Category — Environment

A free repair service for broken household items is as much a social as an ecological concept, reports Sally McGrane in The New York Times (5/9/12). Martine Postma launched the Repair Cafe Foundation the Netherlands two-and-a-half years ago "after the birth of her second child led her to think more about the environment." As Martine explains: "In Europe, we throw away so many things … It’s a shame, because the things we throw away are usually not that broken." Her thought was that "helping people fix things was a practical way to prevent unnecessary waste."

The Foundation has now "raised about $525,000" from various sources, including the Dutch government, and there are some 30 groups that "have started Repair Cafes across the Netherlands, where neighbors pool their skills and labor for a few hours a month to mend holey clothing and revivify old coffee makers, broken lamps, vacuum cleaners and toasters," among other items. Martine thinks it’s the practical nature of fixing things that makes the idea go. Compared to "ideals about what could be," says Martine, this is "about doing something together in the here and now." The "togetherness" part of actually is another key element.

"What’s interesting for us is that it creates new places for people to meet, not just live next to each other like strangers," says Nina Tellegen of DOEN Foundation, which granted $260,000 to the Repair Cafe. Nina says it has been a boon to older folks, in particular, who still remember how to work with their hands. William McDonough, an architect, notes another important relationship: "The value of the Repair Cafe is that people are going back into a relationship with the material things around them," he observes. Martine, meanwhile, sees a global movement in the making, having fielded inquires about the Repair Cafe from France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, South America and Australia."

The new visitor center at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden offers transparent passage to “a secret Eden,” reports Philip Nobel in the New York Times (5/9/12). Brooklyn Botanic has been around for 102 years and until now its “creaking turnstiles … served as the only public entrances to the place.” But starting next week, a new gateway will greet visitors “at the northeast corner of the garden” and “plant lovers will contend with architecture at the garden’s threshold.” The building, designed by Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi of Weiss/Manfredi, carries on their tradition of “integrating buildings with nature, albeit with a certain brashness.”

If you enter Brooklyn Botanic “from Washington Avenue, you climb a few steps, pass through monumental steel gates and find yourself on a bare concrete plaza … To your left is a wall of clear glass under an accordion-folded copper roof … Ahead, the roof continues past the edge of the glass over a wide entryway through which you can make out the green of trees beyond. On the other side of this pedestrian slot through the building is a high wall, the same clean, white concrete of the plaza ground. The effect is distinctly urbane … you approach nature now through the stuff of the city.”

And yet “most of the building remains out of sight, seemingly lost in nature, embedded in a grass-and-tree-covered berm. It’s a move that creates high-contrast oppositions between growing and built, and that also defends the garden against the asphalt and masonry of its neighbor.” The 10,000 square-foot roof is itself a garden of “grasses and flowering bulbs” and the “vertical steel mullions are kept short to match the rhythm of nearby tree trunks … The result is not a craven, apologetic attempt to deny that what was once nature is now architecture. It’s a model of one way those two opposed systems can coexist.” (image)

“It’s hard to check responsible consumption at the door and go back to mass-produced things that have no stories to tell,” says Bradford Shane Shellhammer in a Wall Street Journal piece by David Sokol (4/21/12). Bradford is co-founder and chief creative officer of Fab dot-com, a flash-sale website specializing in simple designs for household items. For example, Fab recently featured “garden tools created by a Montana blacksmith and forged-steel lighting made in Illinois that the site described as having an ‘unpretentious, minimalist sensibility with a rough-hewn edge’.”

David McFadden, curator of the Museum of Art and Design, says the appeal is a “lingering response to the economics of the past few years.” Ruth Storc, who keeps a blog called Design Patriot, agrees: “People are interested in all things artisanal, because they want to know where the things they live with are being made and by whom,” adding: “Perhaps there is a bit of backlash against globalization and technology.” Tyler Hays, founder of BDDW, a furniture designer, also notes that American labor costs are now more competitive with Chinese, and besides, “you can spend $4 in fossil fuel for shipping a $10 item overseas.”

Such forces are fueling a design trend becoming known as New American Minimalism that features “reserved shapes, natural materials, apparent construction and hand finishing.” For consumers, says designer Kimberly Ayres, the “basic yet refined lines allow more whimsical furniture pieces to stand out” while “the handmade quality is grounding.” For BDDW, it’s also smart business. “We’re making a bigger profit on pieces made in America than stuff made in China, and there’s huge, huge interest at the Anthropologie price point,” Tyler says. “It’s green and good for the economy,” he adds. “Local fits everybody’s agenda.”

The shopping mall “has become a proving ground for the most energy-efficient and reasonably-priced technology,” reports Ken Belson in the New York Times (4/11/12). This is especially true of the Mall of America, “the country’s largest shopping and entertainment complex,” which is “heated not conventionally but by skylights, electric lights and the body heat of 45 million visitors annually.” Where “conservation” previously was seen as a sacrifice, it is increasingly viewed as the “fifth fuel — after coal, petroleum, nuclear power and renewables like wind and solar.”

