Futerra Greenwashing Guide

This doc from Futerra Communications includes an interesting (and very European) history of greenwashing. Turns out the automobile industry and utilities are the biggest offenders. Surprising, really, given the preponderance of shaky 'green' claims in home cleaning/care. In any case, their advice: "green by design" and careful attention to processes (LCA).

Ethnographic Praxis and Sustainability

Interested in how ethnographic research might better enable design for sustainable behaviors? Join a new Google group I'm hosting: EPIC Global Impact.

http://groups.google.com/group/epic-global-impact/about

This group is a platform for discussing research and design strategies that result in actionable insights for enabling sustainable behaviors. It arose from the EPIC 2008 workshop, Seeing Global Impact in Everyday Practice: A Creative Exploration of Methods for Researching Individuals' Perceptions of, and Responses to, Climate Change (organized by Simon Blyth, Jay Hasbrouck, Jay Melican, and Simon Maschi).

Edited from the workshop description:
We believe that the EPIC community has something unique to contribute to the topic of climate change. As ethnographers, we understand that the everyday behavioral changes that will be required for an effective response to the climate crisis cannot be mandated. Indeed, successful design solutions/interventions are likely to be those that draw inspiration from established values and behavior patterns and support, emphasize, and encourage development of those best aligned with sustainable practices. The creative research methods pioneered by EPIC-goers, we believe, can provide unique and valuable insights into individualsʼ everyday experiences related to the global phenomenon of climate change.

Andrë Braz's Experience Design Manifesto

Interaction designer Andrë Braz has put together an interesting perspective on experience design. I find the questions it raises for sustainability particularly salient:

Past experiences must offer good memories as a way of re-living it in the present and desiring it for the future.

Present experiences must connect to the mind in its whole, bringing focus to the action being performed and getting the mind to a flow state. Happiness comes from the experience itself and not from the result of it.

Future experiences must bring desire to the present, creating a present that is better because of the latent potential of a future experience.

Experiences can be based in real life or in fantasy, but reality and fantasy must empower one another in a way that the whole is better than the absolute sum of the separate experiences.

Thoughts/reflections: Are we more likely to enable sustainability by eliciting positive memories (effective forms energy use in the past, such as windmills)? How immersive can design for sustainability be in the present? What does it look like, and does it necessarily have to focus on happiness? And, finally, has postmodernism created a populous too jaded to find promise in futurist-based experiences?

From: http://www.brazandre.com/manifesto/

What Paleontology can tell us about Climate Change

"Killer in Our Midst" by Dan Dorritie, details the largest known planetary extinction in the earth's history, and explains in accessible language how our planet's ecosystem can drastically change due to imbalances that have exponential ramifications...in this case methane.

Christopher Ratcliff offers a great summary and says, "Information in this book may forever change your perspective on the urgency on reducing the drivers of climate change."

He adds, "In Climate Code Red, Spratt and Sutton report a very compelling case as to why we're beyond the phase when we can "think about this." They show that global 2007 emissions exceed the worst case scenarios of climate models and why drastic actions are needed to reduce our CO2 emissions footprint."

koyaanisqatsi on hulu.com

One of my all-time favorite films is now on hulu. Great resolution for streaming video (although there are brief commercial breaks). Director Godfrey Reggio's sense of cultural landscape is nothing short of amazing, and he does a remarkable job of linking that sense to issues such as class, environmental degradation, and a critique of capitalism (a critique some might argue is underdeveloped). But he does it all without one word of narration or dialog.

Bucky: Inspiring, Confusing, Design Pioneer

I think part of my attraction to Buckminster Fuller's thinking is his uncanny ability to defy accepted logics and invent his own. His method for forging his own path was a grand experiment of the self that reflected upon—and morphed forever—our thinking about human-planetary interactions. While the results were confusing, profound and prolific, even his most abstract work was always inspiring. Elizabeth Kolbert's recent profile in The New Yorker expresses the tension this created for Fuller as well as those whose lives he touched. The article features some interesting statements from Fuller about the capacity for behavioral change:

Fuller was also deeply pessimistic about people's capacity for change, which was why, he said, he had become an inventor in the first place. "I made up my mind . . . that I would never try to reform man -- that's much too difficult," he told an interviewer for this magazine in 1966. "What I would do was to try to modify the environment in such a way as to get man moving in preferred directions."

