A nice article in the Chattanooga Times Free Press (Sunday, April 29) about local businesses going green. And an interview with our Caleb Ludwick about what's happening here in town.
So much good is happening in Chattanooga right now - with Artini, Green Drinks, Slow Food, as well as the local chapter of AIGA and rumors of an American Institute of Architects Committee on the Environment (AIA COTE).
A greener 'Noog has been a long time coming, and is welcome.
For 25 years, Prince Charles has been calling for better environmental stewardship. Along the way, he has endured ribbing by the British press (not known for their patience or ability to be sated), but this Prince who has never seemed to put much stock in public opinion has remained passionate about sustainable initiatives - in particular, organic farming and better development of the built environment. Now he's going a step further, proposing that products bear labels showing the environmental costs of developing them and bringing them to market.
By "Accounting for Sustainability", the label would clearly quantify a product's carbon footprint for any shopper to see. Enabling not only greater awareness in the store aisles but giving a competitive foothold for local farmers and manufacturers whose green advantages outweigh their ability to keep costs low through mass production. Not to mention helping consumers push for the greater good by using every purchase, every dollar spent, to call for a healthier planet.
We never guessed that Charles was a copywriter, but it turns out we're messaging mates: in today's market, taglines should get second billing. We need transparency. Read about the Prince's journey toward sustainability in this month's Vanity Fair (its second annual Green Issue), on newsstands or at this link.
We love San Francisco's decision to ban disposable plastic shopping bags, but it would serve us well to remember that the marketing push for their adoption in the first place, ten years ago, was environmental concern.
In 1999, the US was responsible for the felling of 14 million trees to produce 10 billion paper shopping bags. According to Treehugger, the total energy used and pollutants produced by every paper bag is nearly twice that of plastic... thus the push, not so long ago, for eco-friendly plastic. Although Treehugger also points out that now we're seeing more than 100,000 birds and animals die each year from an encounter with marine debris, much of it plastic bags.
Being between a rock and a hard place is nothing new for sustainability activists. Let's run our cars on corn? Great! Much better than nonrenewable and ozone-killing petroleum. But what would the impact of higher corn demand be on American farmers? Particularly those who are committed to growing crops without high yield genetically modified seeds or petroleum-generated fertilizers (if you haven't yet, read Michael Pollen). 
OK, then, what about sugar cane? It's a more efficient source of ethanol anyway; in Brazil, the world's largest producer of sugar cane, ethanol-only and dual-fuel cars have been sold since the 1980s. But what percentage of their sugar fields were once rainforest? And how much more would be clear-cut if Americans clamored for sugar cane at the pump?
So are we simply damned if we do, damned if we don't?
Well, there are great causes for hope. One is the rise of true lifecycle analysis: smart ecoveterans around the world are pushing hard to subject the full life of a product to intense scrutiny... not only in the classic understanding of "lifecycle" (from materials to market) but all the way from design to disposal/reuse. This helps us avoid false dilemmas such as "Paper or Plastic?", and leads to big shifts such as what's happened at IKEA. Last year, IKEA became the first major US retailer to begin charging customers for plastic bags - with the stated intention to eliminate their use entirely - while at the same time cutting the cost of their reusable "Big Blue Bag"s from 99 cents to 59 cents. Until their customers catch on and start bringing their own bags, the company is donating profits from the 5 cent cost of each plastic bag to American Forests, to fund the planting of trees to restore forests.
But the best reason to be optimistic is the continually growing groundswell of re-thinkers who don't assume that just because an advance is brought to market, that it is "the answer". Who know that sustainability is not a destination, but is a matter of steps in the right direction. The market has always had a voice (it's our own fault that we're in today's consumption nightmare), but buyers are now acutely aware of their ability to shape supply. And want to use it for good.
This ties into a trend that is top of mind for marketers today. Brand loyalty isn't as much of a decision maker as it was a few years ago. Car shoppers can buy a quality product from BMW, or Audi, or Honda... or even Kia. It's said that nearly 70% of consumers can be swayed in the store re: which product to buy. There are, of course exceptions. Cigarettes, for example. Smokers are fanatically loyal to their Camels or Kools. Maybe we're all protective of the things we love, that hurt us; the Late Great Vonnegut once called smoking the only socially acceptable form of suicide. But smoking isn't quite so cool anymore (and curiously enough, dying is much less trendy than it was a decade ago). Today it seems that its much cooler to live, and help others live.
And brands that are thriving most today are ones partnering with causes beyond their brand. Mini and Nature Conservancy share billboards (and messaging). Greenbuild is growing by leaps and bounds during a time when many interiors expos are dying on the vine, or struggling to reposition themselves.
Or the glory
story: the Project (RED) campaign, which is brilliant because it takes all comers and uses their products, motives, everything, for good. As the associated brands are clamoring for attention, as actors scramble to be included in the latest photo shoot, the full weight of the marketing machine truly is helping save lives. I was in New York this week at an eco-savvy fashion show and saw one of the überhip models wearing an übertiny HAMME(RED) t-shirt from the Gap. At first, skepticism kicked in and I wanted to poke a bit of fun at the apparent incongruity between his context and the (RED) context, but I stopped short. Irony was trumped by the cause. Whatever his reasons for wearing the shirt, whatever Gap's motivation, the fact is that his shirt provided 41 doses of nevirapine treatments to a pregnant woman in Africa, to prevent the transmission of HIV to her child. And this is something wonderful.
