EXP: sustainable Archives

NYC BigApps

by Craig Kanarick on December 10, 2009 | No Comments

Combining open innovation and sustainability into one program, NYC BigApps is a competition (unfortunately already closed) to create an application focused on delivering honest and useful information to NYC residents.

The city asks that its wealth of talented developers design an application using at least one data source from the City of New York Data Mine, which includes a vast amount of issues spanning Special Waste Drop-off Sites to Library Events, in order to make the city government more accessible to all of its citizens.

While the submissions deadline has already passed, you can still take part by suggesting an app you would like to see created or submitting a data set you would like to see added the Data Mine list. And the best way to become involved is by voting, which will be open to the public shortly. Until then have a look at the NYC BigApps application gallery.

The Story of Cap and Trade

by Craig Kanarick on December 9, 2009 | No Comments

Just a few days ago, I wrote about Annie Leonard's brilliant video about consumption, The Story of Stuff. Today she released a new story, The Story of Cap and Trade, timed to coincide with the two-week Copenhagen Climate Conference. As the press materials state, if "you have heard about cap & trade, but aren't sure how it works (or who it benefits), this film is for you."

The Story Of Stuff With Annie Leonard

by Craig Kanarick on December 2, 2009 | No Comments

Annie Leonard's The Story of Stuff is easily one of the best videos I have seen all year. This 20-minute masterpiece about sustainable living on this planet has been viewed by over 7 million people in the last year, so perhaps you have seen it. If not, you really should.

Intrigued by questions about where all the stuff around her came from--and almost more importantly where it ends up--this former Greenpeace employee uses a cheerful tone and clever animations to convey important viewpoints about a serious subject.

As The New York Times points out, educators have embraced the short film as a way to supplement printed textbooks and add a more modern viewpoint. I don't blame them, given how the youth are embracing the notions of sustainability.

Sustainable: Baking For Good

by Craig Kanarick on November 29, 2009 | No Comments

A new online bakery started by New York-based Emily Dubner, Baking for Good donates 15% of each purchase to a cause chosen by the customer. By tying charity to a guilty pleasure, Baking for Good allows customers to feel better about consuming scrumptious snacks and desserts, while simultaneously providing a simple system for giving back. This additional sense of social justice far outweighs most dietary concerns, making this a delicious digital destination.

The nicely designed website also helps for a great overall experience.

[ Thanks->PSFK->made this for you ]

The Secret Life of Walmart's Deli Pizza Box

by Craig Kanarick on November 16, 2009 | No Comments

Say what you will about Walmart's business practices, but it is undeniable that the organization is making incredible strides towards a sustainable company.

Just watch this video below about how their deli pizza box is created. This video comes from their annual Sustainability Milestones meeting held just last week. On their site, you can see over 25 videos about recent efforts.

Sustainable Nau Pop-Up Shop

by Craig Kanarick on November 12, 2009 | No Comments

If you haven't heard of Nau by now (sorry), you really should. The company is a shining example of the new breed of socially responsible company. This west-coast clothing manufacturer is seriously devoted to sustainability -- not only are the clothes all made from renewable products or recycled synthetics, but the entire company was created with sustainability in mind, as explained in their inspiring Business DNA statement. Just take the first sentence as a summary of what they stand for:

The Corporation shall endeavor to conduct all aspects of its business in an environmentally and socially responsible manner, including the promotion of peaceful conflict resolution, the fair and humane management of factory working conditions, the equitable treatment of its employees, the implementation of a sustainable process of product creation, waste minimization and recycling, and philanthropy...

Today, the company is opening a temporary pop-up store in New York called Here/Nau/Now, located in Soho. To reinforce its corporate values, everything in the store aside from the apparel is repurposed items scooped up from the streets of New York, including the branches that comprise the ceilings of the dressing rooms, the coffee-stained curtains, the cardboard and metal displays and more.

You can read some great quotes from their CEO, Gordon Seabury, in this nice article from Fast Company.

The Fun Theory

by Craig Kanarick on November 10, 2009 | No Comments

The Fun Theory is a new project from Volkswagen that integrates digital technology into every day physical experiences with the expressed goal of making sustainable behavior (walking up stairs, throwing away trash, etc) into fun activities. The theory is that if walking up stairs was more fun, more people would do it, and I agree. How great would it be if every staircase was a piano?

They are also using Open Innovation practices to extend the project by awarding a cash prize called the Fun Theory Award to people who submit similar ideas to the one illustrated below...

