This summer the US Postal Service announced a new "Cradle to Cradle" certified shipping model and package for their postal service. This is the first US mailing service to receive such a designation. Awarded by the MBDC (McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry), the "Cradle to Cradle" Silver rating considers everything from water stewardship to renewable energy, toxicity to recyclability. The package has all-around good environmental health.

According to the press release, "Postal Service mailing and shipping supplies already had exceeded governmental requirements, including recycled content standards from the U.S. EPA. Going beyond existing federal and state agency requirements was a goal in seeking certification."

The MBDC Cradle to Cradle certification process reviews all the environmental attributes of material inputs for each product. Based on 39 criteria for human and environmental health, the rigorous process does not miss a single flaw. It doesn’t just look at the physical content of each material, but at every step the material travels before it gets into the package. "MBDC examined 60 packaging items, breaking those items down to 250 component materials and then further analyzing 1,400 individual ingredients in those component materials before awarding the certification." Due to the improvement in the 500 million + Express Mail and Priority Mail packages and envelopes provided by the Postal Service annually, 15,000 metric tons of carbon emissions will be prevented. That means that these tons of carbon won’t just be offset: they won’t even be used in the first place.

"To get some perspective on that number, consider that the gigantic South By Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas generates only 250 metric tons of carbon emissions each year — and that’s from power sources, travel and transportation from around the world and wastes generated by printing, promotion and festival-related goods combined,” states Lucinda Michele Knapp of Conscious Choice Magazine.

Going further, "the Postal Service also worked with MBDC to gain certification for an additional 200 million pieces of mailing supplies used each year (decals, labels, packing tape), examining inks, tapes and adhesives." Additionally, the Postal Service redesigned all the Flat-Rate boxes and envelopes as well; as a result, customers can use the same packaging for domestic and international mailing. This eliminates the need for separate packages (andseparate materials), and reduces the amount of source materials requires for use and recycling.

After Wal-Mart, the US is the post office is the second largest employer in the nation. These developments not only effects and educates customers about sustainable business but it will effect the entire postal service staff as well. In addition to Cradle to Cradle packaging materials the USPS has made moves towards using alternative fuel fleets, offsetting carbon emissions in plants, and now, designing more environmentally responsible packaging. With the proper incentives in sight, the postal service has an eco-effective mutually beneficial system!

Gaining green credentials is of utmost importance to those in the consumer electronics industry. As the demand rises, each company is developing their own labeling system to tote their own personalized green flag. But with so many sets of criteria how do we evaluate the concentration of the green credentials solution?

Philips Electronics recently announced a new consumer product label that will mark simply that the electronic is more environmentally friendly and healthier for the consumer. Titled the “Green Tick”, this label will aid Philips consumers in making decisions about competitive products. Included in the eco-friendly evaluation, the products must meet certain energy efficiency requirements, and use healthier, more environmentally gentle materials in everything from production of the electronics to the packaging. The motivation is to enlighten consumer awareness and to differentiate Phillips products from others. Awarded by external auditors, Green Tick products will be added to the list of Green Flagship products.

It is now becoming easier for Phillips consumers to actively make eco-conscious choices about different products within the company portfolio, but it stops there. The missing link right now is that there is not a tool to leverage the criteria of the Green Tick against that of say Energy Star. When the Green Tick only applies to Phillips products, it becomes difficult for the consumer to make educated decisions about competitive products- how do choose between a “Green Tick” labeled HD TV and an “Energy Star’ rated HD TV? On a seemingly similar note, Sharp
just received an eco-friendly label for their TV’s as well. Boasting
40 EU eco-label awards and additional international energy-efficiency
awards, Sharp was able to achieve so many pillars or environmental wealth because they chose a more common label for
their products- the EU Flower. When the criteria and motivation for these labels are essentially the
same, why compete within the market with private eco-label branding? It is hard to say, but the next step is to get educated and look for labels that are applied to more consumer markets.

Some good news is that many recent European discussions between manufacturers and PR departments have concluded in agreeing to promote green-labeled products and educate with more extensive media coverage throughout the remainder of this year. Hopefully this will result in consumer demand for consistency, and thus an understanding of eco-label activity.

More good news on the horizon is a new widespread European Union Eco-label, the Flower. Taken from the EUROPA Eco-label homepage:

"It is a voluntary scheme designed to encourage businesses to market products and services that are kinder to the environment and for European consumers - including public and private purchasers - to easily identify them. You can find the Flower throughout the European Union as well as in Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland. The European Eco-label is part of a broader strategy aimed at promoting sustainable consumption and production."

Everything from tourism to detergents, business owners and companies can now compete within the green market. With this tool, green attributes pertaining to these private companies, businesses, and practices…may be more easily compared by consumers.

