b l a s t u l a reblog++

Can we live sustainably while still enjoying our stuff? Buying better stuff (and less of it), and keeping it for longer is one realistic strategy for making that possible. But we know that won’t work with most of the stuff we have now. Whether it’s clothes, computers, appliances or even homes, throwaway culture in the developed world — accompanied by throwaway design — makes for stuff we not only don’t want to keep, but that we often can’t continue to use even if we try.

Enter a new meme: Heirloom Design. At Compostmodern, Saul Griffith proposed the concept, which he describes as design that is intended to last for generations. Griffith said he’s planning to give his soon-to-be-born son a Rolex and Mont Blanc pen … and then tell him that these would be the only watch and pen he could use for the next 100 years.

“It sounds like I’m a pretentious wanker when I say ‘green’ is a Rolex and a Mont Blanc pen, but what I really mean is, you have to design things and experiences that will last a very long time, that have been thoughtfully designed and are very beautiful,” Griffith explained.

Durability is not a new concept for sustainability. In theory, if a product stays around longer, it means that a replacement product doesn’t need to be manufactured and transported to the consumer, and the original product stays out of the landfill. But durability alone doesn’t ensure that something won’t be thrown away. Heirloom design introduces something more: our desire as consumers to keep an object because it has some meaning for us. What makes something worthy of passing down through generations?

Griffith’s examples involve heavy initial investments, which can certainly motivate someone to care for and keep a product longer. But the power of price is relative to the consumer’s disposable income, and it still isn’t everything. The point is to not limit heirloom-quality goods to certain people, but to recover an ideal of making things for everyone that will last for generations. When I spoke with Griffith about this, he suggested that designers really need to figure out how to make something beautiful and well made that isn’t expensive.

That goal may not be as pie-in-the-sky as it sounds. In a book called Antiques of the Future, product designer Lisa Roberts put forth a collection of mass-produced objects that she believes will be valuable in the future, once they are no longer in production. Many of the items are relatively inexpensive, but are well made and attractive: one of her primary criteria in selection was just that the objects have “a strong and immediate visual appeal.” Among her selections were Michael Graves’ tea kettle and Karim Rashid’s Garbino trash can (now, she notes, the trash can is available in biodegradable corn-based plastic).

What other products being designed now have the best chance of becoming future heirlooms? Usefulness wasn’t mentioned among Roberts’ criteria, but could also be a reason something is kept. A classic multifunctional tool like the Swiss Army knife may be likely to be handed from one generation to the next. Sentimental appeal is another reason something may become an heirloom, and designers can aim to create products that inspire emotional responses.

Though Roberts’ book demonstrates that heirloom design doesn’t necessarily have to be expensive, her work doesn’t focus on design that promotes sustainability specifically. Griffith’s strategy of choosing investment pieces isn’t necessarily foolproof in this regard, either: a report by the World Wildlife Fund gave the world’s largest luxury companies abysmal sustainability ratings. Even if an item is durable and provides heirloom appeal, limited raw resources and a growing awareness of the impacts of waste mean manufacturers will need to consider lifecycle sustainability from the beginning. A few designers, however, are already using the concept of heirloom design as a way to consciously improve their sustainability, like the clothing company Howie’s, in the UK, and Entermodal in Portland, Oregon.

It’s worth noting that durability/heirloom quality isn’t always the best solution for every product. In some cases, it might make sense to design something to adapt to a radically shorter lifespan, like packaging that instantly biodegrades. In other instances, if a particular product is currently harmful to the environment, a short lifespan would be useful so that the product can be replaced as soon as sustainable technology is available.

At the other end of the spectrum, in some types of products — like rapidly changing technology — the idea of heirloom design can be taken to creative new heights. It could take the form of long-lasting hardware that accepts software upgrades: perhaps, for example, a permanent computer or cell phone case, with replaceable insides (more on this topic in John Hockenberry’s terrific article for Metropolis magazine). Taking that idea to its furthest extension is a future of closed-loop manufacturing, where you could purchase only the service an item provides, relying on the manufacturer to offer you both regular upgrade opportunities and a place to return physical materials to the industrial nutrient stream.

Overall, the idea that products should last — and that consumers should want to keep them — is an important part of designing a sustainable future. Where do you see opportunities for heirloom items that don’t yet exist? Please answer in the comments!

Adele Peters is currently earning her Master’s in Sustainability at Blekinge Institute of Technology in Karlskrona, Sweden.

Photo credit: flickr/Lid-Licker!, Creative Commons license.

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(Posted by Adele Peters in Columns at 11:05 AM)

Originally
from Worldchanging: Bright Green

by Adele Peters


reBlogged

on Jan 1, 1970, 8:00AM

Originally by Adele Peters from Worldchanging: Bright Green on January 1, 1970, 9:00am

Posted under reblog environment, reblog innovation

A green design competition turns up some great new ideas

by Pete Davies

I love gadgets, and I’m obsessed with things that help to increase energy efficiency. So when the two come together, I’m a very happy camper.

This will explain why I’m so excited about the second Greener Gadgets Design Competition that is currently running online. You can view the shortlist and vote for your favorites to make the shortlist that will appear for live judging at the Greener Gadgets Conference later this month.

