A Sustainable Train of Thought

A flurry of comments attached to this image posted on Flickr caught my eye (via Macrumors).

The subject involves a forged Apple event invitation, and I found the depth of analysis contained within the comments to be fascinating, if slightly…well, let’s just leave it at fascinating.

Put it this way: when people start talking about the invitation’s kerning, or how the stars in the background are “ugly”, or even how the choice of words is “NOT Apple-like”, well, that shows just how deep “teh Design” runs over at Apple and how discerning some of its customers are. Talk about a brand!

Now all we need are NON-design types using that language and we’ll have a real revolution on our hands.

Businessweek’s article The Top Ten Hybrid Myths contains a point which I’ve made several times before:

The car you drive sends a powerful message about who you are and what you think about the world. Hybrid drivers take pride in letting other drivers—especially those behind the wheel of gas guzzlers—know that getting from point A to point B doesn’t have to lead us to an uncertain environmental and economic future.

The article has several other points: your choice of vehicle can be tied to national security, political partisanship should be a non-issue regarding hybrid car use, and hybrids are only a partial solution, among others.

While none of the points the article raises are particularly new, I find it interesting that Businessweek is choosing to publish this kind of article, considering it’s more of a mainstream news source.

“Third spaces” aren’t something I’ve really talked about or looked at during the course of my thesis work, but this article in the NYTimes about Paragraph and other writer’s spaces caught my eye. Paragraph is essentially a member’s-only space where writers can go to write.

Ms. Parisi compares writers’ rooms to gyms. In both, a large group of people share the same equipment. And, paying for membership helps writers take their commitment to writing seriously, she said, and gets them “off of the couch” and onto the literary StairMaster.
As Ms. Manghnani, who writes short stories, explained: “If I’m at home working, people don’t respect that that much; they call or text or e-mail, or make arrangements to have coffee. But if I’m at a place that sounds legitimate to other people – a library or a writers’ room – they don’t disturb me as much. No one calls you at the gym and says, ‘Lets go have a burger.’ ”

I really like this analysis of commitments. People paying money to prove to themselves that they are serious about their task, and the appearance of that commitment to others: do they respect it and encourage it? I suppose it’s as much about the public perception of your status as it is your actual status. You could be a complete faker or even just someone who is coasting along, but a membership affords you a certain amount of respect and heads off some questions which might otherwise be asked. You might be writing or you might not be. But the point is that you’ve entered into a mutual agreement of sorts with others regarding the meaning of your membership. It’s a symbol.

Perhaps it’s even a brand. But in this case it’s one with a clause: you have to write to belong. Once we consider time in this equation, then it’s clear that if you’re a faker, or you’re not really working, you will lose your membership. (A gym, on the other hand, is all too happy to let you aimlessly wander amongst the machines and weight stacks for as long as you want, provided you keep paying your membership dues.) So the brand in this case is one which becomes coveted because it has real meaning. Anyone can buy a certain pair of sneakers given enough money. But not everyone can be part of a writer’s room, because you are required to participate, contribute, produce. The agreement you make with the brand and your participation in its realization and fulfillment is a critical part of the brand’s meaning. A self-policing process is required to ensure its continued integrity.

The other part of the article which caught my attention:

...playwright Kirk Wood Bromley, a member of the Brooklyn space, says he finds the atmosphere bracing. “I think writers get jazzed by writing in a room with other writers,” he said. “Writing is a very competitive art.”

I think the same applies to designers in close confines…

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.

I am always interested in the facts trotted out about how hybrid cars don’t actually meet their advertised mileage per gallon. A recent Car & Driver article about the Honda Civic Hybrid essentially put the kiss of death on hybrids with the words “In a hybrid, the trick is to drive like a grandmother.” (Consider this is a magazine which typically showcases cars like the $1.25 million Bugatti Veyron 16.4—top speed 253 mph.)

The EPA testifies that the Civic hybrid gets 49 mpg in city driving and 51 on the highway. But those numbers are rarely achieved. To get mileage in the high-40-mpg range requires gradual acceleration, timid cruising speeds, and cautious use of the throttle. Suffer a short lapse in concentration or accelerate immoderately, and fuel economy will suffer. Fact is, to do this right, you will drive more slowly than you ever have.

