700% Excessive Packaging!

I recently bought  a Wahl beard trimming kit at Costco. The features listed on the retail packaging were just what I wanted. The box was massive; it made it seem like I was getting a lot of value for little money. The side of the package had an energy star logo and it said “powered by an ENERGY STAR qualified battery for a better environment”.  Pretty cool – I like to be green. When I got home and opened the carton, look at what I found…

700% excess packaging and a lot of air! There was no indication that any of the inner cardboard  had any recycled content. There was no indication that soy-based inks were used in printing the large retail outer packaging. If Wahl really cared about creating a better environment, they wouldn’t create packaging that’s such an environmental disaster.

Speaking of hot air, Wahl’s web site brags about their commitment to the environment:

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Our Commitment

Wahl, as an ethical global manufacturer and distributor of electrical appliances, realizes the environment is a key stakeholder, along with our customers, suppliers, shareholders, employees, communities, and countries where we do business.

• We are genuinely committed to reducing our impact on the environment.
• We will strive to define world-class best environmental impact practices and achieve ambitious targets.
• We will continually reduce energy used and materials consumed throughout our end-to-end supply chain processes.
• We will set a good example to our stakeholders by actively promoting sustainability, recycling, and using environmentally friendly materials wherever practical.

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Wahl (and Costco) still have some work to do!  I intend to email both companies with a link to this post.

Walmart and Amazon both claim to be making great strides in reducing unnecessary packaging on the products they sell – I admit it does seem unfair to compare bricks and mortar retailers with on-line only businesses like Amazon on this point, but still, this packaging seems to cross a line.

Did I take it back? No, but I thought about doing that.  Next time…

Do New Green Buildings “Contribute” to Global Warming?

Today, San Francisco Mayor Newsom signed new green building legislation that will substantially increase new green building and green remodeling in the city.  I was especially glad to see that the LEED Gold project highlighted during the announcement was a green remodel, as opposed to new green construction. Generally, the sexy, new green construction projects get all the glory, and I have a real problem with that. While green building and the related green building standards like LEED are focused on much more than just the global warming problem, that is the issue that rightfully has the world’s undivided attention.  The IPCC scientists clearly stated that worldwide carbon emissions must stop increasing by 2014 and greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 50-85% by 2050 OR ELSE.  A building that’s recognized with one of the highest green honors, LEED Gold, can still spit out 60-70% as much carbon gas as a new non-green, code-compliant building.  LEED-NC Version 2.2 awards Gold to projects with a score of 39 out of 69 possible points.  While there is variation amongst Gold-certified buildings, a typical project would only be about 35% more energy efficient than a non-green but code-compliant building (yielding 8 of 10 possible points in the Optimize Energy Performance section of the Energy and Atmosphere category). Basic LEED certification can be had for as little as 14% more energy efficiency.  The new San Francisco legislation uses the less stringent Green Point Rated system for residential and smaller commerical projects, and like LEED, Green Point Rating can be had for as little as 15% more energy efficiency. Unless a new green building REPLACES an old building, the new building’s emissions (albeit reduced) are ADDITIVE to our carbon footprint. I’m not anti-growth, but I think this is an important point: we have to STOP thinking of new green construction as “all good”. “In the context of global warming, new green construction is simply LESS BAD than new, non-green construction.” Of course, I’m not trying to discourage new construction from going green; we must accept the reality that new buildings will be built, and of course we need to make sure they are as green as possible, but let’s save our biggest accolades for projects that directly reduce (NOT INCREASE) our carbon footprint on the planet. If I were LEED czar, the coveted levels of Gold and Platinum would be reserved for major retrofit projects only. End of rant.

Vélib’ – Freedom Bikes – Definitely NOT Free, But Worth It!