Yet, in many ways Fuller's pessimism is perhaps more an issue of scale than human capacity for change. He seems, in many ways, both a designer and anthropologist at heart:

If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top . . . that comes along makes a fortuitous life preserver. But this is not to say that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top. I think that we are clinging to a great many piano tops in accepting yesterday’s fortuitous contrivings.

Kolbert's article was written to accompany a retrospective of Fuller's work at the Whitney.

Energy Conservation as Sport

Photograph by Joachim Ladefoged.

Elizabeth Kolbert of the NYT provides a great portrait of a Danish community's shift from apathy to energy conservation. It all began with a contest and evolved in to a form of sport. But most importantly, it happened among people who didn't -and don't- necessarily see themselves as 'green.'

“The residents of Samsø that I spoke to were clearly proud of their accomplishment. All the same, they insisted on their ordinariness. They were, they noted, not wealthy, nor were they especially well educated or idealistic. They weren’t even terribly adventuresome.”

How it spread:

“One reason to live here can be social relations,” he said. “This renewable-energy project could be a new kind of social relation, and we used that.” Whenever there was a meeting to discuss a local issue—any local issue—Hermansen attended and made his pitch. He asked Samsingers to think about what it would be like to work together on something they could all be proud of. Occasionally, he brought free beer along to the discussions. Meanwhile, he began trying to enlist the support of the island’s opinion leaders. “This is where the hard work starts, convincing the first movers to be active,” he said. Eventually, much as Hermansen had hoped, the social dynamic that had stalled the project began to work in its favor. As more people got involved, that prompted others to do so. After a while, enough Samsingers were participating that participation became the norm.”

“If I’m reduced to being a customer, then if I like something I buy it, and if I don’t like it I don’t buy it,” Hermansen said. “But I don’t care about the production. We care about the production, because we own the wind turbines. Every time they turn around, it means money in the bank. And, being part of it, we also feel responsible.”

Ask Umbra on Breathing Car Exhaust while Biking

A great example of how doing the right thing for the planet doesn't always mean personal sacrifice. Umbra reviews the literature on exposure to car exhaust for different commute options and concludes that bikers, riders, and walkers aren't suffering disproportionately for their efforts.

A car shell contains little gaps into which pollutants flow, and as a result, car occupants sit in a stew of carbon monoxide, benzene, and particulate matter, among other unpleasant vehicle emissions. Bicyclists, bus passengers, and pedestrians are all exposed to these emissions as well, but in a different way. I wrote about this dilemma a few years ago, and just reviewed some of the old and new literature. It seems that cyclists almost always encounter fewer pollutants with each breath than car passengers -- that's a special way to say that the foul mix of toxics is denser in the car than in the cycling zone. Cyclists are breathing more heavily than those sedentary drivers, as you know, so at the very worst their total exposure becomes the same as car passengers. At least that's what I've managed to put together from the various studies. The bus and the sidewalk are, like the bicycle, on the edge of the toxic air zone; presumably riders and walkers are not breathing hard like a cyclist, and have lower total exposure.

Now that you're convinced, check out bikely, one of my favorite googlemap mashups, to share your route.

Energy Conservation and Inspiration

By the looks of recently released data from New Energy Information Administration (eia.gov), the US has a long way to go in terms of residential energy conservation. And this chart doesn't account for the past few years' rise in consumer electronic consumption. Comparisons of total energy consumption would seem to indicate that we might learn something from the EU (especially Germany and its government's leadership), as well as force us to begin considering which cultural shifts in emerging economies might best align with conservation efforts in those parts of the world.

Across the world, total primary energy consumption rose 2.4 percent last year. China, which in 2007 consumed 7.7 percent more energy than in 2006, is responsible for half that increase; India a third. Overall, energy consumption in emerging economies rose by 5.5 percent. By contrast, European Union member states managed to cut their use of primary energy by 2.2 percent. The US, however, consumed 1.7 percent more energy in 2007 than in the previous year.

