The Good

I’ve been reading more and more instances of product “eco-certification” in my news sources of late, and i reckon it’s time to mention another aspect of the William McDonough “eco-empire” that i find compelling.

The closed loop production cycle, in theory and practice, that permeates this blog is largely derived from the book Cradle to Cradle, written by the architect and chemist duo of William McDonough and Michael Braungart. Despite rumors about mcdonough’s practice, and what some have called a sales-brochure tone in the writing of the book, i consider it a watershed in my life. Regardless of any suspicions (i think quite unfounded) regarding the authors and motives behind the book, the facts and theories held within it hold the potential to completely remake the world for the better.

So. One thing i haven’t mentioned about these two so far is their company’s action as 3rd party investigation / certification firm. McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC) has the following to say:

Cradle to Cradle Certification provides a company with a means to tangibly, credibly measure achievement in environmentally-intelligent design and helps customers purchase and specify products that are pursuing a broader definition of quality.

This means using environmentally safe and healthy materials; design for material reutilization, such as recycling or composting; the use of renewable energy and energy efficiency; efficient use of water, and maximum water quality associated with production; and instituting strategies for social responsibility.

If a candidate product achieves the necessary criteria, it is certified as a Silver, Gold or Platinum product or as a Technical/Biological Nutrient (available for homogeneous materials or less complex products), and can be branded as Cradle to Cradle.

The certification process in business has it’s good and bad points, depending on how you look at it. On the negative side, certification can often cost quite a tidy sum of money, and take a lot of time. This can be particularly damaging as it can  ultimately hamper a project’s success, or keep a product (should it’s producer not be able to afford the certification) from succeeding in it’s intended market place. In general, it becomes a form of advertisement and label based categorization, when it should be simply a meaningful mark of true quality. Add to this the fact that certifications can sometimes be misleading.

On the plus side, certification can actually be that meaningful mark of true quality, and more importantly, it offers the possibility of transparency, and accountability in a world where it is so often lacking. That is, if the certifying agency is to be trusted. It’s my belief that MBDC is quite trustworthy, and as such I’d love to see more Cradle to Cradle certified options in the marketplace.

For a complete listing of currently available products which are certified (no frills, text-only), click here.

the bad

Waves of the electromagnetic spectrum are all around us. some of them we know as visible light of a rainbow of colours, others we know as the dangerous x-rays, and still others as the communication waves of the spectrum that carry our favourite flavour of ClearChannel radio station, television, and mobile telephony. The debate between “nut-jobs” and “evil corporate schills” (read: “concerned health / social justice minded citizens,” and “the scientific and medical establishment”) concerning the effects of our exposure to these waves has been long and largely unresolved. This is especially true of the cell-phone portion of the debate where-in no survey of a statistically meaningful group of people (which is to say, a large enough random sample) has been conducted. That is, until now.

Popular Science magazine has recently reported on the preliminary findings by a group of researchers in Israel who are participating in the study of data collected by the organization Interphone. It does not look good.

people who use cellphones regularly are 50 percent more likely than non-users to develop brain tumors. And a joint Interphone analysis from the U.K., Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland reported a 40 percent increase in tumor risk in people who use cellphones for more than a decade; the study found no discernable risk for people who have used cellphones for fewer than 10 years.

This is particularly scary as the definition used by Interphone for “regular use” is “one call, once a week.” That’s about my current usage, and I’m considered by my friends nearly phone-phobic.

As we wait for the study to be completed (and for our understanding of not only how these waves can cause cancer, but how we can combat the unstoppable proliferation of cells in our body in better ways), I for one, plan to use my phone even less

Naturally, all of the organizations I’ve been mentioning so far are highly worthwhile to be involved in, no matter the time of year, and that is just as true for the last set I’ll be presenting below.

It would be my hope that you would perhaps bookmark these pages, and come back to read more, and explore the missions and actions of these groups in the depth that they deserve.

The bulk of this list is below, but first is something i value highly, which is currently running a “pledge drive” of sorts, which deserves attention.