 

 

I recently returned from Paris where I got a glimpse at the future of urban transportation. No, I didn’t see any Segway Personal Transporters, nor did I spot a carbon fiber, electric Tesla Roadster, but what I did experience was far more powerful: widespread, on-demand, free biking. An urban bike revolution has taken Paris by storm and is beginning to sweep Europe, if not the world. After many years of failed or only trial-scale community bicycle programs, a perfect storm is fueling their renaissance. The missing pieces that have come together are:

1. an off-the-budget advertising-subsidized funding model allowing grand scale projects to sail through city bureaucracies, bypassing the traditional “no tax” roadblocks
2. city leaders finally serious about reducing car congestion and related pollution
3. green-aware citizens and politicians wanting to reduce greenhouse gases and to be part of the green movement
4. a subscription plan that makes the majority of the rides seem “free”
5. a commitment to implement on sufficient scale that the program is reliably convenient for short one way trips
6. a more health conscious public in search of more regular exercise

Leading this effort are socialist French Mayors Gérard Collomb in Lyon and Bertrand Delanoë in Paris (pictured above on a Vélib’ bike), who together with French media giant JCDecaux, put together the two largest and most successful urban bike programs in the world. Paris’ high profile Vélib’ (play on words “vélo libre”, in English free bike, freedom bike) program has rapidly installed 14,000 bikes at 1,000 stations throughout Paris since the program began July 15^th and they’re adding 500/week until the end of the year. The resulting 20,600 bikes at 1,451 stations will approximate 1 rental bike for every 100 Parisians. For the most accurate details on Vélib’, I highly recommend the 31 page Vélib press kit (PDF) put out by JCDecaux and the Marie de Paris. While all the kinks are still being worked out of the system, JCDecaux seems to be doing a decent job maintaining the bikes in good clean working order and load balancing supply to meet demand by shuttling bikes from full stations to empty ones. Before renting a Velib bike, you must purchase a subscription for €1 ($1.40)/day, €5 ($7)/week, or €29 ($40.60)/year paid by microchip-equipped credit card (which are used pretty much everywhere in the world EXCEPT the U.S. Some people said their U.S.-issued American Express card was accepted, others said theirs wasn’t. My VISA, sans puce, could not be read by the kiosk.) After that, the first 30 minutes of every rental is “free”. Taking a longer trip? Pay €1 ($1.40) for the 2^nd half hour, €2 ($2.80) for the 3^rd, or €4 ($5.60) for each 30 min block after that. The program is structured to encourage short commutes, not daily vacation rentals. The desire is to keep the bikes in constant circulation. In fact, Paris’ bikes get used almost 10 times a day; that’s 100,000 rides a day in total. Though I did witness a couple of Parisians legally gaming the system: before their 30 free minutes were up, they simply docked the bike at a nearby stand, waited a couple minutes for their account to clear in the central computer, then re-rented the same or a different bike for another 30 free minutes. I believe the cycle-time (no pun intended) between rentals is more like 10 minutes for a similar program in Barcelona operated by ClearChannel Adshel.

Over 10% of the entire Paris population is expected to ante up €29 for an annual subscription to the immensely popular program by year-end. The 10% figure is significant since only 1.6% of Paris’ transportation mix was by bike before July 15^th this year. In a few short months, bike mode share has more than doubled to 3.6% and is set to climb further from there. (For reference, bikes represent a 4% transportation share in hilly, but relatively bike friendly San Francisco.) Such fast scaling numbers will go a long way to create the “cultural shift” intended by Paris officials who hope Vélib’ will become a critical part of their plan to reduce auto congestion and pollution, provide exercise, and further reinforce Paris’ position as a leading demonstration city for innovation and quality of urban life – not to mention almost ensure the 2008 re-election of Messrs. Collomb and Delanoë for another 6 years. The Paris program was modeled on the smaller Velo’v program in Lyon which Mayor Collomb and JCDecaux started in May 2005 with 1,000 bikes and is now set to scale to 4,000 by year-end. In both cases, JCDecaux paid all of the costs for the bicycle program in exchange for rights to advertise on thousands of ad panels on street furniture. U.S.-based ClearChannel Adshel (CCA) had won a similar, much smaller bike rental program in Rennes, France as early as 1998, but seemed to lack the ad-subsidized financial modeling expertise and European political relationships to take the concept to other cities until recently. CCA did win the popular Bicing program in Barcelona and similar deals throughout Norway and Sweden. Interestingly, Barcelona awarded JCDecaux a 10-year street furniture advertising contract in 2006 covering 3,500 ad panels with no bike program quid pro quo. Separately, the city awarded a bicycle rental contract to CCA in early 2007. An urban-area parking tax and €24 annual subscription fee covers CCA’s €2.2M annual fee to run the program, and CCA augments that payment with revenue from ads sold at the bike rental kiosks. Though only slightly smaller than Lyon, Barcelona started with a modest 200 bikes in March 2007 (versus Lyon’s 1,000 in May 2005), but after phenomenal success and not to be outdone by the French, they scaled rapidly to 1,500 bikes on July 1, and now they have shifted into high gear and are under contract to have 6,000 by March 2008. Both JCDecaux and ClearChannel Adshel executives are on a tear throughout the world inking similar deals from Seoul, Korea to Washington, DC. (FYI, I plan to post here a global index to the various bicycle rental programs in a few days.)

