billion in revenue and produced $1.2 billion in free cash.” It may be companies like Wal-Mart and Waste Management that can afford to test out new methods and have the clout to make them industry standards.

[Source: Forbes]

UPDATED 10am, 6/10/10:

From the Associated Press:

GRAND ISLE, La. (AP) — The financial toll of the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico escalated Wednesday as BP’s stock plummeted to a 14-year low and fishermen, businesses and property owners who have filed damage claims with the company angrily complained of delays, excessive paperwork and skimpy payments that have put them on the verge of going under.

The containment efforts played out as investors deserted BP amid fears that the company might be forced to suspend dividends, end up in bankruptcy and find itself overwhelmed by the cleanup costs, penalties, damage claims and lawsuits generated by the biggest oil spill in U.S. history.

Each day we’re met with new and more tragic images of the devastation caused by BP’s Deep Horizon oil spill. From dead pelicans to oil globs on beaches, it’s a real mess (to quote my two year old son). The disaster also provides an interesting case study in the do’s and don’ts of 21st century branding. And while BP’s issues go well beyond branding, the era of branding BP as ‘beyond petroleum’ must surely be over.

As others have noted, successful branding is about aligning your company’s business processes with its corporate culture. Jim Gregory suggests in TalentZoo, “BP provides a case in point of a brand that got way out front of its business process and culture to produce tremendous exposure to risk.” It wasn’t that the branding was not successful. In fact, the move to be known as simply BP (rather than British Petroleum) in 2000 was very effective. The company hired Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide to manage a $200 million re-branding effort, that introduced the new name, a new logo and the “beyond petroleum” slogan. The re-branding was aimed at differentiating BP from its rivals.

“Most assuredly the impact was positive at the time,” writes Gregory,  but “how can it contemplate building the brand before it has addressed the basics of the business? With thousands of rigs pumping oil in the Gulf today how could something as fundamental as a shut-off valve not be standard operating procedure?”

Ogilvy’s campaign helped improve BP’s ‘Brand Power’ in the US among business decision makers “from a score of 30 (on a 100 point scale) when the campaign was launched in 2000 to an all-time high of 50 in 2008.” Even before the Deep Horizon oil spill, that ‘Brand Power’ was slipping, partly due to the fact that BP has reduced corporate advertising from $75 million in 2007 to $53.5 million in 2008 to $32.8 million in 2009. The value of the brand also declined, from $19.9 billion in 2008 to $14 billion in 2009.

But, as a company like BP must now see, branding only truly works when it reflects the company’s genuine mission. As Gregory puts it, the branding “should be a way of life for the management of any corporation.” If a huge gap exists between how you brand yourself and how you actually operate, your brand equity is a ticking time bomb. Just ask BP.

It’s hardly a surprise to note that televisions have really changed in the past 60 years. From black and white, to the introduction of the first color sets, cable television, satellite, high-definition, TiVo and DVR, now 3-D, the changes have been remarkable. But for all the advances that have changed the way we view television, perhaps the most significant is our perception of the TV itself, from a luxury to a disposable appliance.

This slow devolution began in 1947, when Motorola introduced the VT-71 television for $189.95, the first television set to be sold for under $200, finally making television affordable for millions of Americans. The previous year, only 0.5% of U.S. households had a television set. By 1954, that number had climbed to 55.7%, and by 1962, 90% of U.S. households had a TV. Despite this growth, televisions were still a luxury. $200 in 1950, for example, was the equivalent of nearly $2,000 in today’s money. The point is, affordable though they were becoming, they were still expensive and, if it broke, you could fix it. Has anyone ever successfully fixed a flatscreen TV by themselves?

You would fix a television in 1950 for two reasons- 1) few families could afford the cost of a(nother) new one, 2) the technology made it possible. On the back panel of television sets, owners would find schematics for removing and replacing parts. You’d find alignment instructions, voltage charts, tips for cleaning and caring for your set. You could unscrew and replace. Today, the technology in televisions include microchips soldered together. Ok, in truth, I don’t know what makes a modern TV work, but that illustrates my point. Today’s gadgets and appliances are no longer made to be fixed by the consumer.

Do we want to see a return to cathode ray tubes in televisions? Of course not. I, for one, love my flat screen TV. But it is worth noting that cultural shift, from being motivated (by cost) and allowed (by technology) to fix appliances to…well, the opposite. Is it possible to have both? New, innovative technologies that we, as consumers, can fix ourselves?

