Yesterday San Francisco's city council voted to ban plastic shopping bags. Their Department of Environment estimates citizens use 181 million bags annually and one official said the ban would save 450,000 gallons of oil and prevent 1,400 tons of landfill waste each year. That's about 100 bags per quart of oil.
At the 2005 NeoCon World's Trade Fair we launched our "erase waste" campaign. One of our messages promoted conservation: we learned that 1 carpet sample = 1 quart of oil. The same savings San Francisco may enjoy is equaled by eliminating 170,000 carpet samples — about 25% of the total number of samples created each year. Discover the positive impact you can have in your own design practice with our sample savings calculator.
We've teamed up with fellow do-gooders at Bentley Prince Street and Floor Focus for Ample Sample 2007, a design contest. The idea grew from our carpet lamp introduced inside our Gensler collaboration at Greenbuild last November.
More than 700,000 carpet samples will ship this year (maybe a few less if we do our job), helping design professionals move closer to choosing the ideal product for their projects. Too often, after they've served their purpose, samples are not sent back to the manufacturer for recycle or reuse and are destined for the dumpster (and ultimately our landfills). So what do you do with them? Make something cool. Enter before May 15 here.
Planning to be in San Francisco this week? From Thursday to Sunday, ASID's biggest annual conference will be located at the Hyatt Regency on the Embarcadero waterfront... and Tricycle will be located on the sustainability tables, in the resource lounge. We'll be showing off our SIM sustainable sampling right next to the excellent research papers that ASID has published on sustainable design. Be sure to say hi to Anj, and to listen to speakers including our friends Fred Dust from IDEO and Jay Shuster from Pixar.
Remember disappearing ink? Writing code letters (or love notes) in lemon juice, which wasn't visible on the page until you held a match underneath? Well, here's a version for the 21st century.
Xerox... which apparently also goes by the name "Xe-rocks"... has developed a paper that holds ink for the short-term, then fades to blank and can be-reprinted. Perfect for all of those documents destined for the shredder. Another great example of re-thinking waste.
Read the full story here...
I’ve just returned from judging the final round of the Effie Awards. The competition is different than most design and advertising shows because in addition to concept and visuals, 30% of the final score considers effectiveness.
Some of the more provocative campaigns winning Effies promoted corporate social responsibility, alternative fuels and social consciousness. In addition to the great “creative”, I was impressed by the amount of money spent on marketing these campaigns.... in many cases over $20,000,000. It is no small feat to promote an idea to the masses — even a good one. Critics will point to self-serving motives that prompt such spending. However the results of critical public discourse, proliferation of biofuels and revised federal policies — due to these marketing expenditures — arguably have an ROI for us all.
There were also campaigns — really great ones — for luxury items and shoes. But in a competitive marketplace they have to fabricate value and meaning. It’s not unusual to mine the human condition to sell wares. Jewelry = Love. Body Spray = Pursuit of Hedonism. Soda = Longer Nights Out. Even though some of these literally made my eyes gush or brought out a hurrah for the little man, I scored them lower in the “idea” category. The marketing dilemmas are artificial. How important is it that we motivate a person to spend $270 on a shirt? And how are we motivating them — by making them feel more authentic than their other well-off neighbors?
I don’t believe our profession or businesses are amoral. On this blog we’ve promoted the idea of value-based consumption. The other side of the coin is value-based marketing, and ultimately value-based business. Aveda’s purchasing guidelines ask 13 questions of their employees. The first is “Do we need it?” It’s a simple and provocative question. It sat quietly in the back of my mind as we reviewed case after case of heavy hitting marketing campaigns. Then it became an 800-pound gorilla in the room. And I didn’t ignore it.
“Sound Off” is an op/ed post by editors of the Tricycle blog. The opinions may or may not reflect those of the Company. R Michael Hendrix is co-founder and Chief Brand Officer of Tricycle, Inc.
Our blog is mostly about sustainable design in the interiors industry,
especially carpet. Sometimes it's just about us. Updated when we've got something good to say.