The challenge, according to Ben Finkelor of the Energy Efficiency Center at the University of California, Davis, is that it’s hard to measure a negative. “It’s easier to say how many kilowatts we produced. Calculating the kilowatt avoided is much harder.” But, in fact, the United States today “uses only half as much energy for the same economic output as four decades ago,” according to Daniel Yergin, author or The Quest. Retailers, meanwhile, “use about 20 percent of the energy consumed by all commercial businesses and are the fastest-growing commercial category of energy users, according to the Department of Energy.”

Retailer interest in energy efficiency spiked during the recession, because the savings helped “offset declines in consumer spending … Walmart, for instance is … capturing rain in storage tanks for flushing toilets and other uses that do not require potable water.” The retailer says that “hundreds of locations meet as much as 30 percent of their power needs with renewable energy.” Walmart vp of energy Kim Saylors-Laster explains: “The bottom line for us is we’re really committed to our mission to save our customers money, which means preserving everyday low prices, which means having everyday low costs.”

Because shoppers are averse to paying a “green premium,” marketers are re-framing energy efficiency as cool technology, reports Bryn Nelson in the New York Times (4/11/12). In other words, in addition to buying “a 60-inch television boasting killer picture quality, you may get extra satisfaction knowing that your engineering marvel consumes only as much energy as a 75-watt lightbulb … Newly honed pitches steeped in consumer psychology are linking up the traits people crave — cutting-edge quality, say, or convenience — with the energy savings and reduced emissions championed by environmentalists.”

Whirlpool learned this lesson the hard way back in 1994 with its Energy Wise refrigerator “which created the impression that buying one entailed a sacrifice.” The brand did better with its “sharply styled and high efficient Duet frontload washer, introduced in 2001, which “allowed a large capacity, washed more thoroughly than a top-loader and was gentler on clothes.” The larger story is how such appliances affect energy consumption in aggregate.” The Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, for example, “says that a regionwide shift to high-efficiency televisions could yield enough energy savings to power more than 290,000 homes each year.”

With this in mind, the alliance in 2008 started the Energy Forward initiative, which involved placing special labels on televisions meeting certain energy-efficiency standards and offering “a financial incentive of $5 to $15″ to retailers carrying the sets. The idea is to frame “efficiency” as another feature of a well-engineered television. So far, the initiative has “saved the region enough energy to power more than 10,000 homes for a year,” according to the alliance.” In a separate campaign, the alliance is promoting “ductless home heat pumps that double as air conditioners.” While the pumps save an estimated “25 to 50 percent on heating costs, the primary pitch has been to comfort and convenience.”

Eran Ben-Joseph thinks it’s time to re-define the parking lot (The New York Times, 3/25/12). Specifically, Eran believes we ought to reconsider “what we mean by ‘parking lot’ to include something that not only allows a driver to park his car, but also offers a variety of other public uses, mitigates its effect on the environment and gives greater consideration to aesthetics and architectural context.” He notes that there are “almost 800 million parking spaces” in the United States, “covering 4,360 square miles.” In Los Angeles, “parking lots are estimated to cover at least one-third of the land area.”

Given that cars are parked “95 percent of the time, you could plausibly argue that a Prius and a Hummer have much the same environmental impact: both occupy the same 9-by-18-foot rectangle of paved space,” says Eran, author of Rethinking a Lot. But he also notes that parking lots come with their own “environmental costs,” including the “heat-island effect, by which urban regions are made warmer than surrounding rural areas.” He suggests covering the parking lot “with solar canopies” so it can “produce energy while lowering heat.”

Eran also thinks that parking lots occupy “an overlooked social dimension,” as “public places that people interact with and use on a daily basis” and could “actually become significant public spaces,” perhaps by replacing “islands and curbs” with “rows of trees … creating an open, level space under a soft canopy of foliage.” Finally, he suggests that parking lots have an “underutilized architectural function,” and could be re-designed like the lot at the Dia Art Museum, which features “an aesthetically deft progression from the entry road to the parking lot to an allée that leads to the museum’s lobby (images), using the lot to create a great “first impression.”

Nike thinks it has changed the footwear game with a shoe that is constructed like a sock, reports Matt Townsend in Bloomberg Businessweek (3/16/12). Nike is introducing its concept with “a 5.6-ounce running shoe called the Flyknit, made from synthetic yarn ingeniously woven together by a knitting machine.” The entire upper — except for the tongue — is knitted in a single piece. This promises both comfort and perhaps fewer injuries to runners because it is lightweight, as well as greater profits to Nike. The process is so efficient that Nike can contemplate making the Flyknit in the US, and not depend as much on cheaper labor in Asia.