My favorites:

• 

  The Power-Hog

  is basically a mini coin-operated meter that needs feeding before you can turn on the TV or the Wii. A great idea for teaching kids (and adults) to think about the costs of using appliances and gadgets.

Check out the rest of the shortlist and don’t forget to vote!

This piece originally appeared on The TerraPass Footprint

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Emerging Technologies at 12:50 PM)

Originally
from Worldchanging: Bright Green

by WorldChanging Team


reBlogged

on Jan 1, 1970, 8:00AM

Originally by WorldChanging Team from Worldchanging: Bright Green on January 1, 1970, 9:00am

Posted under reblog environment, reblog innovation

Minister unveils ‘great British refurb’ to cut household emissions one-third by 2020 with insulation and low-carbon technologies

Millions of British homes will be insulated under government plans. Photograph: Graham Turner

by Alok Jha

All UK households will have a green makeover by 2030 under government plans to reduce carbon emissions and cut energy bills.

Cavity wall and loft insulation will be available for all suitable homes, with plans to retrofit 400,000 homes a year by 2015. Financial incentives for householders will also be available for low-carbon technologies such as solar panels, biomass boilers and ground source heat pumps, paid for by a levy on utility companies.

The government wants a quarter of homes (7m) to benefit from the schemes by 2020, extending to all UK households by 2030.

The strategy could help cut household carbon emissions by a third by 2020, part of its target to reduce overall UK emissions by 80% by 2050. Currently, homes account for 27% of the UK’s carbon emissions through heating and power.

The plans were welcomed in principle by green groups and energy campaigners, though many were still concerned by the lack urgency in the proposals – which might only begin in 2012 – or detail on how the majority of the plans will be funded.

Energy and climate change secretary Ed Miliband said: “We need to move from incremental steps forward on household energy efficiency to a comprehensive national plan – the Great British refurb.”

“We know the scale of the challenge: wasted energy is costing families on average £300 a year, and more than a quarter of all our emissions are from our homes. Energy efficiency and low-carbon energy are the fairest routes to curbing emissions, saving money for families, improving our energy security and insulating us from volatile fossil fuel prices.”

Under the proposals, a Renewable Heating Incentive would tax utility companies and then use the money to build up smaller-scale energy networks. A spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said the levy, intended to start in 2011, would not affect today’s household bills. “We have to consult on how it will work and, in fact, our proposals would have little impact on prices for many years, apart from cutting billing for those who take up the offer of help.”

In addition, householders could be paid for any electricity they feed into the national grid from their power-generating facilities.

Miliband said the challenge to retrofit homes was similar to the UK’s “dash for gas” in the 1960s. “Every cooker, every boiler, every gas fire in the country had to be adjusted. Changing more than 32 million appliances, of 8,000 different makes and models. Each appliance, house by house, visiting more than 14 million homes. And in today’s prices, the cost they estimated for this was almost £6 billion. Why did they do it? Because they thought long-term and realised that the shift that they started before I was even born would still benefit us today. We face the same situation again.”

Paul King, chief executive of the UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) said the proposals were suitably ambitious but also needed the Treasury behind them. “As Lord Stern said yesterday, energy efficiency in homes and buildings should be part of a green stimulus. Financial incentives are needed to encourage major green refurbishments – the precedent has already been set with stamp duty rebates for zero-carbon homes.”

According to Greenpeace UK, a programme to upgrade the housing stock alone would require £3.5-£6.5bn per year until 2050. Nathan Argent, head of energy solutions at Greenpeace, said: “Tackling energy efficiency is the fastest way to cut emissions, boost our energy security, revitalise the economy and create tens of thousands of jobs. And, obviously, this will cut household bills too. But this plan needs much more investment right now. The government needs to put their wallet where their mouth is.”

Miliband said that costs of efficiency measures would pay itself back over time in reduced bills. Despite that, he said there should be no upfront cost for consumers and part of today’s consultation will look for ways to finance the strategy - energy companies, local authorities or even private companies might foot the bills for the necessary refurbishments.

Andrew Warren of the Association for the Conservation of Energy was concerned that the government had redefined the meaning of insulation to meet its current insulation targets, set by Gordon Brown last year, of getting 6m homes fully insulated over the next three years.

“Most people think of insulation as the stuff you shove in your loft or put around your walls,” he said. The current DECC definition, he said, can also include draft-proofing of letterboxes or replacing windows. “At the moment, even by the most generous interpretation, you’re not even halfway towards the 6m [target announced by Gordon Brown]..”

Danny Stevens, policy director of the Environmental Industries Commission said that setting targets for energy efficiency was not enough. “All we have today is the launch of yet another consultation. This undermines the urgency of tackling climate change and ignores the huge economic benefits of ambitious environmental protection measures.”

That sentiment was echoed by Philip Sellwood, chief executive of the Energy Saving Trust (EST), who said the time for talking is now over. “We are not short of ideas; we just need action and now. Armed with the knowledge that 70% of our current housing stock will still be around in 2050, we know we need to be bold.”