According to a recent study, 32% of Americans now turn to the Internet as their most common source of entertainment, second only to 58% who said they turn to TV. The report, by Edelman, which examines the broadening definition of entertainment in an Internet age, also shows that 83% of those surveyed care about “being able to purchase the entertainment easily,” and 80% care about “being able to access the entertainment immediately.” The findings support what you probably already knew- with iPhones, iPads, Kindles, Netflix streaming on your laptop and the like, more people are spending more time getting more from their gadgets. What does this trend really mean?

For starters, it puts another nail in the coffin of print media. But is that good? The aging debate about whether digital entertainment is greener than print media rages on, but have we as consumers already made up our minds?

Don Carli suggests in his piece for MediaShift, consumers are constantly confronted with, what he calls, a false dilemma: that “digital media is the environmentally preferable choice and that print media is the environmentally destructive choice. But is it possible that digital media could be more destructive to the environment and a greater threat to trees, bees, rivers and forests in the United States than paper-making or printing?” Carli suggests “there is growing recognition that digital media technology uses significant amounts of energy from coal fired power plants which are making a significant contribution to global warming. Greenpeace estimates that by 2020 data centers will demand more electricity than is currently demanded by France, Brazil, Canada, and Germany combined.”

The paper industry, for its part, is also out there making its case. The Print Council reminds people that “paper is made from wood – a resource that is being renewed on a daily basis by the paper and forest products industry, which plants millions of trees every year. Electronic devices are made of plastics and other non-renewable resources and often contain toxic chemicals and metals. Only 18% of the U.S. electronic devices are currently recycled, and many of those are not being reused for other products. In the U.S., nearly 60% of all paper is recycled, recovered and reused to make new paper products.” As Carli suggests in his piece for MediaShift, “if your goal is to save trees or do something good for the environment, the choice to go paperless may not be as green or simple as some would like you to think.”

But the Edelman study shows that consumers have spoken. The 21st century will be shaped by new forms of digital entertainment, information and distraction. So, in some ways, this debate about which is greener is irrelevant. The answer is clear, we need to make digital more green.

Last year we covered an initiative from Levi Strauss & Co. to encourage its consumers to “donate to Goodwill,” rather than simply discard used clothing. In partnering with Goodwill, Levi’s was the first major clothing brand to add special care tags which, along with the traditional care instructions (i.e. “machine wash cold”), provided instructions on ways to consider the lifecycle of those button fly 501s. The initiative was aimed at curbing the approximately 23.8 billion pounds of clothing and textiles end up in landfill each year. Their latest campaign is aimed at curbing the environmental impact of caring for clothes.

Levi’s has launched the Care Air Design Challenge, a contest that is looking for the most innovative and effective method to dry clothing.

A clothes line, for example, isn’t necessarily innovative, it’s also banned by some city/town ordinances, but it does provide some great energy savings:

The average household uses 6% of its energy from operating clothes dryers

Just one pair of jeans consumers as much energy as powering a computer for over 550 hours.

About 50% of a clothing item’s climate-change impact occurs after its purchase by a consumer.

The contest begins June 1st and runs through the end of July.

Care Air Design Challenge

[Source: Triple Pundit]

As we’ve said before, we think composting will one day be as second nature as recycling. But if you live in the city, composting may seem like an impossibility. While some cities are addressing the challenges of urban composting- San Francisco is now requiring it, in fact- it remains out of reach for Joe City-dweller. Beginning this spring, Compost Cab is looking to change all that. For residents of Washington, D.C., who sign up, the company will provide customers with a bin which can then be filled with all kinds of compostables. Once a week, Compost Cab will pick up the organic material and compost it for you. For every 50 pounds of organic waste that Compost Cab collects from a customer, the customer is entitled to five pounds of fresh compost and one pound of worm castings in exchange. Don’t have a garden? No worries, Compost Cab will donate your share of compost to Engaged Community Offshoot, an urban farm that aims to provide people from all walks of life with sustainable, fresh produce.

For residents of Northampton, MA, composting services are offered by Pedal People. Live in Philadelphia? Call on Pedal Co-op to pick up your kitchen waste.

According to Compost Cab’s site, the company was “born of personal demand. We asked ourselves: “What would a composting solution have to look like for us to participate?” It needed to be leak-proof, rat-proof, and odor-free. It needed to be nearly effortless, as simple and intuitive as taking out the trash. It needed to be useful – we wanted the compost for our garden. And it needed to be reasonably priced, without a significant up-front cost. We went from there, and developed a service that makes it easy to be green.”

Is there one in your town?

[Sources: Compost Cab, EcoSalon]