Since many other bike sharing or rental schemes have never gone to scale for lack of funding, you must be wondering, how did Paris justify spending €90M ($120M) to implement Vélib’ on such a massive scale? If the Paris press releases and hundreds of articles and blog posts are to be believed, the simple answer is that Paris didn’t spend anything for Vélib’; media giant JCDecaux agreed to pay all of the costs for Vélib’ in exchange for a 10-year contract to control advertising rights on 1,628 bus shelters, newsstands, public toilets, and other so called “street furniture”. In addition, JCDecaux will pay Paris €3.5M ($4.3M) per year or possibly more if ad sales surpass certain targets. On the surface, it sounds like “WOW- we get this great free bike program and $4.3M/year!” If you really believe Vélib’ was free, then I have some swamp land in Florida I’d like to sell you. The bikes, custom-designed for durability and theft deterrence are reported to cost about $1,300 each, but it seems to me that JCDecaux’s announcement that their initial €90M investment to install and run a system for 14,100 bikes equates to an all-in price of nearly $9,000 per bike. Of course, there’s a substantial investment required to build/run the subscription system, the sturdy and high-tech bike rental stations, the staff required to maintain the bikes, and reserve to replace stolen/damaged bikes, however, that number still sounds high. To help offset the reduction of advertising revenue, Paris will instead be receiving 100% of the Vélib’ subscription fees, which thanks to the programs popularity could bring in a whooping €30M starting next year. Could it be that this is more revenue than Paris would have received from JCDecaux or ClearChannel for simply the advertising rights without a bicycle program? Add to this the indirect windfall of lower health care costs for a healthier citizenry and 400 quasi-green collar jobs that maintain and operate Vélib’, and it looks like the Parisian government just might have hit the lottery jackpot of the century.

The undeniable fact is, Paris has traded hundreds of millions of euros worth of future advertising income for Vélib’. JCDecaux and their competitors, namely CCA and Viacom/CBS Outdoor, are typically required to provide attractive, durable transit shelters, kiosks, and toilets, AND pay large sums to the host city. Clear Channel recently offered to pay the city of San Francisco between $306M and $381M for a 20-year transit advertising pact. In exchange for 5,820 ad faces, JCDecaux guaranteed Los Angeles minimum payments of $150M over their 20-year contract term starting in 2001. If those deals aren’t big enough to get your attention, take note of this: the Spanish firm Cemusa agreed to pay New York City $1B over 20 years for a comprehensive street furniture advertising contract in 2005. While the details of each of these agreements make them difficult to compare, I hope you are getting the idea that street furniture advertising is big business, and that the Parisians are paying more for their “free bikes” than they think. JCDecaux is telling the investment community that their Paris revenue should handily double next year to €60M. With 40+% operating margins, that’s an extra €12M annual operating profit. Note that the JCDecaux/Paris contract has already been substantially expanded in order to further increase the scale of Vélib’, and now encompasses rights to 5,900 backlit ad faces according to financial documents on the JCDecaux website. It’s not clear how this 5,900 figure maps to the earlier announced number of 1,628. In a similar fashion, Lyon is rapidly scaling up Velo’v, their successful 2 year old bike program from 1,000 starting bikes to 4,000 by the end of 2007. The cost? 5,400 ad faces. That’s 11,300 backlit ad faces for just these two programs.

