A Sustainable Train of Thought

I’ve posted onto Flickr the slides we used in the presentation. (I don’t think the ones in the presentation video came out too well.) You can view them individually, or as part of a nifty slideshow.

Here’s a sampling:

I’ve posted my Applied Dreams presentation with Didier Hilhorst on YouTube. It looks like this is the direction my thesis will take, as the topic deals with reputation, trust, renting, currencies, and economies. It’s quite simple, really. Watch the video! (It’s about 30 minutes. If you want to watch a slightly larger version, go to the YouTube site here.)

I was surprised to find this article by The Independent on Google News, but it looks like a plan to incorporate a standardized, easy-to-read labeling system on foods in the UK has hit some snags. Called the “traffic light” food labeling system, the national scheme aims to present shoppers with clear nutritional information.

[The Food Standards Agency] confirmed that it was recommending the food industry to put red, amber and green warning signs on processed foods to indicate high, medium or low levels of fat, saturated fat, salt and sugar on ready meals, pizzas, breakfast cereals and sandwiches.

Tesco, one of the major supermarkets in England, has refused to implement the system, as have several other food manufacturers. (As an aside, doesn’t the phrase “food manufacturer” sound odd? Does a baker manufacture bread?)

What I find interesting is that the reason for their refusal lies in something simple, as the Telegraph article points out:

The industry hit back, claiming it had “listened to customers” and that traffic light labels were “confusing”. They “demonised” food because consumers would read a red light as “don’t eat this”.

The food industry has a point. First, complex problems generally can’t be summarized within a simplistic model. As Fabio Sergio was telling us in this last Applied Dreams: “Simplicity, not simplistic” Second, I’d agree with their assessment of the warning label, although I think the information the labels impart is important from the perspective of the shopper. I for one would like to know if I should eat one sandwich instead of another, but of course the companies which manufacture these foods don’t want you to buy something else…

It would seem that the food industry would do well to look at the car industry for examples of how innovation leadership can reap rewards. Of course like many things that’s easy for me to say and much harder to do. But unless we start thinking about making some serious changes to our infrastructure (energy, transport, food, etc.), we’re going to have some problems in the future.

Quick post…

Reminiscent of some scenarios which I first described last December for my second review, RecycleBank pays you to recycle. In return for recycling, you get RecycleBank Dollars which you can spend at “participating retailers”. As it states in the FAQ section, “RecycleBank generates revenue by helping cities avoid landfill disposal fees.”

The New York Times was running an article on RecycleBank, but it’s since disappeared into the depths of the Grey Lady’s archives. If you want to pay $3.95, you can read it too…

The only thing I’m uncomfortable with is the extremely unabashed message of “recycling = access to shopping” as advertised throughout the site. Responsible consumption is just as important as responsible recycling, particularly because considered choices at the moment of purchase can ultimately reduce the need for recycling in the first place.

But if you’re a company which makes its money off of recycling materials, then of course you’re not going to be encouraging your customers to exercise restraint when purchasing things.

Energy efficiency has proven to be a concern for Google. A new report from Morgan Stanley points to Google purchasing AMD chips for near-term replacement needs when servicing its estimated 200,000 or more servers.

The rationale behind the switch from Intel:

There he discussed the importance of power-efficiency in servers, stating that in some cases simply switching on server hardware and running it for its three-year lifetime can cost a company half as much as it paid for the hardware in electricity fees…

It’s a bit of a convoluted way of saying what’s been said before, namely, that over the lifetime of the computer hardware, the cost of power to run the hardware may someday be much higher than the cost of the hardware.

The question ultimately comes down to “work per watt” and is something I’ve touched on before.

Syd just sent me a great custom American Apparel t-shirt which is conspicuously branded as the “Sustainable Edition”. I haven’t looked into what exactly makes it sustainable, but I sense a strong correlation between “sustainable” and the “organic cotton” materials.

American Apparel is known for its “sweatshop free” production facilities in downtown LA as much as it’s known for hiring porn stars to model its clothing. But that’s neither here nor there.

What I find interesting about this label is that a t-shirt is essentially a platform. And as a platform, is it particularly proper for American Apparel to label a t-shirt as sustainable when, for example, they have no idea what kinds of inks will be used in printing processes downstream from their factories?

In response to this concern, I could see is a contract or agreement with companies that purchase these sustainable edition shirts. The contract could state that further processes applied to the t-shirts would not invalidate the “sustainable” claims made by American Apparel. In this way, American Apparel could stand 100% behind its label, whereas now I might find reason to question the legitimacy of their “sustainable” claims.

The Design Council publication Red Paper 01 Health – Co-creating Services. This is where it all started for last year’s service design course. Most of what it proposes is rather common-sensical, I suppose, but then again that’s pretty much how I’ve always found interaction design.

Again, going through some older posts I never got around to posting…

An older Treehugger post talks about IKEA and its foray into vermiculture. While the idea of mobile “worm-mobiles” is intriguing, I tend to think the worm-farms have been set up in trucks because they can easily be removed from the premises if the trial doesn’t work out. At any rate, it’s interesting to see how large corporations can be proactive too.

It is, of course, no surprise that IKEA is interested in environmentally-friendly practices. They are proponents of The Natural Step and are a big reason so many people use compact fluorescent light-bulbs.

I had a few concerns about composting before I found the Naturemill.

This post is a bit of a throwback to my thesis prior to winter break, when I was investigating a “compost economy” of sorts. Turns out that compost isn’t necessarily smelly and awkward to use. Rather, it can appear simply as dirt. Which is what the Naturemill spits out. It’s basically a box that lives in your kitchen, plugged into the wall, which turns food waste into dirt.

It’s a bit expensive, but it makes great sense for people who live in apartments and don’t have access to a backyard.