I was recently on Broadway—not in the latest production of West Side Story—but at the Hudson Theatre for The Green Event.  The two-day conference brought together textile industry stakeholders—suppliers, buyers, designers, and regulators—to share ideas for developing eco-conscious practices across the board.

I had an opportunity to participate on the “Creating Green” retail panel alongside Marks & Spencer’s veteran cotton expert, Graham Burden.  I shared Continuum’s insights about the consumer perspective on sustainability, sparking a conversation about the need to consider the demand–side of the sustainability equation.  My talk followed an excellent keynote by Andrew Winston, author of Green to Gold and founder of Winston Eco-Strategies.   Mr. Winston spoke passionately about the business case for sustainability, citing numerous examples of companies that had achieved true competitive advantage by identifying upside opportunities or eliminating downside risks in this space.

Ian Yolles, a co-founder of the novel sustainable clothier, Nau, was one of the most compelling voices at the event.  He explained how he and a few friends (ex-execs from Nike and Patagonia got together in 2005 to create a new form of “business activism” by founding a company on the ideals of sustainability and social responsibility.  Their corporate bylaws turned the traditional clothing retail model on its head in a number of ways, including: mandating the use of more sustainable materials and processes (for example, recycled PET soda bottles become recyclable polyester garments), providing a 5% donation of sales to non-profit philanthropy (to be specified by customers at POP) and selling directly to customers through an assortment of low-impact retail outlets (both the internet and their novel store-meets-internet “webfronts”).
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Our mission, when we launched Ecolect was simple, yet ambitious: to help designers find sustainable materials, to provide makers of new materials a space to showcase their innovations and create a forum for environmentally-minded designers to share their inspiration, occasional frustration, new information and everything in between

It was an honor to hold last week’s Materials Petting Zoo at Continuum’s studio in West Newton, Massachusetts. We connected with their large community of in-house designers, engineers and business professionals who were eager to learn about the latest and greatest in alternative eco-materials. It was a chance to speak with designers, developers and the business owners one-on-one about material needs, options and ideas.

The atmosphere was fun, lively, and inspirational, with designers, engineers and other eager staff actively engaged in discussion about emerging material design alternatives.

To take advantage our free database of green materials, visit http://www.ecolect.net.

Fellow Design Strategist Sean Brennan and I recently participated in an IDSA event entitled Next Up: Sustainability After the Trend. Hosted by the burgeoning Rhode Island chapter, it was an intimate gathering of the area’s design professionals, educators and students housed in the new atrium of the Peerless Building in Providence.

Sean and I presented Colorblind, Continuum’s consumer-focused project on sustainability. Many in the audience had historically been focused on the latest and greatest in green product innovation. Yet Colorblind placed consumer needs squarely in their sightline. It was a perspective that resonated, reminding us that real change will happen only if sustainable designs are created not with other designers in mind but the average consumer.

We were followed by Emily Pilloton, founder of Project H Design, and Meaghan O’Neil, founding editor of TreeHugger and editor for Planet Green. While Meaghan shared a wide range of green design innovations collected in the TreeHugger archives, Emily’s first slide pictured the gold-painted plastic trinkets that she vowed never to design. With hints of the passion you’ll find in her manifesto, Emily managed to impart the do something imperative that clearly drives Project H to address social issues around the world through design innovation.

Indeed, that was the spirit of the evening. Conversation topics in the forum discussion that followed ranged from the future of green design to the value of professional collaboration. Ecolect’s Materials Petting Zoo topped off the night on the rooftop amid local brews, gourmet pizza, and great conversation. Overlooking the sparkling city with so many engaged designers, it was easy to be optimistic about what’s next. So, let’s do something!

Stunningly handsome, wickedly fast, and equipped with plug-in hybrid technology, Henrik Fisker’s newest creation, the Karma, is paving the way to a cleaner future for the performance-luxury market. Fisker, whose résumé includes the Aston Martin DB9 and V8 Vantage, is hoping to capitalize on what the company is calling the ECO-CHIC sensibility: environmentally conscious, futuristic, and uncompromising in quality. Delivering on that ideal, the Karma is an astonishing feat of automotive design. The proprietary technology, Q DRIVE, delivers an initial 50 miles of gripping, ultra comfortable travel with zero emission. And a full-length solar roof allows for cord-free charging and self-contained cooling for the interior, while the car is parked.

The flagship Karma will be priced around $80,000 with additional models to follow. For Americans who aren’t willing to trade their Maserati for a Prius, the Karma will be music to their ears.

I recently went to the Buckminster Fuller exhibition at the Whitney Museum and finally saw his Dymaxion House sketches for the first time. They were initially prototyped in the 1930s, but the idea of prefab homes has a long history. Aladdin Company and Sears Roebuck and Co. were selling “house kits” back in the early 1900s.

You have to admit, some of these modular homes feel a bit cold and uniform.  However, I am warming up to them, as I understand the concept behind them. Buckminster Fuller developed the Dymaxion House with the idea of social responsibility in mind. He wanted to address the shortcomings of homebuilding techniques of his time and was also looking for new ways to use resources more efficiently. The home design he created was meant to be easily shipped and assembled.  Fast forward to today. There are plenty of prefab homes to choose from, but one designer’s work stands out in my mind. Michelle Kauffmann has set out to develop the ultimate green prefab homes. Her prefabs designs incorporate energy efficient, eco-friendly systems and materials. The homes feature green roofs, LED lights, solar, wind generation and geo-thermal power. The placement of the doors and windows is carefully thought out to maximize cross-ventilation and natural lighting. She also uses non-toxic, low VOC paints and chooses formaldehyde-free materials for the cabinetry. For plumbing, she installs water-saving fixtures and on-demand water heaters and the list for sustainable design goes on.

