Sustainable solutions seeker. Father x2 and spouse. Over-thinker of the engineering sort. Writing about whatever comes to mind - climate change, humanetech, energy, data stewardship, spirituality, mental health, technology, behavior, sustainability, social media, etc. Seeker of a collective dream, not a good idea.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Clearly, Boeing's customers were concerned with rising fuel prices and public concern about noise around airports. What I am not certain about is how climate change figured into the equation. With global CO2 regulations looming on the horizon, the future remains unclear for how airlines will be affected. Hedging against future fuel price increases as well as CO2 regulations is just good business. The airlines that buy more fuel efficient planes may even be in a position to generate some extra revenue if they emit less carbon than they are allotted. This is assuming they are subject to a CO2 emissions trading scheme.
Amory Lovins discusses the hypercar in Natural Capitalism as one of myriad solutions to our energy gluttony. One of the key elements of the hypercar is the use of carbon fiber that can be reused and recycled many times after the initial design for the car. Perhaps Boeing has plans for reusing the carbon fiber at the end of the plane's life, or at the very least remanufacturing it and reselling it as a raw material to other companies.
Here's one that relies on consumers paying attention, which is always a challenge. Proctor & Gamble is introducing smaller more concentrated detergents. The products will be introduced soon in parts of the southern US and Puerto Rico with a full roll-out slated for next year. I am certain that they are starting in smaller markets to gauge the reaction and tweak their marketing to educate consumers, who generally think that bigger is better, that they are getting essentially the same service for their money. Consumer specialists are concerned that Joe and Jane Shopper will not notice the same number of loads in the smaller container and continue to use the same amount per load, potentially becoming annoyed with the perception that they are getting less.
Now lets get real. Manufacturers do whatever they can to make their products stand out on retailers' shelves. Snazzy graphics, POP displays, and of course BIG packages. Oh, but guess what? Wal-Mart has been promoting smaller, concentrated cleaners along with their smaller packages. P&G is motivated by fulfilling a huge customer's need as much as a sustainability mission. Great.
Do they have both? Yes. No. Maybe? Are any of the companies here "sustainable"? Not yet. They're trying. Efforts like this must be driven by value to the customer (a key stakeholder), the environment, and the bottom line. These seem to have that, to some extent.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007

I snapped this photo while wandering along the typical strip of route 62 in Amherst, NY (outside of Buffalo) earlier this week. It seemed like an appropriate photo for a continuing stream of discussion about energy use and sustainable business. How nice the high voltage towers look, backlit by the setting sun as cars whiz past. How long can we support the existing infrastructure that feeds these systems?
The Eight Disciplines of Sustainable Business:
1) Understand the Current Position
2) Anticipate Future Expectations
3) Set Sustainable Value Goals
4) Design Value Creation Initiatives
5) Develop the Business Case
6) Capture the Value
7) Validate Results and Capture Learning
8) Build Sustainable Capacity
Both articles highlight company concern over energy. One with executives expressing their concerns about energy price instability and the need for making plays to reduce their exposure to this volatility. What does that mean? Investments in energy efficiency and alternative energy sources. The second one, playing off of previous articles about the potential for a C-level Chief Sustainability Officer, mentions the potential for a Chief Energy Officer or CNO. Their may be enough specialization and permutations in procuring energy cost effectively in the future that companies need a special position. Interesting.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Saturday, May 19, 2007
The Sustainable Company
I made the mistake of watching An Inconvenient Truth followed almost immediately by The Corporation. I say mistake because the information contained within the films fed into my occasional hopelessness regarding the future of our planet. On the other hand, once the despair sinks in and moves on, there are glimmers of hope within me that still shine through. Perhaps the most depressing part of all this is our complicity as citizens in the situation we are in. Our own lack of attention has allowed companies to act irresponsibly and dangerously. The very fact that Mr. Gore illustrates so compelling an argument for the existence of global warming, including the scientific community's agreement on the influence mankind's activities on climate change, is part of the problem. Given the influence corporate funded advertising and shell organizations funded by businesses to help discredit the science behind global warming have on the general consumer, I suppose it's understandable that people feel paralyzed or refuse to believe that their daily activities contribute to this massive problem; We're collectively still in the denial phase.