Drop Ship Urban Gardens

London: "VACANT LOT on Chart Street N1. A formerly inaccessible and run-down plot of housing estate land has been transformed into a beautiful oasis of green. Seventy 1/2 tonne bags of soil have been arranged to form this allotment space. Within their individual plots, local residents are carefully tending a spectacular array of vegetables, salads, fruit and flowers."

From London Festival of Architecture

Systemic Thinking and Promise of Cultural Landscape

Lately my thinking about sustainability has been shifting toward the ways in which we might best design for enabling sustainable behaviors on a scale larger than green activism or green consumerism.

Although I believe we can’t mandate behavior change through design, I do believe that if we pay very close attention to current behavior patterns that are most likely to show promise for adopting design solutions/interventions that support and encourage values and behaviors best aligned with sustainability, there is some hope for large scale change. As an anthropologist, this is largely a methodological question. For instance, how might the growth of social networking better facilitate systemic thinking? From my previous work, I’ve seen that narrative and personal connections to choices people make (including those that aren’t necessarily green, but can result in sustainably-aligned behaviors) are also promising areas of investigation. And finally, there is a great deal of promise in George Marcus-inspired ‘follow-the-flow’ methods that can help us better understand the spaces between people, material objects, cultural influences, etc. in ways that might identify opportunities to design for systemic thinking.

For me, investigations of social networks, narrative, and the spaces between people, material objects and cultural influences converge interestingly within considerations of cultural landscape as expressed through visual culture. So, I've started another blog. Actually, it's just a place where I'm collecting thoughts on cultural landscape and visual culture. However, I may eventually begin to build some theory on the connections between cultural landscape, visual culture and sustainability there. Check it out if you're interested.

Tour de Fat

Check out New Belgium Beer's campaign to raise awareness for biking, especially the TDF 101 commandments. Love the adages too: walk before you talk, admit your flaws (being genuine builds credibility), transparency is the new black, go with your soul (and let the authenticity emerge), make ripples (and hope for waves), and it's not all about the sale. Most important, "It's not sustainable if it's not fun."

Notes on CHI 2008, Florence

Sustainability and the role of technology continues to be a strong and growing theme at CHI. The panel “Green Day” drew a large crowd of engaged people with lots of questions. In addition to some interesting work from Elaine Huang of Motorola, “Breaking the Disposable Technology Paradigm,” the panel also included a paper I co-authored on Green Homes research I conducted with Allison Woodruff: “A Bright Green Perspective on Sustainable Choices” (presented by Allison), and a summary of a recent survey conducted by Eli Blevis and grad students Will Odom, David Roedl, and Kristin Hanks: "Sustainable Millennials: Attitudes towards Sustainability and the Material Effects of Interactive Technologies."

In addition to these papers, I sat on a panel titled “Beyond the Hype: Sustainability and HCI” on which I presented “Hackers as Healers: Finding Inspiration for Sustainable Technology Design.” Here's a quick blurb on that work:

In addition to improving recycling methods and raising public awareness, we can most effectively address the problem of e-waste by positioning it as a design challenge, where a "design win" is far more than a compelling form factor. Tapping McDonough's work on cradle-to-cradle life-cycle design, this work asks how we can approach the design of electronics so that we've 'baked in' materials and configurations that facilitate a sustainable product lifecycle from the start. It takes as its inspiration inventive re-use and re-purposing strategies from consumers (via ethnographic research), the DIY movement, and a comparative look at different cultural understandings of embodiment and healing.

Other excellent panelists included:

Lisa P. Nathan, University of Washington, Host
Eli Blevis, Indiana University
Bill Tomlinson, UC Irvine
Phoebe Sengers, Cornell University
Batya Friedman, University of Washington, Discussant
John Thomas, IBM Research, Discussant

Congratulations to Will Odom for his First Place award in the Graduate Student Research Competition. His work "Personal Inventories: Toward Durable Human-Product Relationships" represents the kind of human-centered explorations that will become increasingly necessary for understanding how designers can find effective metaphors that enable sustainable practices.

