There has been enough buzz around the PVC problem in the last 10 years that many credit card holders are aware of it, and would prefer a cleaner alternative.

It’s hard to know how many credit cards are really out there, but if every household in the US (~100 million) has 10-20 cards that’s 1-2 billion cards just in the US (yeah, that’s a lot of cards), using 10 million pounds of PVC (about 0.01 lbs/card).

Enter PLA–Polylactide or polylactic acid resin. This stuff has been around a while, and sounds great…made from corn, it’s biodegradable, compostable and renewable so it should be pretty eco-friendly right?

Unfortunately, not really.

There is a down side, at least for the near future. PLA is pretty energy intensive (like corn-based ethanol…don’t get me started), and most of our corn is grown in states whose electricity is coming from coal-fired power plants. Add to that the fact that corn-based products are competing with a food source and it’s reason to pause. Plant-based polymers have to be part of our future, but there’s still work to do.

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If you are an “ecogeek” like me you might have noticed all the products, services, and research that revolve around monitoring one’s power usage in real time.  Among the first commercially available products was the PowerCost Monitor from BlueLine Innovations.  NStar (the local power utility here in Boston) offered these little gadgets to a few hundred customers at a discount after conclusive research showed that personal power usage dropped about 5-15% when monitored in real time.

Real time means that when you turn off a light bulb you can see your KilloWattHour number drop within seconds, allowing you to understand in dollars and cents how much energy a typical 100 watt light bulb consumes.  This is a win-win situation for all- save money, save power and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

This trend has continued to evolve and DIYers have joined in the fun.  Electronics designers have submitted two product ideas to the Core77 Greener Gadgets design competition.   The first was a Do-It-Yourself power monitoring device made from typical household products similar to the Kill-A-Watt from P3.

A year ago monitoring your power use in real time was a novel idea, now we need to take this information off the simple LCD display and feed it into the web.  Enter the Tweet-A-Watt by Limor Fried.  The Tweet-A-Watt basically takes the concept of real time power monitoring and offers the information to you and the public and is accessible from anywhere.

This concept offers the ability to feed this information into social networking sites like Twitter or Facebook. You could also be monitoring your power usage constantly through your smart phone (i.e. iPhone or Android), or crunching numbers and graphing through Google’s Power Meter.

I would really like to see this real time information offered via open standard protocols to inspire applications for all internet ready devices like the Chumby or iPhone.  Since Google seems to be the first large organization to aggregate this information, I am looking to Google to establish the standard.

On December 30th we were visited by Bruce Biewald, a Continuum client and the President of Synapse Energy Economics of Cambridge. For the past thirty years Biewald has advised state agencies, consumer and environmental advocates, utilities and others on the production and consumption of energy. As the co-author of more than one hundred reports for several different state and environmental agencies, he is a highly-respected voice in the on-going discussion of energy consumption, sustainability and the future of power. Bruce presented his perspectives on the technical, economic and regulatory challenges for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to the thirty or so who gathered in our great room.

What I took away from Biewald’s visit was the idea that consumers can and should modify their behavior to consume less energy, but that sound policy and government regulation is needed to truly minimize the environmental impact of power generation. Current regulation models fail to provide adequate incentives for innovation within the power industry. For example, since carbon emissions are not currently regulated, proposed power plant plans rarely include future costs of carbon in their financial models, despite the existence of cost estimation models.

Surely, no one can predict the future of carbon costs with any more certainty than the price of oil. But, omitting carbon costs in financial plans can lead to misguided technology and poorly made capacity decisions. We need to provide better incentives, improve policy, upgrade older facilities, and accurately represent the financial and environmental impact of new facilities when assessing power generation technology.

Last week, my friend and former classmate Saul Griffith visited Continuum’s Boston office to share some of his thoughts on energy.

Saul is a busy guy and, among other things, he runs a renewable energy startup in Alameda, California called Makani Power.  Many folks have inquired (with rightful interest) about Makani’s work with high altitude wind, but given that the company is still operating in “stealth” mode, there’s not been much to share.  Instead, Saul has been taking his speaking engagements as opportunities to talk about another topic close to his heart, energy literacy.  He believes, as do I, that we need to reframe the conversation from being about what is politically possible to what is technically necessary.

At Continuum, Saul shared two stories with us – one global, one personal – aiming to give us a more tangible sense of our energy consumption, and of what it will take to meet that consumption in the future.  He told us the global story in very big numbers, addressing the issues of climate change, global energy consumption, and fossil fuels.  He shared his second story, the personal one, by focusing on the decisions we make in our everyday lives and the energy impacts that come with them.  While sick in bed with the flu last winter, Saul rigorously calculated his own energy footprint, taking into account his home, his workplace, his travel and commuting, even getting into the nitty gritty detail of the stuff he owns, the food he eats, the trash that’s hauled from his house to the dump every week, and his 1/300 millionth share of the U.S. government’s energy expenditures. By combining a broad world view with his individual perspective, he clearly illustrated the magnitude of the energy challenge.

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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!

We’ve just finished our third revision to our 2007 Baseline Environmental footprint. Finding resources that made sense for our company and our size was an interesting challenge, but we discovered some that worked well and are worth sharing.

To arrive at a baseline footprint we are confident is accurate, we used the 123 page Climate Registry General Reporting Protocol.  With a bit of effort, we felt like we had a complete view of our footprint.  Since then, we discovered the US EPA Climate Leaders program at http://www.epa.gov/stateply.   This has proven to be a good resource for us.  They offer guidance and simple calculators that can help establish your baseline protocol and a tool to help companies track their progress over time.

After we determined our footprint we were able to move forward on reduction plans and efforts to offset some of our impact.

We purchased 100% windpower offsets based on our electricity use for 2008.  Check out Renewable Choice Energy  for help in understanding renewable energy credits and how to purchase them. We’ve decided to offset half our business air travel with carbon offsets through Las Gaviotas.  A group we think is not only doing a good job in restoring the environment but also seems to put a high percentage of the offset money directly into the projects.

Any other recommendations for great resources to help others “green” their corporate environments? Please share.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.