Ray Anderson, Interface's CEO, was again featured as a representative of companies that have come to understand that they are plunderers of the planet. His comments in The Corporation are strong, committed, and impactful. Though he calls out corporate leaders as complicit in the extraction of the next generation's resources, he provides a hopeful vision of a future where companies do not exist merely to transfer wealth from one constituency to another, but are driven by a moral responsibility to their place in the world. After all, those of us that work in the "corporate world" are stakeholders in the environment that companies affect. Shouldn't we care deeply about what those affects are and work to eliminate negative ones?
Perhaps ExxonMobil is showing some cracks in their armor of denial around climate change. Did someone in a leadership role watch the same documentaries?
Thursday, May 17, 2007
World Mayors to Act on Climate Change (from Champaign, IL)
I managed to get out for some exercise during my trip to Champaign. I ran through part of the U of I campus and marvelled at the scale of the place. It dwarfs WPI, where I matriculated in 1994. I am sure the entirety of my college could fit within U of I's basketball stadium. The university has their own power plant, using coal, natural gas, and oil to provide up to 70MW of electricity for the campus. The plant also provides steam to serve the 252 buildings on campus. We visited the plant on Wednesday morning. I was a tag-a-long on this visit, and did not have the opportunity to ask questions about the technologies involved in maintaining environmental compliance and what looming CO2 emissions regulations would have on their plant. They are small enough that they may have quite some time to adjust.
The NYTimes and the Agence France Presse both covered the recent meeting of the C40 Large Cities Climate Group Summit that took place in New York City this week. Mayors of 500 cities from around the globe attended the event to illustrate their commitment to reducing GHG emissions globally. The number of cities that are members of the C40 more than doubled from the 18 that marked the inaugural C40 event in London in 2005. Cities are expected to see a massive influx of population over the next few decades, especially in poor and developing countries with little in the way of environmental regulations. Part of the C40's mission is to develop policies aimed at helping these cities cope with and reduce their emissions potential.
The NYTimes took pains to draw attention to the link between the C40 group and former President Clinton. Given the potential for environmental issues to be a key element of both parties' 2008 presidential campaign, it makes good sense for the Clintons to mark the environmental territory in the event that Mr. Gore decides to pick of the ball and run with it. After all, he cannot own the issue. There have been no indications that Mr. Gore is planning to run, but one never can tell. With the coverage of the 2008 campaign seemingly at a fever pitch so soon, mainly because we would prefer not to think about the nastiness in Iraq, I am sure we will hear of any tiny unsubstantiated rumor about Mr. Gore's intents.
It is good to see more "green" topics making the news. We all would like to save the planet, we would just rather not be inconvenienced by it in any way. Will we manage to find some way to mass market environmentalism to make it a consumer product? Is the exploding interest in greening capitalism real, or is it a way to make as all feel good about working the way we do in what is essentially a system impossible to fix? Certainly, making these statements is no excuse to throw up one's hands and quit. I suppose I would rather work toward changing the way we view and participate in our corporations and our economy than sit back, complain, and do nothing.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Corporate Response and Chance Conversation
My manager replied to my initial inquiry about the company's attitude toward sustainable development and CSR/ESG. The response was not a "go get 'em tiger" that I had fantasized about (not really what I expected), but it was open to the idea. Run it up the flag pole, but odds are it would be received with a shrug. I have yet to receive an answer to my initial inquiry with HR regarding the existence of a sustainability report for our company. I know the question was been sent up the chain to the Treasurer/Investor Relations/Corporate Communications person last week, but I have not heard anything. I am certain I will need to ask again.
On another note...something I find encouraging when I travel; a chance conversation with another professional interested in sustainable development.
My flight to Champaign, IL for the 27th annual Electric Utility Chemistry Workshop was a good one. Despite the howling winds I saw thrashing the trees as I landed in Chicago from Boston, the small plane we all shared to Champaign did not feel as if it experienced the same treatment. There was a brief moment when I questioned my faith in the technology of flight (realizing that my faith was actually placed in the people that designed and built the plane I occupied).