[ Thanks, Alex ]

20 Years Later, Tim Berners-Lee Wants to Reinvent Data

by Craig Kanarick on November 9, 2009 | No Comments

Time Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, has a new passion. His new mission is Linked Data. He wants people to post data on the internet in the same way and with the same enthusiasm that people post articles, documents and pictures. His assertion, and I agree, is that if people shared data the same way they share other information on the web, we'd be able to learn about and solve all sorts of problems we don't even recognize. Watch it and believe. After all, the British Government recently appointed him as the person responsible for opening up England's data to the web. Watch his TED talk below for a passionate and exciting presentation about the subject.

Heat Sensitive Street Lights

by Craig Kanarick on October 27, 2009 | No Comments

The fourth largest city in France, Toulouse, turned on new body-heat sensing street lights today in an effort to reduce energy consumption.

The one-third mile stretch of between a sports stadium and a university is just an experiment, says the Mayor, but if it goes well they plan on rolling them out across the entire town. The lamps now default to a new dim setting but if they sense body heat, they change to a brighter setting for ten seconds. As a result, the new lights are estimated to save about 50% of their energy costs.

They aren't the only ones experimenting with attacking street lights as a way to reduce energy consumption and light pollution -- earlier this year, the 9000-person German town of Dorentrup decided to turn all of its street lights off at 11pm but users can call specific lights by mobile phone to have them turned on for 15 minutes. Studies have shown that in most cases, lights are only turned on once or twice per night since the changeover.

I can't seem to find out exactly how the technology detects body heat or what happens in inclement weather, but it seems fascinating. If only we could get NYC to turn down some of its lights...

Digital Painting "The Landing" by SWEATSHOPPE

by Craig Kanarick on October 22, 2009 | No Comments

SWEATSHOPPE, comprised of New York artists Bruno Levy and Blake Shaw have released The Landing, an amazing video of their project that blends traditional wheatpasting x graffiti x digital video projection. By attaching green LEDs to wheatpasting roller brushes and tracking their motion in software, they are able to project a digital video reacting to physical actions.

This video is inspiring as an example of a digital physical integration that has a wide range of uses and I look forward to when they release software that could make digital painting kits accessible to a wide range of individuals and organizations.

GOOD Transparency is More Than Good

by Craig Kanarick on October 1, 2009 | No Comments

Good, a "collaboration of individuals, businesses, and nonprofits pushing the world forward" is a good magazine and a great voice for sustainability of all types in the form of a magazine, events, online community and more.

Some of my favorite things they make are data graphics, even though they are mostly all static (so they can live both in print and online). You can find a selection on their site in a section called Transparency -- a name with multiple meanings, including a nod to the transparencies of overhead projector days.

On the site interaction is limited to zooming in and out. After sampling the greatest hits on their site, head over to their flickr set where you can see almost the entire collection in the full colorful and informative glory.

Our Former Manhattan Terrace Garden

by Craig Kanarick on September 24, 2009 | No Comments

I recently read a great article in the New York Times about the downfall of taxonomy. I agree that we don't know as much about the natural order as we used to. It seems the current mind has replaced that knowledge with an equal number of complex taxonomies including flavors of candy, models of cars, sports teams, celebrities and operating systems.

Last week my family moved from our home of the last 10 years, the highlight of which was the 350-square foot terrace half-filled with plants. For us it was a small act of sustainability, not just in terms of ecology, but also culturally by instilling nature-based taxonomies to our children. Avid eaters, our guests enjoyed the many species the kids would identify, pick and taste. Here is a visual tribute to that garden:

I'll miss it.

How Does an Open Innovation Company Work With its Partners?

by Craig Kanarick on August 25, 2009 | No Comments

One of the aspects I find most exciting about the growth of open innovation is the consequent growth of firms' consulting services in order to better utilize open innovation to solve problems. How and why does that work? Watch Dwayne Spradlin, President and CEO of InnoCentive, explain how the process works in this quick and interesting video:

In this fascinating video about cleaning up the Exxon Valdez spill years after it happened, Spradlin explains why open innovation is essentially a sustainable business practice:

Ten Thousand Cents

by Craig Kanarick on August 21, 2009 | No Comments

Ten Thousand Cents is a innovative 2008 project from the talented Aaron Koblin and Takashi Kawashima. For the project, they used Amazon's Mechanical Turk system to get 10,000 anonymous participants from over 50 countries to draw one small section of a $100 bill without knowing what they were drawing. They paid each artist one cent, for a total cost of $100. Using custom software written in Processing, the process was recorded from start to finish and combined together to create a fantastic application of a large community of users all working on one small part of a larger solution.