Jimmy Wales, the founder of wikipedia has issued the request, found here. Hopefully we can continue to enjoy at least one important website without advertisements in our way.

In any case, this is the last list, and the rest of the foundations on it, are those organizations which have found their beginnings in the TED prize wish. Every year since 2005, the TED conference has chosen 3 remarkable individuals who present a wish, and are granted 100,000 dollars. The TED “community’s exceptional array of talent and resources,” as well as “TED sponsors, attendees and the online community [ . . . ] obtain pledges of support for the TED Prize winners.”

These pledges can take the form of business services, hardware and software, publicity, infrastructure, advice, connections … Any and all pledges of support are welcomed. Major support for the TED Prize has come from AMD, Sun Microsystems, AvenueA/Razorfish, Hot Studio, Nokia, IDEO, Kleiner Perkins, @radicalmedia, Adobe and Photosynth. This is in addition to the funding and support from the Sapling Foundation and TED staff.

(these are just my favourites, for the whole list, see tedprize.org.)

Next Einstein works from a very simple, elegant, and obvious point of view. A contention which I’ve mentioned previously, or has been mentioned in some of the video’s I’ve linked to, but one which so many well meaning people somehow miss. “Only Africans will solve Africa’s problems.” Neil Turok, prominent cosmologist and education activist, envisioned the program in his TED wish, and it has since blossomed remarkably. The premise goes further, to say that through education in mathematics and science, African people can develop an economy that can thrive in the modern age.

Read more »

Annie Leonard, “an expert in international sustainability and environmental health issues, with more than 20 years of experience investigating factories and dumps around the world” has created a fun documentary condensing many of the issues I’ve been typing about recently. According to her website:

Annie’s efforts over the past two decades to raise awareness about international sustainability and environmental health issues has included work with Global Anti-Incinerator Alliance, Health Care without Harm, Essential Information and Greenpeace International. She currently serves on the boards of GAIA, the International Forum for Globalization and the Environmental Health Fund. Previously she has served on the boards of the Grassroots Recycling Network, the Environmental Health Fund, Global Greengrants India and Greenpeace India.

In any case, this is pretty nice, and definitely cute / to the point:

Click here to see the 20 minute short documentary “The Story of Stuff.”

While the last post focused on those organizations that Good Magazine recommends,
the following is a list other groups i’ve come across that are without any such media connection.

One Laptop Per Child, a project begun by MIT’s MediaLab [one-time] director, Nicholas Negroponte. Their mission:

To create educational opportunities for the world’s poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning. When children have access to this type of tool they get engaged in their own education. They learn, share, create, and collaborate. They become connected to each other, to the world and to a brighter future.

In his TED talk from now almost 3 years ago, he talks about the genesis of the project’s goal of the 100 dollar laptop (beginning in the 1960s):

Seemingly for the holidays, the “give one, get one” $399 donation model is back (after a while of absence), allowing you to not only give a laptop to a child in a developing nation, but also to a child in your own life, that is, a laptop with a focus on learning, computer based creation (programming and true computing understanding), and communication.

A more recent update is here.

Incidentally, i plan to add this to my Kiva loans (as soon as my next paycheck comes in) as my volunteer donation practice expands.

(it’s also interesting to see a prophetic talk by Negroponte from 1984, also at TED, seen here. It’s slightly technical, perhaps too much for some, but quite interesting for others.)

Read more »

Whether you’re looking for a last minute donation opportunity for tax purposes, to give to a charitable organization (and generally feel good about life), or just want something to do with all that extra money in your pockets (!?), this is the post for you. (Actually, this is the first post requested by various friends. So, this really is for you.)

Quite a bit can be said about foreign “aid” (some good, and quite a bit of bad). I plan to write an article soon about the issue, but for now, have some trust that the organizations listed below are the best of the best. (As far as i know. Do you know some of others? Please post them!)

