3p Contributor: Ashwin Seshagiri
Recent Articles
What it Takes to Power the Internet: Quantifying Our Online Obsession
Click on image to englarge
US Infrastructure ran an article last month about how much energy we use to power the Internet. The above is an in interesting representation of what that power consumptions looks like. From updating our Facebook profiles to reading the news to watching last night’s sitcoms, the Internet has subsumed nearly every aspect of our lives.
3p’s Data Center Week: Creating a Context for Green IT
For many of us, the data center is something we all know exists; and as we have been reading more and more, it is something that needs “greening” to improve large corporations’ environmental footprints.
Yet, aside from the select few that work and think about data centers on a day-to-day basis, the majority of the public, business leaders, and even sustainability experts couldn’t explain how data centers work, let alone what it takes to make them more efficient and environmentally friendly.
Over the course of the week, 3p will be showcasing the perspectives of experts and thought leaders in the data center industry, as well trend analysis, in an attempt to create a context for how they fit within the larger economic and environmental bottom lines.
Trading the Landfill for the Beach: Crazy Shirts CEO on Using Recycled PET in Product Line
Crazy Shirts is one of the first companies in the Hawaiian Islands to design, manufacture, and sell t-shirts. For many Americans, it is emblematic of the Hawaiian Aloha lifestyle, selling the mystique of surf, sand, and sun in shirt form at shopping malls, airport gift shops, and coastside boardwalks from California to Florida. Recently, however, the Honolulu-based apparel maker made news for something slightly different. It’s making board shorts from recycled plastic bottles.
This is a growing trend in fashion design. Earlier this year, companies from Anvil to Sears and H&M announced the production of lines made from recycled polyethylene teraphthalate (PET). To produce each pair of Crazy Shirts board shorts, roughly seven 16-ounce recycled plastic bottles are used, converting the synthetic material into polyester PET microfiber. In a recent interview, President & CEO Mark Hollander spoke about how and why Crazy Shirts makes its eco board shorts.
Blog Action Day Today: Tackling Climate Change
As BlogWorld kicks off in Las Vegas later today, the folks over at change.org, in partnership with several other prominent organizations such as Greenpeace, The Nature Conservancy, and WWF, launched Blog Action Day.
Blog Action Day is an annual event held every October 15 that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. Blog Action Day 2009 will be one of the largest-ever social change events on the web.
This year’s focus is on the growing concern over climate change. As of this morning, 8,922 blogs are participating—including 3p—representing 148 countries, and a combined readership of over 12.5 million people.
To find out more, go to Blogactionday.org.
The New Generation of Philanthropy: Enlightened Self-Interest
When 3p covered BBMG earlier this year, the interactive marketing agency had just released their 2009 Conscious Consumer Report, an exploration of consumer attitudes, behaviors, and priorities at a time of perceived great social reset. This morning, in what seems to be a natural extension, BBMG released a white paper on the evolution of philanthropy, building off of much of the logic of their Conscious Consumer Report.
In it, the paper’s author writes, “The new economy has created a reset moment that’s changing how we live and work. And it has profound consequences for philanthropy.”
Trust in our institutions has changed. Entrepreneurship is rising, and from that, a new class of social entrepreneurs, those who break classical boundaries and blur the lines between the traditional roles of for- and non-profits, combining what BBMG calls, “social purpose with financial promise.”
Is Nike’s Environmental Stance Connected to its Earnings?
Nike made a couple big announcements yesterday. The first, as we saw here, was its resignation from the board of the US Chamber of Commerce. The second, and slightly overshadowed, was a higher than expected earnings report, which caused shares to shoot up in Wednesday trading.
The timing of the announcements could have very easily been a coincidence. A company as large as Nike, with so many wheels turning, it’s very possible that the two developments occurred mutually exclusive from each other. But what if they didn’t?
Free Range Studios Offers Grants to One Lucky Business and Non-Profit
Jonah Sachs, and his long-time friend Louis Fox, started Free Range Studios 10 years ago as a creative agency with a conscience. Sachs, named one of the “The Thirty People Cleaning up the Earth” by Shift magazine in 2001, first realized the tranformative power of media as the editor of his college newspaper. He recalled, in a recent interview, releasing issues and seeing the entire student body reading the paper. He realized then that producing media at scale has the potential to amplify conversations about issues that press the world today.
Recently the agency, with offices both in Berkeley, CA and Washington, D.C., announced its Youtopia grant, a pledge of $15,000 worth of free design and strategy services to a non-profit and socially responsible business. The grant program, despite name changes, is in its 7th year of existence, and past winners include Green for All and the Global Resource Center for the Environment (GRACE), most recognizable for its viral flash video, The Meatrix (see video at Free Range’s site).