He added: “If we throw everything at our existing housing stock – based on today’s technologies only – we could reduce household carbon emissions by 50%.”

The EST said there are 7.3m cavity walls that could be filled with insulation, 7m solid walls that could be insulated, and 12.9m lofts which do not have the recommended depth of insulation, and 4.5m G-rated (the least efficient) gas boilers.

Shadow energy and climate change secretary Greg Clark said the government was “delaying rather than getting on and adopting our scheme immediately, when it is desperately needed.”

Last month, the Conservatives proposed giving an allowance of up to £6,500 to every household in the UK for energy efficiency improvements, the same figure announced today by the Lib-Dems to refurbish homes.

In their Warm Homes strategy, the party aims to upgrade more than two million homes a year for 10 years, and would award the contracts to regional building companies rather than large national companies such as Wimpey and Barratt.

Today’s Decc strategy also includes ideas to encourage microgeneration, where homeowners and local communities generate their own heat or power.

This piece originally appeared in The Environment section of The Guardian, for which Alok Jha is a green technology correspondent.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Politics at 11:50 AM)

Originally
from Worldchanging: Bright Green

by WorldChanging Team


reBlogged

on Jan 1, 1970, 8:00AM

Originally by WorldChanging Team from Worldchanging: Bright Green on January 1, 1970, 9:00am

Posted under reblog environment

Image credit Wikipedia

In regions where pumping and distributing water requires significant electricity use, policies that lead to reduced water consumption could address climate change more efficiently than requiring businesses and households to use less energy, according to water expert Peter Gleick.

“Some of the cheapest greenhouse gas emission reductions available seem to be not energy-efficiency programs, but water-efficiency programs,” said Gleick, president of the California-based Pacific Institute, a global water research center.

Gleick notes, for example, that it may be cheaper for consumers to reduce the overall hot water usage in their homes than to replace their incandescent light bulbs with more energy-efficient alternatives.

The virtues of water efficiency can be found in California and China - regions where water shortages have become emergencies and droughts may worsen with climate change. Conditions may become more severe in the future as consumers turn to water solutions that often require even greater energy supplies.

In California, where drought is afflicting the land for the third year in a row, the state is reducing water deliveries by 20-30 percent this winter and warns of “the most significant water crisis in its history.” The water shortages are forcing farmers to cut production and lay off employees in an already sour economy.

Meanwhile, water transportation, storage, and treatment account for about 19 percent of the state’s electricity, according to a 2007 California Energy Commission report [PDF]. To reach the rapidly expanding urban clusters in southern California, for instance, water is pumped 2,000 feet (610 meters) over the Tehachapi Mountains north of Los Angeles.

David Zoldoske, director of the Center for Irrigation Technology at California State University-Fresno, has led efforts to educate central California farmers about proper pump maintenance since 2001. With the help of utility company subsidies, the project has helped improve the efficiency of several irrigation pumps, saving 19.4 million kilowatt-hours of electricity annually between 2002 and 2005, he said.

But the recent drought may reduce many efficiency gains. Farmers are digging deeper water wells and several counties are exploring plans to build desalination plants. Both measures lead to significant increases in energy use.

“When you’re running out of water, you don’t care about what the energy bill is…and we’re in dire straits here in California,” Zoldoske said. “Where people can use water more efficiently, people will opt for that…. But the availability and reliability of water is more of a concern.”

In China, drought now stretches across the northern wheat belt, and nearly 4 million people are without proper drinking water. After declaring an emergency “rarely seen in history” on Thursday, the government said it plans to send cloud-seeding rockets into the air to encourage rain, and to redirect portions of the Yangtze and Yellow rivers.

Many regions of China fit into Gleick’s definition of “peak water” [PDF] - a term used to describe situations when water is consumed from aquifers or the ground faster than it can be replaced, or when water-use patterns irreversibly damage the local ecology.

“China is an example where [water] problems come together in the worst ways on the planet,” Gleick said during a presentation of his bi-annual report, The World’s Water, at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. last week. “Water resources are over-allocated, over-used, and grossly polluted by human and industrial waste.”

To address the country’s water deficiencies, the Chinese government began plans in 2001 for a South-North Water Diversion project. The $62 billion project hopes to divert water from the Yangtze to the arid north along eastern, central, and western routes. If the project is completed (the western route has yet to begin), a significant amount of energy would be required to pump water across the country.

“It takes a lot of energy to move, treat, clean, and use water. A remarkable amount of water, it turns out,” Gleick said. “So whatever we can do to reduce the energy required to meet our water needs reduces greenhouse gases.”

The Chinese government in 2005 prioritized a 20-percent reduction in “energy intensity” - the amount of fuel needed to generate each dollar of national income - by 2010. Historically, water production and supply have consumed less energy over time. Energy intensity declined about 30 percent between 1997 and 2004, according to a 2008 study in the journal Water Policy [PDF].

But the study predicts that as China follows through on its promise to expand water treatment facilities across the country, energy consumption will rise.

“Reducing urban and other end-user water intensity could conserve both water and energy,…saving households money on water and energy and creating jobs elsewhere in the economy,” said David Roland-Holst, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley who co-authored the study.