Not exactly the way to sell hybrids to the go-fast crowd.

Car & Driver magazine has a point when it comes to the numbers, though.

Producing an accurate gas-mileage evaluation is so difficult that most folks don’t think even the federal government can do it.

So if people don’t can’t have faith in the accuracy of the gas-mileage numbers, why do they buy hybrids? Shouldn’t the reality of hard results taint the ostensible value of hybrids? Well, as Car & Driver points out (in 2004, mind you):

Wearing a Toyota Prius has become … a sought-after badge among the greenies…

An older Environmental News Network article talks about the first-mover advantage Toyota has over rival car manufacturers when it comes to hybrids.

Even Toyota’s rivals acknowledge that the company’s head start gives it an advantage.

“They were there first,” Larry Burns, GM Vice President in charge of research and development, said while in Tokyo for the Tokyo Motor Show, which opens to the public Saturday. “That’s an advantage to have had real experience with real customers.”

In addition to the technology lead and the public perception and branding lead, there’s a very important component of customer experience related to having new technology in the field first. It’s kind of like experience prototypes, in that you can refine your products more quickly and surely when you receive direct feedback. Other car manufacturers, such as Ford, who are observing on the sidelines may think they have an advantage in that Totyota is doing all the hard work which Ford can later reap the benefits of, but the reality is that Totyota is also building a relationship with customers in the process. And I’d wager that those relationships will be just as valuable as the other advantages (technical, financial, market, etc.) Toyota is gaining on its competitors.

I was reading Salon.com this evening, and I ran across two articles which revealed a strange juxtaposition of values. In the article about Wal-Mart entitled Who is guilty of killing downtown?, money seems to be the underlying motivation:

The obvious question is, do the costs outweigh the benefits? And there are plenty of good reasons to argue that they do; that the total cumulative impact of Wal-Mart on the fabric of society is negative. But the unfortunate reality is that few minds are going to be changed by one-sided reports that do not even begin to acknowledge the very real reasons that people have for shopping at Wal-Mart—or the responsibility that those shoppers bear for what kind of changes are wrought in their local communities.

In the Salon.com article Why do people buy Priuses?, the argument is that people want to communicate an image of green citizenship to others.

Chevron’s public relations campaign Will You Join Us is an attempt similar to BP’s public relations campaign to engage the public on issues of oil consumption and climate change.

As I’ve mentioned before, public perception plays a critical part in the march towards more sustainable practices. However, companies like Chevron need to remember that talk only gets you so far: at some point they need to act, and in their actions we will be able to determine whether or not they truly mean what they say. As ClimateBiz points out:

But others say the friendly “letters from Dave” approach is a classic case of corporate greenwashing as Chevron attempts to shore up Big Oil’s threatened power base with calculated public relations language. Some environmentalists argue the effort and investment would have been better spent cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Looks like Tide laundry detergent is marketing a new product called Tide Coldwater which promotes saving money and energy by enabling you to wash clothes in cold water. (Yeah, a quick look in treehugger shows this product’s been around for at least a couple of months, but this is the first time I’ve seen the commercial on TV seeing as I’ve been in Europe the last several months.)

As the FAQ asks:

What spurred P&G to launch this product now?

Syd got a bottle of lotion for the holidays, which arrived in a HUGE box.

Yes, the only thing inside that box, aside from more packaging and bubble wrap, was that bottle of lotion. The iPod is there for scale.

Now, I know there is probably some argument within industry for shipping a relatively tiny bottle of lotion in a relatively gargantuan box, and that such an argument would probably fall along the lines of economies of scale and money. While the price might be right, in the end the customer is faced with a wad of bubble wrap, packaging for the lotion bottle, and a huge box. All of which is going straight into the trash, unless they have the inclination to repurpose or reuse the packaging. If this big box goes straight into the trash, its effective use-lifespan is somewhere on the order of days (depending on how long the shipping company took to deliver the package). Seems like a bit of a waste to me. (Continued)