I started up a conversation with the gentleman seated next to me. He works for a small company called Lason that specializes in the digitization of microfilm and microfiche. We had an interesting conversation about the challenges facing organizations that have large amounts of data on old and in some cases crumbling microfiles. Colleges, Universities, insurance agencies, government entities, they all have many thousands of microfiles that need preserving. Why not make them digital? They'll last longer, be more easily accessible, and take up less space. I wonder what the LCA of microfilm scanned into a digital file would be?
In any case, we quickly found that we shared similar opinions about energy use and sustainable development (maybe because we're both cyclists). I cannot help but mention energy use in a random conversation with a complete stranger. I find that just about anyone I speak with will be interested in the concept, and understand that our economy is tenuously based upon artificially inexpensive energy, but they struggle with how they can have an impact. Their level of comprehension varies; many grasp the basic issue, but they would prefer not to think about the fact that their activities are contributing to climate change.
Bob, the gent I was speaking with, made the point that the American consumer has to have an economic reason to act in the best interest of society and the planet, it cannot merely be some sort of moral imperative. I was glad to hear him say that. The entire movement of CSR/ESG/sustainable development hinges on engaging capitalists in the greening of their products, services, and the delivery of said products and services. There is an argument for a moral imperative to drive our policy making. The right political leader should be able to appeal to our inherent desire to preserve the future for the generations to come, but I know I am still waiting for one. The individuals that take action on climate change or environmental issues may be acting under their own personal imperative, but to make it something tenable to our mass consumption culture, there must be policies in place that promote the correct price signals.
Some companies are taking action on the packaging front. Consumers free themselves of excess hassle from occasionally impossible to open packages and companies reduce material costs and maybe even transportation costs. The NYTimes ran an article entitled Incredible Shrinking Packages last weekend. Gwen Ruta of Environmental Defense and Bob Langert of McDonald's are mentioned in the article, referring to their landmark partnership in the early 90's to end McDonald's use of Styrofoam clam shells for their sandwiches.
There is waste associated with products that have absolutely no impact on the value delivered by the product. Let's get rid of it from the beginning.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Monday, May 07, 2007
Taking the advice of people that have worked on this before, I decided to start with some simple inquiries about sustainability in our corporation. I sent the Harvard Business School Article from December 2006 entitled "Strategy & Society; The Link Between Competitive Advantage and Corporate Social Responsibility" to my manager and inquired about corporate sustainability initiatives with my HR department, referring to reports by Baxter and REI for context.
I expressed my long-term interest in sustainable business during the hiring process. The person that was largely responsible for my hiring, a long-time professional friend and former coworker, and the one I expressed this interest with, left the company about one month after I was hired. I may have initially underestimated this change would have on my attitude toward this new opportunity, feeling initially abandoned. Fortunately, my new manager and I have a good, natural relationship, keeping me positive about the possibilities for me to grow professionally. He has a background in environmentally related jobs (from his youth) may help us communicate about my interest in sustainability.
As I mentioned in previous posts, I have been fortunate to connect with many passionate and knowledgeable people that are working in the field of sustainable business. I contacted Kevin Hagen, REI's Program Manager for Corporate Social Responsibility and main author of REI's Stewardship Report to tap his working knowledge in the field. Kevin and I were introduced by a mutual acquaintance back when I was working for Beacon Power and Kevin was attending the Bainbridge Graduate Institute. When I mentioned that I needed to learn how to introduce sustainability to my company, Kevin recommended the following books:
Dancing with the Tiger – Learning Sustainability Step by Natural Step, Brian F. Nattrass, PhD
The Sustainability Advantage, by Bob Willard
Cradle to Cradle, by William McDonough and Michael Braungart
The good news is that I have read 2 of the 3. In the immortal words of Meatloaf, 2 outta 3 ain't bad. Now what do I do?
I will wait for a bit to see what kind of response I get from the people I have asked about sustainable business.
Sunday, May 06, 2007
I discovered a new CSR source recently, CSR Chicks, a Yahoo! Group started in London by professional women working in CSR. Though the name includes the word "chicks", the group is open to people of all sexes and backgrounds and has become a global clearing house for CSR information. The group is new to me and I have found some interesting information posted from their members.