Ben Block is a staff writer with the Worldwatch Institute. He can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org.

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(Posted by Ben Block in Water at 12:00 PM)

Originally
from Worldchanging: Bright Green

by Ben Block


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on Jan 1, 1970, 8:00AM

Originally by Ben Block from Worldchanging: Bright Green on January 1, 1970, 9:00am

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Earlier this week, Google.org announced plans to develop a personal energy metering tool that will allow users to monitor their home energy consumption. The PowerMeter “will show consumers their electricity consumption in near real-time in a secure iGoogle Gadget,” according to the organization’s website.

Google believes consumers have a right to detailed information about their home energy use, and that real-time energy information could help people make smarter choices that will save them energy and money:

Our lack of knowledge about our own energy usage is a huge problem, but also a huge opportunity for us all to save money and fight global warming by reducing our power usage. Studies show that people save 5-15% of their energy costs when they have access to information about their energy consumption.

Over the next three years, with support from the Obama Administration’s proposed stimulus package, more than 40 million U.S. homes are set to receive smart meters. But many currently available smart meters do not display information to the consumer, which Google states is “unacceptable:”

We believe that detailed data on your personal energy use belongs to you, and should be available in a standard, non-proprietary format. You should control who gets to see it, and you should be free to choose from a wide range of services to help you understand it and benefit from it.

The organization is currently testing the software with Google employees and seeking out utilities and smart energy device makers to partner with. When PowerMeter is released, the tool will be free and is rumored to be based on an open source model.

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(Posted by Sarah Kuck in Emerging Technologies at 12:41 PM)

Originally
from Worldchanging: Bright Green

by Sarah Kuck


reBlogged

on Jan 1, 1970, 8:00AM

Originally by Sarah Kuck from Worldchanging: Bright Green on January 1, 1970, 9:00am

Posted under reblog environment, reblog innovation

Each day, a plethora of new media arrives at our Worldchanging Headquarters in Seattle — from books on climate change to magazines on women’s rights, invitations to the latest innovation-focused conferences to pamphlets and products offering new ways for solving the world’s problems. When you do our kind of work you get to see a lot of what’s out there, and the spectrum ranges from batty to brilliant. But if we didn’t see all of it, we wouldn’t recognize the best of it when it hit our desks. Each month, we’ll sift through what we received and share our favorites with you.

Our Favorite January Resources

Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design With Nature

Resilient Cities: Responding to Peak Oil and Climate Change

Reusing the Resource: Adventures in Ecological Wastewater Recycling

Award Winning Green Roof Designs

Post Carbon Cities: Planning for Energy and Climate Uncertainty

Design for Water: Rainwater Harvesting, Stormwater Catchment, and Alternate Water Reuse

The Endless City

The Long Thaw: How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate (Science Essentials)

Electric Water: The Emerging Revolution in Water and Energy

Atlantic Monthly

The Option of Urbanism: Investing in a New American Dream

Technologies for Sustainable Growth - Bright Green

What new media have you been consuming since the new year started? Share below.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Resource - Stuff at 5:44 PM)

Originally
from Worldchanging: Bright Green

by WorldChanging Team


reBlogged

on Jan 1, 1970, 8:00AM

Originally by WorldChanging Team from Worldchanging: Bright Green on January 1, 1970, 9:00am

Posted under reblog environment

What does it mean to “work in sustainability” in the 21st century?

Last weekend, I traveled to Vancouver and Whistler, British Columbia to attend the North American regional gathering paralleling the international sustainability conference Hallbarhet2009 in Australia. The event and its regional iterations attracted leading thinkers from around the world, including longtime Worldchanging ally Alan AtKisson. The purpose: to re-energize and more thoroughly network the professional sustainability community through dialogue and shared experience, and to work toward strategies for increasing the impact of their work.

It was great to have the chance to step back from my own day-to-day and view this nascent, changing field as a whole. While I feel privileged to do my own form of outreach from behind the screen here at Worldchanging, I feel like the colleagues I met in Canada are, by and large, out there on the front lines. By engaging with businesses from the small to the megacorp, steering leading NGOs and embedding in local and regional governments, these individuals are changing the course of how we as a society envision both business and policy. They hold the white-collar green jobs, the posts of experienced scholars and managers who hold advanced degrees and are well versed in strategy.

In Whistler, B.C., the combination of a several-years-old strategic vision for sustainability and the accelerated development associated with the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympic Games has fostered a convergence of political will, economic support and public engagement that’s unique, particularly in North America. During the weekend, we heard from a variety of leaders from the local business and government, including Whistler’s charismatic mayor Ken Melamed, and management-level representatives from the Games, the Whistler 2020 city plan, and the local economic cornerstone, the Whistler Blackcomb resort.