The animations are viewable online as a whole or individually, creating a unique rendition of a $100 bill. I particularly love looking at the different drawings to find the ways in which people draw, and to see the few "easter egg"-like drawings that have nothing to do with what they are meant to become.

Printed versions of the final images are available for $100 each (naturally) and all proceeds from the sales of each piece are donated to OLPC.

I just recently posted a presentation by Aaron, which you can see here.

Technology on the farm

by Craig Kanarick on August 10, 2009 | No Comments

Demonstrating the broad reach of real-time communications tools, CNN recently published an article about how people like 39-year old Nebraska wheat farmer Steve Tucker uses twitter over ten times a day during work. This usage isn't unique -- every Tuesday from 6-8pm Eastern, farmers meet on twitter and post with the hashtag #agchat, utilizing the platform as a large public chatroom. Started by agriculture advocacy writer and speaker Michele Payn-Knoper, these chats have dedicated subjects each week and can draw thousands of participants.

Discussions aren't the only use of real-time digital technologies being embraced by the farm. PureSense, an irrigation software company, recently released an iPhone version of their main product, allowing farmers to remotely monitor the real-time water content of various locations of their land. According to most reports, the system not only saves farmers water, they also have higher yields, clearly a sustainable benefit.

Another example comes from Danish firm Smarterfarming who just released its CowDetect RFID system for tracking cows' locations, consumption and other activities. By looking at visualizations of the data, cow owners can discover information about a cow's health and optimie milking schedules. They claim that a $511 per cow investment (for a farm with 200 cows) will yield $500 per cow per year in savings. The system also issues daily warnings about cows it thinks might be at a health risk or crisis, allowing early intervention on potentially damaging conditions.

Nasa's New Green Challenge

by Craig Kanarick on August 6, 2009 | No Comments

Last week, NASA and the Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency (CAFE) Foundation announced the a $1.5 million dollar prize for aircraft that can average at least 100 mph on a 200-mile flight while achieving greater than 200 passenger miles per gallon. Calling it the Green Flight Challenge, this program joins the 6-year old Nasa Centennial Challenges, which also include the $2 miliion Power Beaming Challenge, a Tether Challenge (see below), the Regolith Excavation Challenge, the $1.6 million Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander X Prize Challenge and Astronaut Glove Challenge sponsored by the Innovative Partnerships Program and seeks to spur the development of high-efficiency aircraft. This contest is not only innovative, it is the most sustainable NASA challenge yet.

IDSA 2009 Winners

by Craig Kanarick on August 4, 2009 | No Comments

Congratulations to Nike, Dell, Tatil Design, Red Ingot and the rest of the design teams who won awards in the 2009 IDSA International Design Excellence Awards in the Ecodesign category. Let's hope that in a few years, "ecodesign" stops being a category and is just the price of entry for everything. In fact, I would argue that IDEO's Human Centered Design Toolkit is Eco-friendly. It is certainly sustainable.

Nike's Trash Talk, pictured here, not only took a Gold in the Ecodesign category, they also won Best in Show, highlighting the importance of sustainable design.

FreshDirect Using Fewer Boxes

by Craig Kanarick on July 30, 2009 | No Comments

My wife and I use online grocery service FreshDirect frequently and while we understand the environmental impact of packaging and transportation driven by online ordering isn't ideal, we find the convenience of the service extremely attractive. We have often received orders with a large cardboard box containing only one item and considered stopping our usage.

That is, until recently. Over the past few months, I've noticed that our deliveries seem to fit into fewer boxes. I wasn't sure that this was actually happening until I read an article in the New York Times a few days ago entitled "Delivering More Groceries, and Fewer Boxes" which explained that over the past year, FD has reduced the number of boxes by 1.5 million boxes! That translates to an almost 25% reduction in boxes. The system to allow them to do this cost them over $1 million in hardware and an unspecified amount in training and software, but it is clearly a sustainable choice. What's more exciting is that this is only one step on a new sustainability program for the company who is moving from boxes to paper bags next year and converting their fleet of over 170 delivery trucks to run on biofuel. Not only have they reduced their environmental impact, they have made customers and drivers happier as well. This is a clear example of a sustainable decision that will improve customer and employee satisfaction, reduce cost and reduce environmental impact. Kudos to FreshDirect.