Frankly, I believe that consumers don't enjoy being skeptical. It can be fun and funny, but it was much more fun to have my mouth shut by the truth of the (RED) t-shirt. Because like many people out there, I love to be surprised by truth and goodness.
Corporations aren't incompetent - far from it. And they go where the demand is, shaping it along the way. It'll be interesting to see how branding responds to a market that refuses to choose between X and Y. We'll see more brands unite around sustainable causes, for sure. Hopefully their ad budgets will help reduce environmental and human injustices (here's a starting point: fashion has always depended on developing nations. Some work to be done there). At Tricycle, we're glad to be associated with many groups that promote sustainable causes, because these relationships offer more situations where we can push for reducing unnecessary design waste, and continue to insist that something that is not made cannot be wasteful.
And where, perhaps above all, we can continue to promote transparency in these organizations. Because the company that says the same (true) thing in public and in private will move forward, while others find themselves backpedaling through backlash.
“Sound Off” is an op/ed post by editors of the Tricycle blog. The opinions may or may not reflect those of the Company. Caleb Ludwick is communications director of Tricycle, Inc. He now owns a (RED) t-shirt.
This week I read an inspiring piece by Jeffrey Moore at NBBJ, on the importance of benchmarking energy use of projects in order to reduce consumption in all new construction. One wonderful conviction that Mr Moore taps is that certifications and performance standards are not a ceiling, they are a starting point.
Our personal goals, both as companies and individuals, can aim much higher. In our nearly-universal shared state of tight deadlines and budgets, smart designers will find better solutions when their personal goals are lofty and non-negotiable. Because while negotiation is the appropriate language of business relationships, there are fewer situations in which it should be the vocabulary of personal conviction.
The brilliant realism here, however, here is a commitment to interim best practices while stretching and sweating for the goal.
As Moore wrote: "Sound daunting? It is! However, as we find new ways to cut energy consumption, purchased renewable energy can fill the gap."
Good to think of both today and tomorrow as holding goals worth pushing toward... and not get caught standing at the starting line, waiting for better materials, better practices, better opportunities. Click through to the energy reduction letter he references here.
"Conscious consumers in the modern marketplace rarely face an either/or proposition. Gone are the days of choosing between pleasure and principle. Gone is the sacrifice of flavour, colour and style in the name of environmental responsibility. With the likely exception of toilet paper (which it seems still cannot be made both recycled and soft), many of our everyday items can now be found in a luxurious shade of green. Savvy advocates of sustainability know that business is not the enemy of the good…"
Thus begins a great article in Business Week called "Are you Being Greenwashed?"
We read it with gusto, especially the paragraph on our hobbyhorse, dematerialization:
"Then there is another category, which... may represent the direction green consumption is headed. It's design for the elimination of excess—dematerialisation—in which user experience takes precedence over acquiring more things. Product service systems, or service designs, reconceive goods as functions and permit users to obtain access to the outcome yielded by a product without actually owning it, meaning each of us needs to consume less in order to get the same result. The concept has taken hold well in the UK—perhaps better than anywhere else in the world—where sharing of commodities such as cars, office space and power tools has become relatively commonplace."
Sarah Rich, you rock. Everybody else, go check out the whole article here.
This week, Live Green talked with Edwin Datschefski, the founder of Green Drinks, one of the fastest-growing environmentally aware communities in the world. Founded in London (at a Slug and Lettuce, for those of us who know them well!), Green Drinks is now in more than 200 cities around the world. Including our hometown of Chattanooga.
During the interview Edwin gave our wee local chapter props for the invitation we send out, for best encapsulating the Green Drinks philosophy.
If sustainability is truly about economic, environmental and social viability, then woot for the social! Social networking, like grassroots word-of-mouth or even today's high profile viral marketing, is a first great step to bringing great minds together and giving birth to great ideas.
Click here to go to the interview. And pass along the props to Tricycle's own Anj McClain, without whom Green Drinks Chattanooga wouldn't happen every month.
Recently Treehugger, the online magazine, interviewed Paul Hawken about his new book and the Global 100, the top 100 (supposedly) most sustainable companies in the world. For those who have never heard of Paul Hawken he is a writer, a speaker and an entrepreneur (Smith & Hawken, PaxIT).
It seems to me there is an underlying theme through all of Hawken's writings, that every organism is related and dependant on the other. In this interview he touched on the term "sustainability" and is quoted as saying, "A green movement fails unless there is a black, brown and copper color movement and that can only exist if the movement to change the world touches the needs and sufferings of every single person on earth."
"Sustainability," he says, "comes from seeing the world as a system - re-imagining the world in such a way that we can stay here." This applies not only at the macro level, but in design systems, manufacturing systems...it all starts with how we see them.
Listen here