The following is a loosely organized list of deserving organizations, foundations, and suchlike that are doing good in the world (and in who’s hands your money might do a little better than buying another dancing santa):

Good opportunities:

The following organizations are all possible donation targets when signing up for a Good Magazine subscription. Good lets you pay whatever you want for a subscription, and donates 100% of the money to the organization of your choice. over the past two years they’ve raised $857,220 this way, you can help them reach their end of the year $1,000,000 goal.

Bill Drayton, founder of Ashoka, tells you about social entrepreneurship:

You can learn more about donation, or getting involved in more hands-on ways here.

Read more »

While on the topic of water, it strikes me that it is another issue which is generally lacking in all the current media disputes and recent political debates on energy.

While we debate the merits of offshore drilling, clean coal, natural gas, and nuclear power, we seem to ignore the fact that all four of these require incredible amounts of water to sustain. This during the most severe world-wide water shortage in recorded history. According to the World Health Organization, 35% of the world’s population live in highly water stressed areas, and while we might arrogantly believe that this only effects those in the third world, we find not only Australia, but our southwestern U.S. of A. in the tally of critical drought sufferers (with many other states soon to enter the ranks). What allows us to seem so much better off in the global demand for water are the great luxuries of cheap energy and the extant infrastructure of the country, on which our society depends to alleviate the problem. However, these can only do so for a finite time period, one which is rapidly coming to an end. The triple-threat of rising energy prices, increasing populations, and dwindling supplies of water will very soon come to a head.

For one example: Las Vegas exists in the precarious situation of a desert city using drastic amounts of water to feed it’s opulence in greenery and fountains, drawing water from nearby Lake Mead. Meanwhile the lake is approaching water levels so low that it could soon lead the city to drastic water rationing, as well as a cease in operations at Hoover Dam, the primary source of electricity for the city. The situation is so dire that current projections of climate change and drought tell us the lake could be dry as soon as 2021. Even if the lake weren’t running out of water (and by extension, it’s electricity producing potential), the 123 megawatt-hours of energy required to get city it’s water for a single day is only going to get more expensive. And in a way, they’re lucky, because delivering water from a lake or groundwater is on the energy cheap side, currently about half as expensive as reclaiming waste water, and an 8th as expensive as our present methods of desalination from seawater.

On the energy side of the equation, realize that most of us in the U.S. of A depend not upon the hydro-electric power of a nearby dam for our energy, but instead on one of the 1,600 coal-fired plants in the country, the 900 natural gas plants, or the 300 nuclear power plants, all of which in turn depend heavily on water to make that electricity happen. To create 5 megawatt-hour of electricity (approximately enough to power 40 average U.S. homes for a year), the average coal or gas power plant must use 142,000 gallons of water. That is roughly equal to the yearly water use of 1.5 of those same average U.S. homes.

To take that math a little further (with a lot of averaging), we find that a typical coal power plant produces roughly 1,216,552 megawatt-hours of electricity in a year. To put it another way, and accounting for the variations from plant to plant in water use, those 1,600 coal-fired plants in the country have an annual water use approximately equal to that of 2.4 billion people. No, that is not a typo. U.S coal fired electricity plants alone use more water than one third the world’s current population. That is, based on average U.S. of A water usage. To give a little perspective, UK water use per person is one third of ours, and people living in sub-Saharan Africa use as little as one sixth what we use (this disparity is just as much a result of our indulgence as it is their relative lack of access to water, potable or not, in this part of Africa).

Again, this is just coal plants, this doesn’t count the natural gas plants, which use 10-20 percent more water than coal plants, or nuclear power plants, which tend to use the most water, at about 2 times as much as coal plants. If these numbers are worrying, remember that China builds around 100 coal-fired electrical plants a year, adding to the more than 50,000 power plants worldwide.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey report on water usage from the year 2000, 30% of the water so used is saline, meaning it would have needed treatment (and energy) to be drinkable. It also shows, however, that of the total water withdrawals in the united states for that year, less than 1% was for domestic use. 11% was for public use, and 48% was for “thermoelectric power,” or cooling down the reactions in these power plants.

By contrast, Hydroelectric plants use 1% of the total U.S. of A water withdrawals, and naturally: solar and wind power use no water at all.