Pictured: Whistler village. Top photo: Vancouver, taken from Stanley Park.
Photos by author

There is definitely progressive work being done here. As part of its mission to leave a lasting legacy of sustainability for future Olympic Games, the Vancouver Olympic Committee has included green building standards, environmental stewardship, and social inclusiveness into its model. Whistler Blackcomb has an aggressive timeline for achievements in zero waste, clean energy and more. For example, by 2010, the resort expects to complete a local micro-hydro project capable of meeting all of the resort’s power needs, as well as to install rooftop windmills on most of its small restaurants. Of course, there are still limits. When asked about the problem of travel-related CO2 emissions generated by the resort’s two million annual guests, Whistler Blackcomb’s mountain planning and environmental resource manager, Arthur DeJong, replied that the resort’s sustainability plan doesn’t extend beyond the town’s borders.

Each vision combined distinct economic and social goals with a sustainability plan. But it seemed like in this setting, there was consensus on at least a meta-level: in order for these plans to succeed with a majority of stakeholders, they must be as practical and as profitable as the unsustainable models they replace. Whether for a business, for an event, or for an entire community, achieving sustainability requires careful strategy around a clear long-term goal. In Whistler, the stakeholders adhere to the framework developed by the NGO The Natural Step, which we’ve discussed before. But whatever your methodology, without a practical argument, it’s nearly impossible to gain willing participation from all sectors of society and economy. And without engagement at all levels, the plan cannot be sustainable.

To put it another way, while there is no question that a bright green economic recovery will involve green-collar jobs at the industrial level, getting us there will also take a new kind of boardroom leadership. In the next 20 years, I hope to see many of the same people I met in Canada earn seats at the heads of these tables.

So here’s to an enormous – but increasingly possible — task at hand for sustainability professionals everywhere.

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(Posted by Julia Levitt in Columns at 2:59 PM)

Originally
from Worldchanging: Bright Green

by Julia Levitt


reBlogged

on Jan 1, 1970, 8:00AM

Originally by Julia Levitt from Worldchanging: Bright Green on January 1, 1970, 9:00am

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By Scott Smith

The sustainable future will be a networked future: technology will be the glue that binds the green city together. One voice among those pushing this idea comes from communication equipment giant Cisco, which is staking the claim that sustainable cities are not just about grass roofs and vertical farming, but about using the IT skeleton of the urban environment — its web of communication systems, connected transport systems and networked living and working environments — to tie the whole city together in an integrated, controllable, monitored community.

As a step on this road to fully networked city environments, last month Cisco and the City of Amsterdam held the second Connected Urban Development (CUD) conference to highlight the Dutch city’s inclusion as one of three initial cities, alongside San Francisco and Seoul, in its CUD initiative. CUD’s creation in 2006 was driven by Cisco CEO John Chambers’ involvement in the Clinton Global Initiative, and held its first summit in San Francisco last year. This year’s event also marked the inclusion of four additional cities as CUD testing ground: Madrid, Hamburg, Lisbon and Birmingham, England.

Kicking off the conference, Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen pointed out that his city has several obvious reasons for being interested in looking more deeply into using IT to do its part to help slow climate change: not only because it is a low-lying city that would be strongly impacted by rising sea levels, but also because it has a tech-centric economy, with 12 percent of employment linked to IT and new media. With major traffic problems (and increasingly tech-based solutions) in his city as well as around the Netherlands in general, Cohen said Amsterdam felt not only pressure but an obligation to cut carbon emissions, and has set C02 reduction targets for 2029 at 40 percent lower than 1990, which will require aggressive action. Population density is a core issue the Dutch have had to face in recent years, as the country ranks 23rd in inhabitants per square kilometer worldwide, even higher if only land mass is taken into consideration.

Despite very high usage of alternative transport, Amsterdam still faces carbon problems driven by population density.

Cisco Europe’s Chris Dedicote also pointed to IT as a potentially powerful tool in helping cities lower emissions and achieve greater levels of sustainability by linking transportation, energy, built environments and other urban infrastructure, but only if use of technology itself is better understood for its own potential for negative impact on the environment. Dedicote said an estimated 2 percent of global carbon emissions can be traced back to unmanaged use of IT, and that his company was itself trying to better understand its own internal carbon consumption in order to establish carbon budgets alongside financial budgets. “You have no idea how much energy a department or an office uses,” Dedicote said in his keynote. “In the same way we know how much money [a department] spends, if we also know how much energy they use, it has an incredible impact on the way they work.” Dedicote pointed to refining monitoring and sensing technologies as the next key step in getting to this level of transparency across companies, buildings and entire cities.

Larger IT and communication companies have placed a main focus on the topic of energy-efficiency strategies as a competitive advantage. Cisco and one of its largest competitors, Nortel, have both been focusing on the energy consumption levels of their own networking equipment and benefits of green IT. Nortel’s latest ad campaign targets Cisco directly, claiming its own gear’s lower energy consumption amounts to an “energy tax” on those who use Cisco equipment. Cisco itself appointed a director of green engineering earlier this year to drive the company’s efforts in the area.