Indeed, the new approach requires 35 fewer pieces than does a conventional shoe, dramatically reducing production costs. It’s not that the shoes would be less expensive to make in the US (they will still cost more) “but the cost difference could be made up by spending less on shipping and being faster at filling demand or jumping on a hot trend … The Flyknit process also fits into Nike’s sustainability push because the amount of material wasted manufacturing each pair weighs only as much as a sheet of paper … Nike says the Flyknit produces 66 percent less waste than the Air Pegasus+28.”

Less shipping is greener too, of course. The flexibility of the more automated production process “also could lead to a day when a person can visit a Nike store and have their foot scanned for a customized fit … far more customized than allowed by NikeID,” which allows only customization by color or fabrics. Running is Nike’s “biggest category, generating $2.8 billion in annual global sales, about 50 percent more than basketball and soccer … Lightweight shoes accounted for 30 percent of the $6.5 billion US running shoe market last year and were responsible for all of its 14 percent growth, according to SportsOneSource. The Flyknit will hit stores in July and cost $150.

David Owen explores "the hypocrisies and paradoxes of living green" in The Conundrum, reports Michael Rosenwald in Bloomberg Businessweek (2/13/12). David’s essential argument is based on "an economic principle known as the ‘rebound effect’," which posits that efficiency gains are more than offset by the resulting increase in activity. For example: "Efficiency gains made beer cans cheaper to produce, transport and dispose of. The cost of popping a brew declined so that more people can do it, using up more aluminum cans."

Same thing with air conditioners — as they became “more efficient and cheap” more people used air conditioners. The list goes on: “The more affordable lightbulbs get, the more they’re left on. Airplanes are more energy efficient and faster than at any point in history, and therefore cheaper to fly longer distances.” And about that Prius — “as government officials have moved to increase automobile fuel efficiency, our gas consumption has gone up.” The problem with things like apps to find parking spaces, says David, is “they make drivers happier with their cars.”

As for farmer’s markets and locavores, David says: “If all the world’s groceries traveled from farm to fork in minivans, two bags at a time, we’d have exhausted many of the world’s resources years ago.” His solution is that more people should live in cities and car-makers should re-discover the Model T, reasoning, “If the only motor vehicles available today were 1920 Model T’s,” he writes, “how many miles do you think you’d drive each year, and how far do you think you’d live from work?”

The top thinkers in business management are journalists and academics who are "far removed from business school," observes Alan Murray in the Wall Street Journal (12/5/11). Adrian Wooldridge, an editor at the Economist, analyzes whether this is good or bad in his latest book, Masters of Management. We’re talking about folks like Malcolm Gladwell, Thomas Freedman, Chris Anderson, Robert Reich and Stephen Covey. Adrian profiles various "management thinkers and muses briefly on the possibility that their existence is a sign of management theory’s ‘immaturity’."

However, he "concludes that the disparate nature of management theory is a sign of ‘the profession’s vitality — its openness to outside ideas and its willingness to allow a thousand flowers to bloom." He suggests that management theory’s open, informal and undisciplined culture has "kept it fizzling with new ideas." His book is actually an update of an earlier work, The Witch Doctors, which he co-authored with John Micklethwait, also of the Economist, in 1996. That book took aim at corporate re-engineering, or the ’90s-era trend toward cost-cutting and downsizing, deeming the "cure worse than the original disease."

The new book explores "corporate social responsibility" in a similar fashion. Among others, it cites BP’s efforts to position itself as "the world’s most environmentally conscious oil company," only to find itself viewed as hypocritical, or worse, after "the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico … For all the talk of a ‘triple bottom line’ — targeting people, planet and profits — few companies, in the US at least, have truly taken their eyes off their stock price and quarterly profit." He also notes that "many companies that trumpet social responsibility have found it a useful tool for cutting the cost of materials, improving recruiting, wooing customers and otherwise enhancing the old-fashioned bottom line."

Long Island City is dabbling in art therapy as a form of public policy, reports Martha Schwendener in the New York Times (12/13/11). The Noguchi Museum and Socrates Sculpture Park asked four artists to offer their solutions to "unchecked development, the loss of affordable housing and the chemical hangover of industrialization." Their concepts are currently being featured in an exhibition called Civic Action: A Vision for Long Island City.

Natalie Jeremijenko offers "Feral Robots," or "cast-off robot toys outfitted with computer components for sniffing out pollutants in contaminated soil; awnings that collect solar-energy; and bags you can hang over your apartment balcony to grow food." She also proposes "hula hoops filled with wildflower seeds and biomimetic wings for personal travel. " Rirkrit Tiravanija proposes "drivable" grass and opening a community kitchen.

Mary Miss suggests turning "four giant smokestacks … into a kind of eco-feedback center registering environmental changes that would be visible to the community." Whether any of these concepts "will make it out of the gallery and into the world" is, of course, an open question. The stated goal, however is simply to "’spark an ongoing dialogue’ between the creative sector and the community." It is based on the premise that "civic change isn’t merely about infrastructure, but addressing ‘psychological barriers.’"