After seeing one of Michelle’s models at the Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry,  I couldn’t help but to want to move into one. Until I learned of the costs! At $250-$275 per square foot for predesigned home, and $400+ per square foot for custom designed homes, they come with a hefty price tag.  So, the next thing we need to work on is to make sustainable design more affordable.

Last weekend, my mom spontaneously announced: “I have a treat for you,” as she handed me a new pair of Lululemon reverse groove yoga pants.

“And the best part is,” she gushed, “The bag. It’s reusable! And super-cute, right?”

“Absolutely,” I told her, though I didn’t have the heart to inform her I already had four of the same red bags, covered in inspiring messages, sitting in a pile at home.

***

The next day, my sister approached my mother, sister-in-law and me with an ear-to-ear grin and an I-have-a-secret-behind-my-back posture. She quickly revealed four reusable bags–one for each of us–and of course, one for her.

The bags featured black and white fashion shots and a sign-off of Ovations for the Cure of Ovarian Cancer, a foundation close to our hearts, as a dear friend of ours had passed away after a nine-year battle just days before.

***

Last night, I dined with a friend who had just returned from Disney World. She carried a real-live plastic bag (gasp – are we still using these?), which revealed an adorable Mickey Mouse reusable tote. Complete with artfully frayed edges and those signature mouse ears, the tote gave the look of reused materials, perfect for the shabby chic tree hugger.

***

After dinner, I tossed my oh-so-adorable bag behind the passenger seat in my car and watched it float to the top of an already brimming pile of super-convenient, ultra-green reusable bags. I couldn’t help but wonder: could there be such a thing as too many reusable bags? (This coming from a girl who can’t say “no” to anything in the handbag genre).

Now that even Mickey is getting in on the action, will each American home acquire an overabundance of the very thing that was meant to minimize paper and plastic bag consumption?

Have we out-greened ourselves and flopped back over to the standard American tenet of “more is more”, wasting energy and material (which surely is not all recycled), and landing exactly where we didn’t want to end up?

***

For now, I’ll switch off my bags daily, tote their messages with pride, and pray for less generous friends and family. Just doing my part.

This is a great piece from our friend Jennifer van der Meer.

The Crowd Will Save Us: How the green movement taps participatory networks to drive innovation

The emergence of more user-centered-thinking has given designers an influence well beyond the old drafting table. Upstream in the product development process, designers can now leverage tools like ethnography and sophisticated needs analysis. When given the opportunity, these methods drive the whole development process towards more meaningful and commercially viable innovation. These user-centered methods are the precursor for solving the green problem.

On 15 January 2001, Wikipedia introduced the first online encyclopedia that could be edited by anyone, forever changing the way we seek expert information. While critics scoffed at Wiki’s accuracy and scope, Nature concluded in a recent study that it competes pretty darn well with the original pillar of accuracy, Encyclopedia Britannica.

An exciting development in this brave new wiki-world is the introduction this year of Green Wiki. It is certainly a welcome development in a thought-space where there are more questions than answers, and knowledge and experience are plentiful but diffuse. Here’s hoping that it will prove to be an equally able concentrator of all things green.

We recently launched the “Sustainability at Home” series, a forum for discussing how each of us is tapping into natural resources or finding alternative ways of living in a more sustainable way. Here is one of the stories that our colleague, Mark Hanks shared with us.

For Mark , who owns a home in a remote part of the Cape Cod bay, practicing the 3 R’s–reduce, re-use, recycle–is not just a matter of choice, it is a matter of necessity. His small peninsula shared with 40 seasonal residents has no access to running water or electricity and as such, it exemplifies off-grid living. And as Mark and his family have found, diversifying energy sources makes for a more efficient and comfortable living.

For years, Mark’s family depended on a 10 kWh Diesel generator for their energy. They relied on the generator primarily to power a 240v well pump, several power tools, a bank of batteries and for lighting. However, using this generator was not ideal–the noise level, fuel consumer and waste of power were less than desirable.

So, last winter Mark decided to replace the generator with solar panels (Evergreen tm, Photovoltaic solar cells). By quietly converting the suns energy into usable power and storing that power in a bank of batteries, Mark is able to generate up to 2.5 kwh (kilowatt hours) of electricity per day. On average he only uses half that, as conservation is the key to efficiency when producing your own power.

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A recent Financial Times article, entitled “Plastic: The Elephant In the Room” by Sam Knight, was particularly meaningful to me. It illustrated an important point. Too often, ecological issues are presented in simplistic, black and white terms–plastic is bad, glass is good; things that decompose are good, things that don’t are bad. However, the reality is that sustainable solutions need to address complex issues involving many gray areas and dichotomies.

Case in point: during a recent visit at a recycling facility, I discovered that polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles, typically used in milk packaging, have a very high commercial value, because they are recyclable. Meanwhile, colored glass bottles have a very low commercial value, because the brown glass that results from their recycling is considered undesirable. So, the PET bottles are carefully rescued from the trash, while the rest of the glass piles up in great big mounds around the facility.
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