One element of Amsterdam’s strategy is the development of networked co-working centers, the first of which opened last week in Almere. The fast-growing satellite city to Amsterdam’s east is typical of sprawl that has emerged as the Netherlands’ population has grown in the past few decades. Created in 1971 in part to ease crowding in Amsterdam and now home to 185,000, Almere is expected to double in population by 2030, according to the city’s mayor, Annemarie Jorritsma. The Smart Work Centre provides working space for area commuters, including meeting space and fiber-based videoconferencing facilities, taking advantage of the massive fiber network infrastructure that has been laid under the Netherlands in the past decade. The city of Amsterdam uses the co-working space, as does IBM, but it will take many such centers to make a significant impact on working and commuting patterns in the region, and even then proponents will have to break through a traditional work culture built around 9 to 5 presence under management’s eye.

Almere’s mayor Annemarie Jorritsma speaks with Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen and others via a fiber-based video link.

CUD’s next stop is next spring in Seoul, where it will take stock of the initiative’s progress. Based on the plans and case studies discussed at CUD, sights are set high among government leaders, technologists and urban planners. With major projects ranging from San Francisco’s Treasure Island redevelopment to Abu Dhabi’s futuristic technology project of Masdar City — both presented at the conference — those hatching new mega-developments globally are feeling increasingly pushed to put sustainability front and center in order to achieve the scale of their project plans. Where a diverse set of city departmental managers once sat in different facilities watching traffic or power grid performance disconnected from one another, concepts discussed at CUD point toward a future where integrated “dashboard” views of a city’s vital statistics — a la Sim City — will redefine the nature of city management.

Scott Smith is a futurist and founder of Changeist, a human foresight consultancy, and project director of Smartspace, a research initiative to map development of integrated intelligent communities worldwide.

Photos taken by the author.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Columns at 8:45 AM)

Originally
from Worldchanging: Bright Green

by WorldChanging Team


reBlogged

on Jan 1, 1970, 8:00AM

Originally by WorldChanging Team from Worldchanging: Bright Green on January 1, 1970, 9:00am

Posted under reblog environment, reblog innovation, reblog wikinomics

This article was written by Jeremy Faludi in January 2008. We’re republishing it here as part of our month-long editorial retrospective.

Are you a designer just getting interested in eco-design and are looking for a place to start? Are you a designer who already knows the big-picture view of sustainability, but wants to actually apply things to your designs today? Either way, the Okala guide by the IDSA (Industrial Designers Society of America) is for you, and your office. It is a primer on green design written by designers for designers, and while it is short enough that no one in the office has an excuse to not read it (fewer than 70 pages), it has enough activities in it that it can be an 18-week university course. In fact, it was designed as a course by Philip White, professor at Arizona State and current chair of IDSA’s Ecodesign section, as well as design professors Louise St. Pierre and Steve Belletire (with some influences by Worldchanging ally Wendy Brawer and others). The Okala guide is not an in-depth theoretical tome like Natural Capitalism, but it is a good workbook for applying sustainability to your product design practice today, right where you are.

Almost no green design guides exist that are practical and textbook-worthy. This is not to disparage works like Cradle to Cradle, The Green Imperative, or other great green design titles; it’s just that most books on sustainability are very abstract, talking about the problems we face and the general principles to think of when trying to deal with them. They give you a very clear picture of what the problem is, and a vague picture of how to solve it, but without many real nuts-and-bolts-level tools. They often list examples of good practice, but don’t give an exhaustive list of ecodesign strategies or provide a way to balance the pros and cons of different strategies, which is key to creating your own good designs. Occasionally a book will overflow with good examples (like Alastair Fuad Luke’s ecoDesign, almost a catalog of green consumer products), but these are also of limited use, because they fail to connect the examples to enough theory, leaving you in the same place as overly-abstract books.

To be a good textbook, you need to provide four things: understanding of the problems and solutions at a big-picture level, a toolbox of strategies for the day-to-day level, examples of success, and the connections between these three. Okala, simple as it is, does these four things. The only other book I would strongly recommend for practical how-to instruction is Design + Environment, written in 2001 by professors at the Centre for Design at RMIT University in Australia. Longer and more technical than the Okala guide, it is a great reference book and learning guide. (In fact, Okala references it several times.) Okala’s guide, on the other hand, is a great workbook: it is meant to be actively engaging, getting you to try things out, do your own analyses and redesigns. It aims at average designers, and gives them a solid foundation without overwhelming them with the complexities of detail. If you want those details you’ll have to go elsewhere, but it does have several suggestions for further reading. It’s also highly visual, like designers are, which should make it more accessible to the right people.

The first section of the guide (nearly the first half of it) introduces you to the concept of sustainability in all its ecological, social, and financial aspects; it gives overviews of the Natural Step, ecological carrying capacity, different arenas of ecological impact, and so on. It also points out how eco-design fits into a larger view of stakeholder needs, and talks about balancing different needs against each other.