Remember the logic word puzzle from middle school: “Which is heavier, a ton of feathers, or a ton of lead?” Some of us answered with the obvious response: they are of the same mass. Others of us got stuck on the materials under reference. For those of you who relate to the latter, I’m here to tell you it’s ok, and there is help.

Many factoids that we hear throughout the day are hard to process and comprehend. These numbers are originally relative to the individual. Yet when multiplied by the masses, they result in dramatically long numbers that are supposed to represent our collective actions on a daily basis. We commonly hear them on the radio, on TV, and in conversation, are we really expected to have the capacity to visualize 6+ digit numbers in our head on the fly?

Photographer Chris Jordan is working hard to help us comprehend these numerical conundrums. “Running the Numbers” is his new photographic series presented to rescue us more visually-oriented folks. These “digitally stitched” images effectively depict these number problems based on our collective consumption. Since our individual experiences are incomparable to these numbers-of-the-masses, it is hard to create a mental picture of massive amounts. For example, 426,000 cell phones are disposed of in the US every day. When the majority of us dispose of one every one to two years, it becomes difficult to understand the collective numerical value. Well, if you agree with me and really love to visually understand what these numbers look like, then Chris has already decided to help you.

In this image are 426,000 cell phones, the number disposed of every year by US residents.

This image is made of 106,000 aluminum cans, the number of cans used in the US every 30 seconds.

This is what 60,000 plastic bags looks like, the number used in the US every 5 seconds.

Now grab this last image, drag it to your desktop 30 times, and open up each one next to another. This is equal to the number of plastic bags we consume in the US every minute! (For you number people, that is 1,800,000.) With this image, it is easier to imagine what this amount looks like taking up space in our designated drop spots (aka landfills), and how they might be affecting our congested ecosystem.

“If we can more deeply feel the meaning behind numbers like these,” says Jordan, “maybe that will enable us to make more conscious choices about the behaviors that lead to them.”

Chris Jordan: Photographic Arts

In the design world, often times young architecture/design firms and even individual designers will apply to competitions during the young part of their career to get public recognition, build credentials, and experience the social circuits around design.

As a young aspiring designer myself, I have made a keen observation of the design industry this year. Many of the call-for-entries and competitions this year have been for solutions related to sustainable development, energy, climate, biodiversity, environmental degradation, etc. Naturally we would expect these type of call-for-entries to come through the EPA grant programs, the NRDC, and other governmental organizations for the environment. Instead the call for action is coming from design firms, architecture magazines and other NGOs alike.

Allow me to take this opportunity to highlight some of the forthcoming competitions and competitions past that have sparked interest in publications of all sorts. The entries to these competitions not only alert us to solutions most of us have never thought of, but through the venue of these competitions many will have the opportunity to be realized! The following are just a few examples of the aforementioned. Look out world, great solutions are coming!!!

Design 21: the Social Design Network, is a mainly internet based collaborative project between the global design and merchandise company- Felissimo; and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (known as UNESCO). They seek to inspire social activism through design- design for the greater good. “We connect people who want to explore ways design can positively impact our many worlds, and who want to create change here, now.” Design 21 has been hosting international competitions since 1995 mostly based around social themes.

This year, one competition called Heated Issue, was a call for an environmental campaign; another was for an educational “Childs Play” toy that encourages children to cultivate their own imagination; and the third, Shelter Me, is for a new design of a natural disaster temporary relief shelter. The competition award recipients were voted on by the public, and the winners were just announced! So go ahead, view the future!

Metropolis Magazine: an architecture, design, interiors magazine has strongly directed its focus towards sustainable development in design over the last few years. Annually, they host a design competition called the Next Generation Design Competition that awards $10,000 to the winner and they choose a list of runner-up proposals that get published as well. This year the competition focused on solutions for ENERGY reduction, consumption, efficiencies and alternatives. The award recipients this year designed a city streetlight that conserves urban energy based on the lunar cycle. Check it out. Metropolis also just announced next year’s theme: WATER.

Droog Design: an international design collective based in Amsterdam, seeks to “create innovative concepts that change perspectives." This past month they had a call for entries for concepts based on Climate Change. As a result of picking a winner, they hope to develop a product that pushes boundaries, changes perspectives of environmental issues, and invent new experiences, interactions, and participations… How exciting. Droog will select the top 10 designs, and the public will be able vote online to pick the winner. Public voting begins in September, so look it up and get your vote on.

Aside from the competitions calling specifically for sustainability conscious and socially responsible entries, many award recipients of internationally acclaimed annual design competitions are being recognized for their environmental awareness. Competitions such as the ID Annual Review, the Red Dot Design Award and the Spark Awards. This interesting progression is to be noted among the design circuits as a landmark in sustainable development. Lets hope that this is not the trend of the year but an annual progression towards more socially and sustainability conscious design and cradle-to-cradle conscious products.

turtle, NO!: Image courtesy of The AgeWhat would it take for you to revolt against every accepting a plastic bag from a store again? A sea animal choking on one? A landfill in 2500 filled with decomposed matter, and plastic? A a shortage of oil? Having to choose between the deodorant container or the bag to take it home in…? Well, two women in Colorado desire to make this choice obvious and easy for you.