A post of a transcript of a speech by Tim Smit, founder and Chief Executive of the Eden Project caught my eye recently. As I read along, stumbling over some of what I assume are English (should I say "British"?) colloquialisms, my eyes popped when I read this comment from Mr. Smit:
I went to speak to the Schumacher College last year for the 40th anniversary of Resurgence magazine and Satish Kumar, who’s the boss, asked me to be controversial. So I got up and said, to the audience: who here believes that everybody on earth ought to have access to clean drinking water? And everybody put there hands up. And then I said: who here supports water aid, which is a fabulous charity that does that, and almost everybody put their hands up? And I said who here believes that water aid could provide clean drinking water to everybody on earth? Nobody put their hands up, and I then laid into the audience. I said the problem is you’re in love with hippie shit.
The truth is that the very organisations that actually make your tummy turn, because your politics suggest you shouldn’t be supporting them, are the only people capable of it. Shell, Mobil, Exxon: these companies have the project management, the drilling skills to actually do this stuff. And that’s where we are. That’s our battle ground. It’s to grow up and not take the baggage of the Sixties - the radical chic of being pro-business or anti-business - with us into the next phase of our development. We need to understand that there is a new configuration developing and if we can’t bring business together with the sort of value-driven systems that
we have, that will be our failure.
BuildingImpact
Strong Women, Strong Girls
Actor's Shakespeare Project
Boston Urban Youth Foundation
In a brief conversation with Lisa Guyon, Founder and Executive Director of BuildingImpact, I was reminded to be disciplined about my own assumptions. We quickly found that we shared a passion for sustainable business, and discussed home composting and living in yurts. In fits of cynicism tied to our current energy gluttony, I have thought about living in a yurt, but I am 98% sure my wife would not go for it. I expected to talk to Lisa about her organization, but as with many compulsive entrepreneurs, she has many more ideas for saving the planet. It was fun to share her energy.
Saturday, May 05, 2007
The speakers covered various strategies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and though they are in the business of selling electricity, they all addressed technologies to prevent the neeed to build more power plants (or at least reduce the urgency to build). Mr. Sterba suggested the following actions:
> Increase the efficiency of appliances and lighting to reduce annual demand growth from the current 1.5% to 1%. This step alone would reduce CO2 emissions 9% by 2030.
> Build 50 GW of wind farms and solar power plants by 2020, and an additional 2 GW/year thereafter.
> Add 24 GW of nuclear capacity by 2020, and another 4 GW/year thereafter.
> Target raising the efficiency of new coal-fired plants to 46% by 2020 and to 49% by 2030.
> Make 90% of the new coal plants carbon capture–ready by 2020.
> Strive to have electric cars constitute 10% of all U.S. vehicles by 2017, and 30% by 2027.
> Increase distributed generation's share of U.S. installed capacity from
less than 0.1% today to 5% by 2030.
1. Efficient vehicles - Increase fuel economy for 2 billion cars from 30 to 60 mpg
2. Reduced use of vehicles - Decrease car travel for 2 billion 30-mpg cars from
10,000 to 5000 miles per year
3. Efficient buildings - Cut carbon emissions by one-fourth in buildings
and appliances projected for 2054
4. Efficient base load coal plants - Produce twice today’s coal power output at 60%
instead of 40% efficiency (compared with 32% today)
Friday, May 04, 2007
April's Business Travel for CO2 Emissions Tracking

Business Auto mileage:
877 miles
798 driving alone + 79 miles as a passenger (from 158 "actual passenger miles"; I use my scientific "fudge factor", dividing passenger miles by 2, to obtain my contribution).
Air Travel:
Not this month
Rail Travel:
~434 miles
Acela Express round trip from 128/Westwood to Penn Station, NYC round trip.
I have been remiss in my carbon tracking, and I am hoping that the folks at NativeEnergy will help me figure out the best way to offset my emissions over the next few months.