Just for kicks, I did a quick look around to estimate the carbon footprint of a typical backlit ad display, assuming they were on dawn to dusk. Believe it or not, “each” display could generate as much CO2 as one typical European car/year. Carmanah Technologies, who makes a solar-powered transit shelter, claims a typical ad display transit shelter generates as much as 3.5 tons of CO2/year and European cars emit an average 4 tons of CO2/year. I came up with a similar footprint after looking at the technical data for state-of-the-art (but non-Solar) ad displays designed by Primalex. Just when I thought I had stumbled across a dirty little secret, I took the time to adjust my calculations for France’s unique electricity mix which is nuke-heavy and ultra low carbon (95% nuclear, hydro, and conventional thermal), and that completely deflated my smoking gun. It does seem appropriate, however, for municipalities in other countries to consider the fact that these giant street furniture advertising programs carry a large carbon footprint, and it seems especially egregious to put in a green-friendly biking program paid for with much-less-than-green advertising dollars. Perhaps ClearChannel and JCDecaux are way ahead of me and are buying renewable energy through carbon offsets, but I’m not aware of any such activity. At the other end of the carbon spectrum, with 95% coal-based electricity, Chicago, in particular, should think twice about the need to offset all the CO2 emitted by all the additional electricity-hungry ad sites that they’re tempted to offer JCDecaux in exchange for their nifty bikes.

Vélib’– Part of a model green program

Vélib’ was no lucky accident. Paris underwent a 16 month bike sharing study of user requirements before awarding the large 10-year contract to JCDecaux earlier this spring. What’s amazing is that this planning process gave Paris the bold confidence to contract a bike sharing program that was 10 times bigger than anything any other city had attempted to-date.

It looks like Bertrand Delanoë is well on his way to meeting his 2001 campaign promise to double the number of cycle lanes in the French capital by 2008 and reduce car traffic by 40 percent by 2020. Proving his green commitment way beyond campaign promises, this week Delanoë unveiled the start of a comprehensive plan unanimously endorsed by both left- and right-wing district mayors to cut Paris emissions by 30% by 2020. Mayor Delanoë’s eco credentials seem impeccable, as his many projects have already helped cut NO2 by 32% and CO2 by 9% during his term in office, according to Paris air-quality agency Airparif. Ahead of the new plan’s adoption, Delanoë said “the environmental emergency is the greatest challenge of this century”. To all the political leaders of the world — I hope you are taking notes.

Labor Day Weekend Retreat Goes Green

Earlier this month over 180 men attended the annual California Men’s Gathering at Camp Newman in Santa Rosa. Little did they know I had spun my green web and they were temporarily caught between organic spinach and re-useable water bottles. No one was asked to become vegan or to use composting toilets, however, everyone was asked to do things a little differently. Some of the other 9 men on the planning committee for this gathering were initially skeptical of my green ideas, but quickly they became my strongest supporters, each figuring out how to green their respective areas of responsibility.  We weren’t entirely sure how well these new ideas would be received by the 170+ participants, but fortunately, instead of a revolt, we created a mini, green revolution. The mantra was REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE, OFFSET, and the result was one giant step in the right direction:

REDUCE

Waste/recycling was reduced about 90%:

• Over 3,000 individual plastic bottles & cans were replaced with 180 nice stainless steel (sigg-type) bottles and vats of freshly mixed iced tea, lemonade, and cranberry juice with fresh organic mint garnish (of course!) Hopefully these bottles go on to live a long life, saving tens of thousands more plastic bottles. Did you know that 83% of all recyclable plastic bottles end up in the garbage? This is even true in green California! Click here to read about the other problems with plastic water bottles. Greening our event had lots of unexpected side benefits, too. For example, do you know how much 3,000 bottles of water and soda cans weigh? 180 men X .5 gal/person/day X 3 hot days X 8.34lbs/gal = 2,252 lbs or 1.12 tons! And how much of a hassle it is to rent a U-Haul truck, load a literal ton of beverages at Costco, drive it 60 miles to the weekend camp site, unload a ton of beverages, and then reload any excess bottles/cans at the end of the weekend, unload, and refuel/return the truck? I’d rather get my workouts at the gym, thank you very much. By going green, we put all our beverage makings (4 dispenser jugs, beverage powder/tea bags, frozen concentrate, lemons and mint garnish) for almost 200 men in the trunk of a sedan. By relying on the filtered, pure fresh water at Camp Newman, our beverage solution was significantly healthier, cheaper, hernia-proof, and by the way, GREENER, too.
• Styrofoam cups/plates and plastic utensils were replaced with washable plates/utensils at meals and biodegradable coffee cups to go. Of course, natural stevia and honey were available in addition to those fabricated sweeteners.
• The majority of men survived a summer weekend without air conditioning just fine.
• We had 2 volunteer ride share coordinators. An estimated 57 ride shares (2-5 people/vehicle) were arranged in advance — reducing car-related emissions by ~75%. Since 1/3 of the attendees had never been to one of our gatherings before, a side benefit to ride sharing was that many men were able to meet others who lived near them and would start their weekend with those new friendships in place.
• Mostly local and some organic food replaced standard commercial food for all meals throughout the weekend. We offered a fresh salad bar stocked with local fresh vine ripened tomatoes among other colorful treats, and we dined on local, free range chicken with local portobello mushrooms while increasing our food budget by a bearable 10%-15%. We also reduced consumption of beef and pork – everyone seemed to like the turkey bacon with their scrambled free range eggs. Unfortunately, the camp’s kitchen had little experience with organic food sources, so didn’t get nearly as much organic food as we had hoped. We did, however, verify that the majority of food was local within 75 miles – which is more than half the battle (at least from a carbon perspective). We also believe we have planted seeds for some green, permanent change at Camp Newman, especially in their kitchen. In today’s global market, food typically travels 1,600 to 2,500 miles on its way to your plate. “If we’re not paying attention to what we eat, thanks for driving the Prius, but get the Hummer out of your kitchen,” says low-carbon food expert Helene York. Read more here.
• At our events we provide a 24 hour snack bar that in past years was basically a free ad for Coca-Cola and Herseys. To the chagrin of many underemployed dentists, this year we featured fresh and dried fruits, nuts, organic granola bars, iced filtered tap water, unsweetened raspberry iced tea, and a bevy of other healthy yet tasty options.
• A green living workshop was offered among the 35 workshops held during the weekend, attendees posted their suggestions on a Green Idea Bulletin Board during the weekend, and all 180 attendees were sent green living tips in a follow-up email.
• For the first time, our event t-shirts were made from 100% organic cotton, made in the USA within 500 miles of our camp site, instead of the usual petroleum fertilizer-feed cotton shirts made 7,000 miles away in China.
• Promotional post cards for the event were printed on paper from FCS-certified forests. The 40 page program guides were printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper.
• Instead of cars, electric golf carts were used to shuttle supplies around the sprawling campsite as well as to help those who are differently-abled get to geographically dispersed workshop sessions.

REUSE

• We gave attendees nice messenger bags with an embroidered (not screen printed) logo. These bags were a hit over the weekend, and they are likely to have a useful post-gathering life as a gym bag, briefcase, grocery bag, or just all around trendy man-bag.

RECYCLE

• We reduced usage so much that we not only had much less waste, we had much less to recycle. Unfortunately, many of our giveaways (messenger bags, stainless steel water bottles, notepads, pens, etc.) came with an embarrassing amount of packaging. We had 3 volunteers who sorted/folded/toted plastic/paper/cardboard/waste, primarily during our first day of set-up. We even took up a surprisingly large collection of dead/weak flashlight batteries to dispose of properly (at Walgreens).

OFFSET

Finally, we calculated our estimated carbon footprint with the assistance of carbonfund.org (we estimated our collective transportation and energy-related emissions, including those related to the year-long planning of the event), and 32 tons of carbon offset was purchased from the carbonfund.org to fund renewable energy, energy efficiency and reforestation projects.

OTHER

There were plenty of other activities at the gathering that complemented the green experience. For example, over 50 men participated in one of three Native American sweat lodge ceremonies. Basically a sweat lodge is a ceremony of purification and prayer that takes place in a sacred tent where participants speak from their hearts about their lives, their connections to people and the planet, as well as their concerns. In the steamy heat and darkness of the lodge, we come closer to ourselves, closer to spirit, and closer to the earth. Not surprisingly, the need and opportunity to lead a more authentic and greener life came up in some manner in every sweat lodge ceremony.

ADVICE FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO GREEN THEIR EVENTS

1) It takes education and planning. I worked closely with a planning team of 9 other men over a 10 month period. Those who originally gave me that doubtful “what you talking about?” look, have become strong green advocates. Going green is contagious (in a good way!)