So, in addition to the clouds of sulfur and mercury giving us acid rain, the decapitated mountains, the greenhouse gas emissions of “dirty coal,” which scientists now agree are the leading cause of climate change, and worldwide breathing problems, add ‘drastic strain on water supplies’ to the list of cons against coal power.

Internet petitions run the gamut of outright scams (aimed only at collection email addresses to sell to marketing firms) to amazing examples of “eCivic action,” such as the MoveOn.org campaign which restored $100 million of cut funding to NPR/PBS just a while back.

It’s difficult to say how much effect any given eCampaign can have, but the following couldn’t hurt:

article31.org is an online petition working from the following precept:

Everyone has the right to clean and accessible water, adequate for the health and well-being of the individual and family, and no one shall be deprived of such access or quality of water due to individual economic circumstance.

The basic idea is that the United Nations ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, it included, and still includes 30 articles, such as “Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay,” and “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.,” two particular articles the U.S. of A could use some help with of late. Naturally it is an ideal to which we all aspire, but it currently lacks an article pertaining to water.

Visit their site to read the articles in full (via a link down at the bottom of the page), or to “sign” the petition.

“Print is Dead.” I’ve been hearing this for at least as long as i’ve been alive (Egon says it in the first Ghostbusters movie), yet even now with the ubiquity of internet reading, and digital text media, print is alive and (relatively) well. At least as far as books are concerned. Small newspapers are closing around the country, or being purchased by larger corporations, but this could be said to be as much a problem of business as a problem of communication method. In any case, just as recorded music didn’t [completely] destroy live music, TV didn’t kill radio, and BETA/VHS could never fully compete with watching films in theaters, print, and the use of paper/paper-like-materials will likely never die out entirely. Some things are simply too delightful to the human senses to disappear from a culture, and i would argue that reading the printed word and turning the pages of a book is one of those things.

As we redefine what print can mean, the question of environmental and social justice necessarily come up, if not for any altruistic “hippy-dippy” reasons, then simply for the bottom-line issues of resource use, both material and human, in the production of any goods.

Unfortunately there is no known printing method in popular use which is environmentally just. Most environmental energy in the printing world is focused on creating papers and inks that are little more than slight modifications on the precedent models of production. These are: wood pulp from “sustainably managed forests,” higher and higher recycled contents, and post consumer contents,* as well as alternate ink binders, mostly soy, or polymer based. As with any attempt to do something in a manner which is “less bad,” it is still not good. At least not entirely. The Forest Stewardship Council, will tell you all about the wonderful effects they’re having on the world’s forests by virtue of widespread adoption of their methods on the “about” page of their website. The best news is that they don’t just worry about printing, but certify logging operations which fell trees for timber used in all manner of wood products. The bad news is that we’re still writing on trees, if slightly fewer of them.

Paper use in the fine art world can arguably be called a celebration of the material (or perhaps I’m just biased as an artist), but use of tree products in the creation of office detritus is no such celebration. Meeting minutes, intra-office notes, and the daily news are a disrespectful use the oldest lived life form on our planet, and the services they render us in acting as our global lungs, and a life giving force for thousands of species. In either case of paper use (the arts or daily waste), other options exist, and have for quite seme time.

An article from the New York Times from 1916 (concurrent with a country wide paper production cost increase, during which prices threatened the newspaper industry) described the impassioned efforts of Georgian senator Hoke Smith to switch the country’s paper production from trees to waste stalks, that is: the stalks of extant commodity or food crops such as cotton, corn, rice. According to the article, a 1911 report by the Department of Agriculture demonstrated that paper could be made from any of these sources (it issued the report in 5 versions, each on a paper made from a different kind of waste stalk). Making paper in this method at that time was not considered commercially viable, however, as the U.S of A’s supply of timber seemed as endless as the heavens, and as a result of this psychological devaluation, paper was strictly cheaper to make from trees than from agricultural waste. Only in countries like India and China did the practice of making paper from plant stalks take hold, at least, until recently.