If you already believe in the importance of green design and understand the basic goals, you can skip to the later modules–the rest of the guide is divided into three sections, “lifecycle strategies”, “assessment”, and “practice”. These are your toolboxes for green design, from the initial strategic phase through design development and material choice, product usage, and end-of-life. It even discusses green marketing and business strategy. While most of these subjects are not covered in depth, each one gets a mention, and several activities are suggested for you to deepen your understanding through your own research and/or theoretical designs. I would like to have seen more detail for each strategy, but the brevity does make it an easy read, and a quicker reference. For example, their Ecodesign Strategy Wheel is great for reference, listing dozens of strategies in the seven life-cycle stages that each one is relevant to. Their table of connector designs for manual disassembly is especially good, since this is an easy strategy to employ but one that nobody talks about in detail. On the other hand, there are areas where the guide could be improved. The module titled “Strategies In Depth” only talks about two strategies (biomimicry and product longevity), whereas it should describe all strategies mentioned in the Strategy Wheel. Several of the other strategies in the wheel get described in more detail in other parts of the guide, but in no particular order; I would prefer to have the pamphlet organized by the seven regions on the Strategy Wheel, so that it is easier to navigate to the strategies you are interested in. I disagree with their example of Velcro as a green material–it is indeed biomimetic, but as a petroleum product requiring high temperatures and pressures in extrusion, it’s not any greener than plastic buttons or zippers. One subject that I would like to have seen which was not covered at all is persuasive design–affordances, interfaces, and whole devices that change user behavior for better sustainability. I can’t fault Okala for this, though, since no one has really written well on this subject yet; and they do mention persuasion for lengthening product lifetime, by designing objects users will become attached to and not want to throw away. The one eco-design tool that Okala covers in real depth is well-chosen: life-cycle impact assessment.

The single most useful feature of the guide is the list of “Okala Impact Factors” for doing back-of-the-envelope life-cycle analysis. These are single-figure scores for the ecological impact of common materials and manufacturing processes, derived from the US EPA’s TRACI system. Single-figure scores are often called oversimplified and misleading, and rightly so: a product’s life cycle impacts fall into wildly divergent categories, from fossil fuel use to water acidification to human toxicity to mineral depletion, just to name a few. Trying to normalize these against each other and lump all of them together into a single score is comparing apples to oranges. And yet, when I have given a presentation to a client showing the impacts of their product in all the various categories, it all boils down to comparisons: comparing the product’s manufacturing to its packaging, or comparing the usage part of the product’s life-cycle to the manufacturing or disposal parts of the cycle, or comparing one design to another possible design. For comparisons, in the end you always want the choices to be as simple as possible, A vs. B. You always end up lumping things together into a single score. Trusting a single score to adequately represent the complexities is mostly a matter of trusting the people who decided how to weigh apples and oranges on the same scale–the score’s normalization and weighting algorithm. The most widely trusted system for weighing life cycle impacts is probably Pre’s Eco-Indicator, but it is for European data, and the IDSA’s audience is primarily American; hence the preference for TRACI, which uses US data. (Although arguably everyone should be using Asian data, since most manufacturing happens there nowadays; unfortunately, hardly any Asian data is available yet.) Okala’s list of impact factors also has the advantage of being free and simple to work with, while Pre’s software costs thousands of euros. Few companies are willing to spend this kind of money on eco-analysis, and even fewer individual designers are able to. So although single-score life-cycle assessment is oversimplified, I think it is valuable for designers and design firms to use as they start off on the road to sustainability. Any quantitative life-cycle thinking is an improvement over guesswork and intuition, which is what most people work with today. We need to avoid letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. We need as many people as possible getting on the road to good work; once they’re on that road, they’ll continue on towards the perfect as their skills and successes improve.

In the end, I recommend the Okala guide to designers looking for an introduction to sustainability, and those who are already versed in green design but are looking for a handy desk-side reference. I also recommend it to those who would like to use life-cycle analysis but cannot afford LCA software. While many other sources go into greater depth, Okala is immediately practicable, which is something very few books on sustainable design can say for themselves.

image credits: Okala Guide

The Okala Guide to Green Design is part of our month long retrospective leading up to our anniversary on October 1. For the next four weeks, we’ll celebrate five years of solutions-based, forward-thinking and innovative journalism by publishing the best of the Worldchanging archives.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Worldchanging Retro at 12:22 PM)

Originally
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by WorldChanging Team


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on Jan 1, 1970, 8:00AM

Originally by WorldChanging Team from Worldchanging on January 1, 1970, 9:00am

Posted under reblog environment, reblog innovation

This article was written by Alex Steffen in October 2007. We’re republishing it here as part of our month-long editorial retrospective.

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” - Winston Churchill, speaking of the turning point battle of El Alamein,1942

Al Gore and the IPCC winning the Nobel Peace Prize symbolizes more than just a head-nod towards some eco-fad — it shows that sustainability has finally moved from the outskirts of activism to the most central halls of authority. Concern for the planetary future is now as credible as it is possible to get. The beginning of the struggle to save ourselves from ecological catastrophe has come to an end and we can begin to see the outlines of the next stage of the struggle.

Those of us who’ve spent our careers advocating a saner approach to the future can be forgiven a few moments of smugness, for these are sweet days. There is no longer any reasonable debate about whether or not we need to move with all possible speed towards a different way of living on this planet. To argue the contrary is now to prove oneself morally bankrupt.

Of course, the morally bankrupt can still be found in some numbers in the corridors of commercial and political power, but we don’t need to worry too much about them. They are the leaders of the past: their influence wanes by the moment, as leader after leader steps up to call for big changes.