2) It’s not just about carbon offsets. That should be your last step, after you’ve done everything you can to reduce your event’s footprint.

3) It helps to find creative green solutions that don’t cost any more than traditional approaches. Some green ideas will increase your expenses, but you should be able to come up with interesting green cost savings that offset those additional costs, with the overall goal of yielding not just carbon neutrality, but budget neutrality, too.

4) Stop that nasty limited thinking about green being more expensive and less convenient. Sometimes it is, but it doesn’t always have to be. Instead visualize how being green can add significant value to the experience of your attendees, and indeed, even permanently impact their lives in a positive way. With the same per person budget used for our past events, we reduced waste 90% and our attendees happily left with an eco SWAG bag (a nice messenger bag, a quality stainless steel water bottle, 100% recycled note pad, coupons for massage/spa treatments, and green living tips by follow-up e-mail). We decided to charge a small “green tax” to each attendee which funded our offsets – in order to raise the visibility of what we were doing. Also, it was an easier sell to the planning team by saying we could substantially green the event without negatively impacting the existing budget plan.

5) Start early and work closely with your facilities staff – including property management, janitorial, and kitchen teams. Bring them onto “your virtual green team” and acknowledge their extra efforts publicly at the beginning of your event.

6) Of course, there’s a wealth of info on the web. A simple google search for ‘green event’ returns a mere 153 million hits. Everyone from the EPA to Greenpeace thinks they have something to say about green meetings. I thought many sites had too much of a focus on offsets while others were too focused on promoting their green product or green service. The resources that I found most useful were:

• The Green Meetings Report, put out by the Convention Industry Council, is more of a comprehensive green meeting guide, than a report.
• The other thing that I found handy was a checklist for green meetings put together by someone at Duke University. Parts of it are specific to the University, but I think it’s one of the better checklists out there.

MURPHY’S LAW

As perfectly green as things seemed to most attendees, there were a few dirty devils in the details. Here are just two stories to give you a flavor for the browner side of our gathering.

There was the summer afternoon ice cream social – nice idea, but much to my dismay the kitchen staff started serving scoops into styrofoam bowls. The very nice and competent server didn’t really seem to understand why I wanted her to switch to washable dishware and very innocently she even tried to explain the benefits of not having to wash regular bowls since these were disposable. Somewhere between my distressed stories about how those bowls will still be in landfill in 500 years and how EPA studies show alarming levels of toxic styrene migration into our food, she finally caved and off she went to fetch washable bowls. Click here if you want to learn a few of the reasons why we absolutely must avoid styrofoam. About 75 mouth watering servings later they ran out of clean bowls. The kitchen dishwashers made several futile attempts to keep up with the drooling, ice cream-crazed faces in line. Eventually in the interest of not keeping their anxious ice cream lovers waiting, the well meaning kitchen staff abandoned bowl washing entirely and I suppressed my horror as countless styrofoam bowls began to dance across the room. It’s hard to believe these bowls which enabled so many smiling ice cream moustaches were slowly spreading their styrene poison to my brothers on their path to creating a permanent pile of off-white toxic landfill.

Then there was the task of finding a printer who would affordably do a rush print of our 200 forty page program booklets on 100% post-consumer recycled paper. After 2 days of diligently verifying that every printer (including Kinko’s Fed-Ex) in the greater Palm Springs area couldn’t even spell “post-consumer recycled paper”, a personable and eco-friendly (but unnamed) San Francisco printer bent their rules for us and agreed to do the 2 day job overnight. To make a long story short, they screwed up the job, causing the entire job to be re-printed (at their expense), using twice the paper (albeit 100% recycled paper), ink and energy – not to mention causing me to grow twice as many grey hairs waiting for the job to finish so I could get to the camp site. This printing debacle could have been prevented by avoiding the last minute nature of the project. Don’t let a lack of advance planning wreck havoc with your green plan.

SUMMARY

Don’t worry, I won’t end this post with the things that went wrong–not after so much went right! Most importantly, we widened the circle of those participating in the green revolution. I believe we successfully left a small indelible green mark on the souls of our 180 gathering participants, on Camp Newman and their staff, and on the various suppliers/vendors who we used and didn’t use because they weren’t green enough. Viva la revolution!