A recent Worldchanging article describes a revitalization of the idea in our friendly country to the north. The most compelling information is this tidbit from Ottawa printer Dollco, in a press release from earlier this year concerning only the waste of wheat straw in paper pulp:

The majority of Canada’s paper is currently made from Boreal forests and Temperate rainforests. Straw from Canada’s wheat harvest could produce 8 millions of tonnes of pulp—equivalent to the paper volume used by the North American newspaper industry every year. That could result in a saving of 100 million trees each year—without impacting food production or increasing energy inputs, while providing a new source of income for grain growers.

Two issue of environmental justice jump to mind on this issue, however, one, Silica, is addressed in the Worldchanging article, while the other, Dioxin, is absent. Dioxin is a carcinogenic compound (possibly the most dangerous known to exist) that is created in the paper making process, during the chlorination (bleaching) step. This tends (ironically) to be more dramatic in post-consumer waste paper products, and could possibly be as sever a problem in the waste-stalk paper world. We shall see.

On the ink side of things, are the “environmentally friendly inks,” so called because they use binders which are non-toxic, and off-gass little or no volatile organic compounds. Soy, and polymer inks, in addition to being non-toxic have various properties which make them conducive to our current methods of recycling. Unfortunately, the compounds making colour within in the inks in the first place are still dangerous, and if not recycled, can seep into the environment, including food and water supplies, much more readily than their conventional toxic-ink counterparts. The toxicity of the products are much lower overall, but potentially more dangerous.

Perhaps a more exciting possibility for both our papers and inks, is that of a closed loop production model for polymer papers and high-tech dyes, where-in each generation of recycled product is of just as high a material standard as the first, and none of the materials are environmentally dangerous if they escape that loop. This implies relatively minor advances in the technologies of the materials involved, but a great advance in the culture of paper use, where we would return the product to it’s manufacturer or distributor as a matter of course. There would no “recycling,” per se, only use and re-use. The technical challenges here are creating polymers that are safe for the kind of use they would withstand as reading material, and dyes that could be “washed” off of the paper easily, but not in any way that naturally occurs (a zero-engergy safe chemical process for instance). Again, we shall see.

Another stop-gap possibility, long talked about, are e-inks, and e-papers. Of which there are relatively few in scientific development which seem promising, but nonetheless offer exciting possibilities, at least for tech nerds, and those who like holding paper-like-substrates. Current methods are mostly not entirely friendly, and lack not only the tactile delight of printed paper, but also (at least publicly) the environmentally sound focus of those researchers working in other fields. On the other hand, this we can see, and now:

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* Paper products can legally be called “recycled,” even if they contain no post-consumer products. This version of recycling is more accurately “rescuing,” or “reclaiming” as it makes use of wood pulp deemed to be of too low a grade for general use in paper making. This pulp is usually used for some other wood product industry (particle board and the like), or simply thrown “away.” Post-consumer products, on the other hand, are actually wood pulps made from your local recycling center, by way of your old cereal boxes, newspapers, and junk mail.

and dont’ worry worry less about the packaging.

Two relatively new drink packaging ideas worth thinking about:

First, paper bottles, by the multi-national design firm BrandImage.

As far as my research has led, this is not being used in the production of any beverages as yet, but did win an IDEA (International Design Excellence Award). Questions of practicality abound on the web with issues of coatings / linings, compostability, durability, taste effects, et cetera being argued, and with nary and answer in sight from BrandImage or anybody else. Still, an interesting concept to be sure, and something i’d be willing to try out.

For another take on eco-friendly beverage packaging, we turn to Tetra Pak, the 50 year old Swedish company who semi-recently recreated itself as an environmentally sound business. While their packages have always been unusual, they now claim to be 100% recyclable, though with packaging made from layers of plastics, foil and paper, it’s hard to imagine how easy to recycle the material can be.

In any case, the wine maker French Rabbit uses the Tetra Prisma packaging for their product, to reduce shipping weight (and thus, C0₂ emissions).

The packaging has it’s problems, of course, but again, it’s a good direction.