Tom's One for One Movement

by Craig Kanarick on July 15, 2009 | No Comments

Tom's Shoes, a 3-year old company started by serial entrepreneur Blake Mycoskie, is based on a simple, yet extremely sustainable idea: for every pair of shoes purchased, Tom's donates a pair to a child in need.

To date, the company has given over 140,000 pairs of shoes away and plans to give away a whopping 300,000 this year alone. Their goals include protecting the feet of children around the world, especially in places where walking is the primary mode of transportation, but also eradicating the deforming foot disease podoconiosis in Ethiopia.

Where did the idea come from? In 2003, he and his sister were contestants on "The Amazing Race" and a few years later, they revisited some of the places from the show. When they visited Argentina and saw aid workers distributing shoes that didn't fit the recipients, he decided to do something about it. In addition to producing inexpensive and fashionable espadrilles, they have created a strong network of supporters on college campuses, giving top members free trips to drop off shoes. The site is also best-in-class with great use of video and real-time chat-driven customer support.

The Ikea SUNNAN solar work lamp

by Craig Kanarick on July 14, 2009 | No Comments

There are many solar lamps on the market but IKEAS's Sunnan version is most likely the only one that is sustainable in two ways. For every lamp sold, another is donated to UNICEF to give to children who are in remote villages and refugee camps, places where electricity often isn't available, making the lamp not only good for you, but good for the world.

The work lamp is sold at stores for $19.99 and comes in five bright colors. It runs on solar cells that convert sunlight into the power needed for the lamp and never needs to be plugged in. The lamps need about 9 hours of sunlight to fully charge, which provide the lamps with enough energy to run for 4 hours.

Thanks, Inhabitots.

Fiat eco:Drive

by Craig Kanarick on July 10, 2009

Fiat eco:Drive is a system that helps drivers analyze their driving habits, allowing them to improve their fuel consumption up to 15%. Available in the UK and other locations, the system works by recording driving data on a removable USB thumbdrive. When transferred to a PC, the Microsoft-crafted software analyzes the data, displays it, and gives recommendations to the driver about how to increase their fuel efficiency.

I like it because it integrates digital technology into cars, devices that seem so far behind in terms of technology development it is almost depressing. More importantly, by providing the driver with crucial information, the system transfers some of the burden of responsibility towards a better planet to the driver instead of just on the car company -- it enables the driver to do something about the planet directly.

Congratulations to digital agency AKQA who won a well-deserved Cyber Lion in Cannes this year for the project. Now, if we could just get one of these in the States...

Nike x Livestrong = Chalkbot

by Craig Kanarick on July 9, 2009 | No Comments

Chalkbot is a machine that updates the Tour de France tradition of spectators writing inspirational messages on the road to urge on riders to a digital experience. The machine takes 40-character tweets and SMS messages submitted by the public and prints them in chalk along the route. Creators Nike, the Livestrong Foundation, DeepLocal StandardRobot, and W+K, ask people to send a completion to the sentence "It's about..." Nike estimates that they will write 100,000 messages over the length of the race.

I tend to get excited about new ways of using computers to render text and this play on that idea is a great use of digitizing something that before now was analog and only available to people who could actually visit the Tour. Now people from the entire globe can interact with the riders, spread hope and make people happy. I also like that it forces users to think and be clever.

Once again, Nike impresses with their enormous creativity and their use of technology to create buzz, all while making people happy.

Sustainability is coming of age

by Craig Kanarick on July 9, 2009

With the rise of the post-Gen-X generations (Gen Y, Gen Z, the baby-boom-echo, whatever), a new basis of morality is influencing decisions around the world: we are starting to care about ourselves, each other and our world like never before. Consumers are no longer just swallowing the marketing messages that are broadcast. Instead, they are using digital networking tools to research products, services and the companies that provide them, determining what kind of world citizens those companies are and what kind of citizens they would be if they worked at or purchased from those companies.

The best companies today understand this trend and are not only making products that people want, but are making products and engaging in programs that are good for the individual and the world. As a best practice, these actions are not done as a public relations move but are seen as important to the core of the company and leading to a truly sustainable business.

Sustainability -- be it ecological, economic, social or cultural, means having enough for today while not hurting the future. Companies that are truly sustainable are the ones that will survive and thrive in the modern marketplace. This blog will consider many forms of sustainability, not just ecological -- even though it is probably the most popular. Instead, we will be covering all types of products, services and practices that improve the world, either one person at a time or in larger ways.

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