Wednesday, May 02, 2007

I changed a printer cartridge on my HP 5610 multi-function thing-a-ma-jig this morning and spent a few minutes studying the cartridge, the packaging, and the envelop conveniently included to mail the used cartridge back to HP. I took the time to do this because I was interested and I remembered meeting Ed Costa, representing HP's Global Technology Value Solutions Group at a Harvard Business School event last year addressing sustainable business. I enjoyed Ed's comments on moving companies from an environmental regulatory compliance mentality to a model where regulation is nearly irrelevant because the product is environmentally benign. We are a long way off from that, but the fact that people in industry are thinking about it is a good sign.
The overall package was quite reasonable, though the outer box was bigger than it needed to be. I am not a packaging engineer, but I did call on customers that designed packaging machinery back in the late 90's. There are lots of design inputs for packaging, not the least of which is aesthetic appeal on retailers' shelves. Remember the giant CD cases? I am sure there are many, many articles on the contribution excessive packaging makes to the destruction of our society (tongue in cheek).
Back to the HP cartridge. To my untrained eye, the plastic wrapper around the cartridge was thin and adequate to keep it sealed. I am sure they need it to keep the cartridge from drying out or getting damaged by moisture in transit. For all I know the plastic is made from vegetables. The envelope included to send it back to HP for reuse was well proportioned, easy to use, and free (well, the price is somehow included in the purchase price). In fact, two cartridges could have fit into the envelope.
What's my point? If I had not met Ed, did not care about sustainable manufacturing, and did not know about HP's environmental effort, I would not have noted anything special about this packaging. Exactly!
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Where to Start?
Happy May Day.
Since I am embarking upon a mission that others have embarked upon before, I should take advantage of their experience. I have a habit of trying to figure everything out on my own. This drives me to investigate, analyze, and form my own opinions. It also results in an occasional stubborn commitment to those opinions as well as a refusal to seek counsel to help in my analysis of my opinions. Asking for respected and experienced colleagues' assistance is a step in the right direction, a necessity.
I called David Gustashaw, Interface's VP of R&D. The logo above is from InterfaceRAISE, Interface's sustainable business consulting group. David is a hardcore engineer, in fact, check out the article on his project using landfill gas to provide power for Interface. He's been in the design trenches practicing sustainable design before I knew what sustainability was. He understands mass and energy flows and knows that the laws of thermodynamics rule in all of our high-minded discussions of sustainability. He's a great believer in sustainable business and a great supporter of people working to integrate it into their businesses. Heck, he's a pretty nice guy too. Our conversation crossed many topics including, waste handling (post industrial, post consumer, & post customer), selling services not products, changing customers' perceptions of a product from linear to circular (return to producer/supplier), the EPA as the "Environmental Compliance Agency" (good point), industry hoarding profits and not sharing with society, etc., etc. There were more topics, but these two stood out relative to starting a sustainability movement:
1) Practice where you are
2) Start locally and build expertise
To use an old cliche, a journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. Of course, I'd prefer to skip to the end and have it all done and set up. I guess it's not that easy.
I am taking local action to investigate a potential project with EnerNOC to help the company reduce energy costs at peak times and contribute to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. This then leads to the potential corporate involvement in RGGI, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative covering 10 northeast states (Maryland joined only 10 days ago). Why be a laggard when we can be a leader and reap the benefits of stakeholder perception of innovation?
I joined some of the regulars at the Greendrinks event in Central Sq. this evening. With the better weather, people are coming out for the evening and I am meeting new people and feel hopeful that there are those out there yearning to integrate stewardship of the planet for themselves and those around them. I had a good conversation with Melissa Tritter of NetImpact fame about the change in the workforce from long-term employees to "free agents" that need to maintain brand you first referred to by Fast Company back in 1997. In fact, I added Melissa Tritter's blog to the link list, Capitalism4Good to help maintain the "brand". I met a sustainable engineer (there is an entire division of sustainability that should address educating engineers, but I'll leave that for later), Kelly Collins of Haley & Aldrich working on Office Kaizen to maximize client value, and the newest member of the Green Depot, soon to open in Stoneham, MA.
I hope to see more people come to meet and discuss how we can collectively save the planet. I also hope they'll read my blog, subscribe and make comments...I need all the help I can get.