Green Endeavors is a Boulder, Colorado-based non-profit run by two women, Doreen Molk and Carly Gralak, who hope to make an impact on environmental awareness. The co-founders are working free of commission to provide a reusable bag to as many shoppers as possible. Their goal is to remove the requirement of making the choice between paper or plastic. To them the third option, neither, needs to be an obvious and widespread option. Doreen explains, “Every time a shopper chooses paper or plastic they have to make the wrong choice, but are not even offered the right one. We just want so make sure that people know of the third option!"

If we all changed the habitual declaration of our paper or plastic preference to cloth or “I brought my own," we would collectively save 4 billion dollars and 14 million trees from the industry of shopping bag production. The cofounders of Green Endeavors are not out to make a profit from this practice; they simply want to give every household the opportunity to make responsible choices. The way their organization works at the present: send an email with your order for cloth bags to greenendeavors@gmail.com. Each bag costs a wee $2.50. (That is a pretty darn good deal compared to the $800 fashion shopping bag.) You can also check out their site for upcoming events where the two of them will personally (and happily) sell you a bag.

Scientists debate over how long a single plastic bag will take to decompose but let's just put it this way- if you swallowed a supermarket plastic bag at birth, it would still be the most solid material remaining in your coffin after your body breaks down. That doesn’t seem right…or fair. Polyethylene, the most common shopping bag material, is a man-made polymer that microorganisms simply don’t recognize as food; therefore, nothing wants to break it down, so it sits in our landfill (or body) indefinitely. Paper bags will break down, but they are still disposable. The responsible option is to opt for the cloth bag that can be used over and over and over and over…

So on this date of 7 ELEVEN, when you go into that convenience store, don’t let your soda get packaged in a small polyethylene bag that will outlive the complex composition known as your body. Stuff it in your purse, in your pocket, or your Green Endeavors shopping tote (and recycle the bottle, too!).

Green Endeavors
Slate: Will My Plastic Bag Still Be Here in 2057?
Kicking the Habit: Plastic Bags
Tip o' the Day: Paper or Plastic? Bring Your Own!

Kiss & Cathcart, 2020 towerIsn’t it the best thing in the world when you find out that making a decision about your lifestyle is not only the environmentally-friendly decision, but the economical one too?!!! It makes me want to run through the streets with my arms flailing, telling the world that we are going to be ok. Blue collar, green collar, white collar, red collar… we can all save a bit of money by taking a healthy and responsible action for future generations.

Increasingly, homeowners and businesses are getting bank loans and even grants to install solar and wind power systems on the site of their property. The Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency is a great place for homeowners to start. It is common to now receive an incentive to reduce the cost of these systems from 25 to 40%, depending on location, of course. The state of Oregon now has 50% Business Energy Tax Credit for all renewable project costs. Not only does this incentive make alternative, local power generation an affordable option, but in provides individuals, families, and groups with the possibility of claiming energy independence from the electric grid.

Following is a supreme example of how the business management of renewable energy systems is gaining strength and incentives. The largest investment bank in the U.S., Morgan Stanley, will finance and own the PV systems that are to be installed atop 7 Wal-Mart stores in California. The way this works is that Morgan Stanley signs on as a financing partner of SunPower, the supplier, designer, installer, and maintenance supplier of the systems. Morgan Stanley pays for the system up front and the customer pays for it over a long period of time, as opposed to 100% up front. This means low investment risk and instant availability. Big business is seeing green in dollars returned by investing in alternative energy that makes good business sense to them. Not only is it just good business because it looks good and tops their environmental checklist, but it’s economical. Tiffany’s, for example is expecting a $500,000 annual savings on the 1.3 megawatt solar installation divided between 2 distribution centers in New Jersey.

I am not writing to debate the politics of appreciating solar value, market value due to commercial demand, and increasing utility prices; I’d just simply like you to appreciate that there is a greater demand. According to Solar Buzz, “Over the last 20 years the cost of solar energy systems has come down seven fold…” According to The Economist, “Global investment in renewable power-generation, biofuels and low-carbon technologies rose from $28 billion in 2004 to $72 billion in 2006.” If you think about it fundamentally, it makes sense that there be more value at a cheaper cost to us in something that is renewable. These businesses are not signing the Declaration of Energy Independence (yet), but they are partially acting on the economical incentive present. Even though designing these stores and warehouses to maximize on natural light might be the most energy efficient option, investing in solar to power the devices within this space has to be applauded.