Streets of Firenze :: April 2008

Paolo Pecorella :: Archaeologist Extraordinaire

From Museum of Archaeology in Florence:

Home Depot Elegance :: Firenze April 2008

Designs for Life Grants: Deadline March 31, 08

From the website:

The Audi Design Foundation, an independent charity established in 1997 by Audi UK, aims to encourage sustainable and inclusive design that has a positive impact on society. One way it does this is by awarding grants to designers to help them develop their ideas.

We have a total fund of at least £80,000 per annum for prototypes/design solutions relating to these areas; designs may fall into both of the product categories. Similarly, the trustees have the flexibility to award grants for prototypes in each of the areas or for designs that cover both sustainable and inclusive design.

Decentralized Renewable Energy

Qurrent, a company based in the Netherlands, is making decentralized renewable energy a reality. They recently won the 500,000 Euro Picnic Green sustainable technology challenge, and seem ready to launch a very promising set of products/services to help change the landscape of power generation: Qbox, Qmunity, Qserver.

From their website:

Decentralized energy is locally generated energy; for instance on office buildings, warehouses, homes or apartment buildings. The energy is being produced right where it's being consumed.

In a decentralized energy system many thousands of units each provide a small portion of the energy needed, instead of a few power plants each providing enormous amounts.

Great Find for Bucky Fans

Conversations with Bucky is a wiki that includes (among other things) 42 hours of video footage from Fuller's lecture series titled "Everything I Know", delivered in Philadelphia on Janurary 20th, 1975.

Corporate Scorecards from Climate Counts

Climate Counts evaluates companies on the following criteria:

+ Have they measured their climate footprint?
+ Have they reduced their climate pollution (what we usually call greenhouse gas emissions) or established clear goals to reduce?
+ Have they supported or suggested intent to block progressive climate policy initiatives at the local, state, or federal level?
+ And have they publicly disclosed their climate actions clearly and comprehensively to consumers and stakeholders?

And then assigns them a rating of either stuck, starting, or striding.

Overall, an admirable effort. But I think there's a convincing case to be made for going well beyond footprint reduction and policy efforts, and in to ways of integrating cradle-to-cradle design innovation with deep understandings of consumer behaviors and local cultural contexts. Perhaps Climate Counts could add a new category for companies that make it that far. Say..."Stupendous"? :)

My Favorite New IKEA Hack

Find out how to make your own here.

Old-school Notebook from Dead Motherboard

If you've ever disassembled a PC, you know how sharp and dangerous board components can be. Volunteering at Free Geek in Portland, I once had quite a bloody incident while pulling apart an old tower.

So, when I saw this notebook made from old motherboards, the first thing my mind's eye saw was that huge cut on my hand. I like the idea, though. Why not try one with all the components facing inward (the undersides are cool looking too)? In any case, there's something very appealing about the potential for dead technologies (say, a notebook PC) being transformed back into the old-school form factors that originally inspired them (paper binders in this case).

Mapping North American Environmental Issues

I love data visualization, especially when made accessible and actionable. The Commission for Environmental Cooperation has pulled together some interesting interactive data here.

Above is the North American Sustainable Commerce map. From the site:

Description
This map shows the total installed renewable energy capacity for the states, provinces, and territories of North America as of 2003. The renewable energy sources included in the data are biomass, geothermal, hydropower, solar, and wind.

Back from Hiatus

After some time spent transitioning to a new position at IDEO, I'll be adding to the Verde Vista collection. Stay tuned.

Climate Comedy

Refreshing to see these attempts at green humor.

From Sydney Harris' 101 Funny Things about Global Warming, a recently released collection of cartoons:

Chime In on Green Computing: The Register Hosts

Check out the Register's open forum on Green Computing:

"On February 27, we'll host a four-hour online session which will include some brief opening remarks from Vance, a couple of analyst presentations and vendor sessions. We'll chat about issues such as improving the energy efficiency of data centers and cost savings through blade PC and thin client computing models."