Consider, for example, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s call this week for a global system of carbon regulation and pricing to be in place by 2012:

Merkel insisted that only by establishing limits on carbon dioxide output per individual around the world — suggesting about 2 tons per head — could the fight to stop global warming be effective. … Her suggestion would mean drastic cuts: Germany has a carbon dioxide output of some 11 tons per person per year, while the U.S. is at around 20 tons per person.

Similar proclamations — which would even five years ago, been perceived as beyond the pale of realistic debate — can be heard from corporate CEOs, retired generals and religious leaders. (These conversions are coming none too soon. There’s been a spate of disturbing news of late, including NASA climate expert Jim Hansen’s latest paper (PDF) estimating that we are moving towards an increase of six degrees Celsius rather than three, and that drastic observed effects (like the rapid melting of the polar ice cap) may be evidence that we are on the verge of hitting climate tipping points.)

Winning the debate doesn’t mean we’re winning the war, yet. But the fight has changed. Now that we have an increasingly broad consensus that we face a major planetary crisis, we can start in on the next step. Now we move from spreading the word to setting the agenda, from handing out pamphlets to drawing blueprints. The future we’re inheriting is broken. People all over the world know it. Now it’s time to design a future that works.

This campaign will be no easier.

For one thing, in order to create real solutions, we have to avoid certain traps, like carbon blindness. It’s going to be difficult to help the world see more clearly that climate change is a symptom of our lack of sustainability, not its cause. We must find ways of showing that climate chaos, environmental degradation, economic inequity and political corruption are all part of the same problem. We simply cannot solve any of those problems without working to tackle them all.

Others will call for “moderation,” which in this context actually means totally insufficient half-measures. Because we know that we’re dealing with the hard reality of merciless trends here, we’ll have to be strong and demand more than timid steps and vague pronouncements. We’ll have to demand commitment to the bold timelines necessary and hold our leaders accountable to them. To take baby steps now is to fail, however good our intentions.

We’ll also have some work to do explaining why the developed world needs to lead the way. We in the North have a moral responsibility to go first, of course, both because we bear the historical guilt for the situation in which we find ourselves and because others have the same right we do to expect reasonable prosperity and we will not earn their cooperation (which we need) without acknowledging that. But we also face the practical reality that it is our governments, universities and businesses that have the research capacity to forge the new solutions people everywhere will need. If we want the whole world using these new solutions by 2050, we’d better start inventing and implementing them here, now.

But there’s an even more fundamental challenge facing us, I believe: we don’t know what the future we want to build looks like.

We are coming to understand the kinds of radical challenge we face — cutting our impact on the planet on the planet by perhaps a factor of 20 over the next 25 years or so, while delivering sustainable prosperity to many more people — but the truth we rarely speak in public is that we really have no idea how to get there.

We don’t know what our cities will look like, how our energy will be created and delivered, how we’ll get from place to place, how our food will be grown, how we’ll manufacture our consumer products and make our clothing, or even how we’ll recreate and relax. Yet we will need revolutions in each of these fields — and in the cultural interactions between them, the policies regulating them, and in the businesses which deliver them.

Up to now, we have been a movement whose purpose was to raise awareness of the dangers of a broken future; education and persuasion will continue to be part of our job, but now our central mission must evolve into creating a networked movement of people and institutions who are working together to imagine, describe, plan and build a sustainable society. We have shown people the need for change; now we need to become capable of mass-producing it. Our business now is vision.

It’s common, among certain of our allies, to try to avoid seeming like radicals by reassuring people that a sustainable world won’t be all that different from the world we live in now. It’s time for us to stop saying that.

It’s time for us to stop saying that because it’s not true: the kind of world we will be building will have to include what are, from today’s perspective, some truly massive changes. We won’t be living the same way in a couple decades, either because we’ve undergone some relatively profound transformations, or because the consequences of failing to change our ways will be coming home to roost in a series of utterly predictable disasters.

But it’s time to stop downplaying the changes needed for another reason: if we do our jobs right, life will get better. The systems we currently rely on don’t just destroy the environment, they limit our happiness. We do not live in the best of all possible worlds. We know it is possible to create lives which are not only profoundly more sustainable, but more prosperous, comfortable, stylish, healthy, safe and fun. If we do our jobs right, a bright green future will be downright sexy.

Our task now is to envision those lives, envision them with such practical clarity that we gain the power to build them.

Getting to a bright green future is going to involve quite a long journey. The storms of bad news won’t stop coming in the meantime, and we can expect the seas to be choppy along the way. But this will also be a grand adventure and we can take heart in the message the Nobel committee has sent: look to your sails, the tide has turned.

Al Gore, the Nobel Prize and the End of the Beginning is part of our month long retrospective leading up to our anniversary on October 1. For the next four weeks, we’ll celebrate five years of solutions-based, forward-thinking and innovative journalism by publishing the best of the Worldchanging archives.

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Worldchanging Retro at 11:39 AM)

Originally
from Worldchanging

by WorldChanging Team


reBlogged

on Jan 1, 1970, 8:00AM

Originally by WorldChanging Team from Worldchanging on January 1, 1970, 9:00am

Posted under reblog environment, reblog innovation