Their goal: "to discover what goodness actually travels with the green computing bandwagon and what badness we can do without."

My take: It'd be nice to see some folks there who'll sniff out and expose any signs of greenwashing in this space. :)

It doesn't get much better than this: Heidi Fleiss to Open Eco-brothel for Women

Even if you're not planning on visiting Heidi's new joint, you gotta check out the pictures of her and her giant attacking parrot. :)

Narrative Indulgences and Evocative Abstractions: Fictional Products at Adobe Design Center

Allan Chochinov ponders the use and relevance of prototyping products that will never be produced. His analysis highlights an interesting distinction between design for production and design for consumption, in which the latter's distance from utility opens a space where "Form follows Art, where products can be ideas first and utility second."

IMO, design for consumption also signals some important implications for sustainability. In addition to Idealist (mentioned in the article), Instructables is a great example of a large collection of designs and inventions that prioritize ideas and place production in the hands of those who wish to execute them, possibly increasing the likelihood that they are locally-sourced. It also begs the question of whether or not the rise of "consuming through pixels" (especially in cases where products are not produced) obfuscates the necessity of having all those computers plugged in just to check out the ideas and pass them on to others. It would be interesting to calculate the carbon footprint of a successful 'virtual' viral design (server demand, estimated number of time on individual PC's during which people consider and forward it, etc.).

Jetson Green's Trendspotting for '08

Some interesting observations about where green building might be headed from Preston Koerner on his blog:

Green Rehabs
This one is pretty obvious, I think. With new house permits down and sales going slow, real estate transactions will involve already built structures. People with money will meet their needs with existing stock. And with a slew of green products in the market (or well on the way), green renovators will use (or have the option to) eco-friendly materials in lieu of non-green materials. People will want to do this, too, what with all the attention the media gives to the environment. Let's look for people to do more with what we have already. We may even see some cool examples of adaptive reuse.

Affordable Green
Similar to the first trend is the notion that green needs to be affordable. Again, the economy will be a little slow and people won't be able to tap the negative equity of their homes. Nevertheless, people are cognizant of the environment and will look for affordable ways to live/work comfortably. Everywhere you go, the conversation is the environment. Regardless of the economic demographic, rich or poor, everyone will make important changes. Executive jets can be expensive because rich people buy them (money is no object), but green stuff is different. Watch for people in the lower economic bracket to scream for more affordable, meaningful, eco-friendly products.

Green Skepticism
We've seen a lot of this with greenwashing talk in the second half of 2007, but watch for this to heat up. Consumers are getting tired of hearing their favorite celebrity say something like "if every person would change just one light bulb..." People are smarter now. They will force businesses to quit dumbing down the message. People want all the information. And businesses that are looking for a green angle should be wary. There is no green angle.

LEED Criticism
Everyone is doing it, as if it's the new black. Look for this to elevate and continue. Higher profile, relevant individuals will start to call out the program. LEED is the standard for green building certification, and that's good, but issues remain. Projects that are LEED registered may not get certified (although they will be built green anyway). The money involved in certification may become an issue in the future, too. Third party certification is valuable, but it shouldn't be break the bank on a project. If the USGBC can find a way to maintain quality and diminish costs/administrative burdens, people will be happier.

Product Competition
I'm seeing tons of green building products these days. Many of them are excellent. Businesses that are early to market will have pricing power, but that power will be subject to substitution by non-green products. With new green product competitors and product availability growing on both the east and west coasts, watch for some pricing competition. To the extent that products become popular, brands will be able to drop prices and sell more, too. The strong will survive in this economy, and this will be good for the consumer.

Some other trends I've been thinking about, but that I think may be early include the following: (1) clean tech on the micro level - at home, work, and for everyone in any geographic location, (2) LED lighting retrofits - it's expensive, but it's high quality and we'll need to watch the real estate market for this one, and (3) the all important energy audit - subject to the future of the real estate market, experts will be able to use audits to arbitrage waste and save money for owners.