Bill Clinton, T. Boone Pickens, and Al Gore on Cleantech Jobs and the New Economy (VIDEO)
The National Clean Energy Summit 2.0, sponsored by Senate Major Leader Harry Reid, UNLV, and the Center for American Progress took place last month in Las Vegas, and boasted an impressive roster of participants like President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, General Wesley Clark, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and several others.
The event was an attempt to bring together some of the most respected leaders from industry, science, government, and advocacy organizations to discuss a policy agenda for creating good jobs in the new economy by accelerating the deployment of clean energy and energy efficiency, advancing energy independence, and ensuring long-term prosperity for Nevada, the nation, and the world.
Below are several videos of the event, including special remarks by Mr. Clinton, Mr. Gore, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, and T. Boone Pickens.
Cisco Pays Employees Not to Work at Cisco
How the Computer Networking Giant Encourages Non-Profit Service
A few years back, the Financial Times told the story of Peter Santis, a regional sales manager for computer networking giant, Cisco Systems. When he was let go, according to the article (links to articles dating before 2004 aren’t available on FT.com), Santis was presented with a unique proposition. Instead of walking away with a pink slip and a severance package, he was given the opportunity to remain a part of the Cisco family working for a non-profit.
Peter Tavernise, now a senior manager at Cisco’s Corporate Affairs Group, found himself in a similar position in 2001. When he was laid off, Tavernise was offered one-third of his former salary with full benefits to become a Cisco Fellow and spend the next year as planner and fundraiser for a North Carolina-based public affairs group. Since returning to the company, Tavernise has used what he did for that non-profit to help shape what he is doing now.
These days the program is called Cisco Leadership Fellows, and it is more focused on employees with potential as a way to, as the company asserts, bring people and technology together to make a difference and help a community prosper.
Fall’s New Fashion Trend: Plastic Bottles
Anvil Knitwear Launches New T-Shirt Made From Recycled PET Bottles
Yesterday, Anvil Knitwear announced the launch of its newest line of eco-friendly apparel: A t-shirt made from plastic bottles. No, this is not some misguided homage to Zoolander’s Dereliqute campaign, but rather an interesting attempt to promote plastic recycling and the conversion to industrial organic cotton farming.
Called the AnvilSustainable, each tee uses approximately three 20-ounce recycled plastic bottles, and the cotton utlized comes from farms that are in the three-year process of transitioning to organic. According to the company, using recycled plastic is also cheaper than using new polyester, so Anvil can pass the savings onto consumers.
“Buying a shirt made with cotton in conversion is a great way to support farmers making the switch, and encourage more to do the same,” said Anthony Corsano, Anvil’s CEO.
Consumers Backlash Against Ban on Incandescent Light Bulbs
A monumental ban on incandescent bulbs went into effect today throughout the European Union, marking a significant milestone in policy regarding consumer habits as a way to combat our collective impact on climate change.
It’s been long understood that compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) are significantly more energy efficient, and while there will be a roughly three year grace period to completely phase out those non-CFL bulbs that have already been fabricated from the market, according to the UK’s Energy Saving Trust, this new ban could cut the average UK’s household by 37 Pounds (approximately $60) and save 135 kg (approximately 298 lbs.) of CO2 emissions each year.
What is notable, however, isn’t the potentially huge environmental impact this ban will have, but the large amount of resistance it is receiving.
Greenpeace Faux Pas Raises Debate About Sensationalizing Climate Change
Last week, a lede in the Guardian UK’s environment blog read: “Greenpeace’s sea ice ‘mistake’ delights climate change sceptics (sic).” Apparently, in a recent interview on BBC, a Greenpeace expert went on air and said that the Arctic is looking at ice free summers as early as 2030. He, in fact, meant to say sea ice-free summers, citing research inspired by NASA focused on Greenland.
Gerd Leipold, the executive director of the environmental organization, then went on to say, “As a pressure group, we have to emotionalise issues and we’re not ashamed of emotionalising issues.” Despite what is seemingly a small omission, the Guardian reported that Leipold’s slip-up gave ammo to the many climate change detractors out there. The environmental advocacy group was quick to issue a defense, claiming that the context in which Leipold was speaking was obvious that he was referring to sea ice and not the land-based ice sheet of the Arctic, and the phrasing he used was in line with terminology used in the initial NASA study.
It appears, however, that what most critics have latched onto is not the specific data regarding Arctic ice melts, but the underlying ethos by which Greenpeace operates. “Admitting you don’t mind emotionalising issues,” writes the Guardian blogger, “gives ammunition to critics that will then use to say you are prone to exaggerating the facts.” One blog claimed Leipold’s comment highlights the fact that Greenpeace is “doing more harm than good by overselling alarmism.”
Tappening: Bottled Water Made from Melted Ice Caps and Polar Bear Tears
Founded in 2007, Tappening is an educational campaign designed to encourage the public to drink tap water whenever possible, and to send a message to the bottled water industry about its unnecessary and extreme waste of fossil fuels and resultant pollution of the Earth. Recently, they’ve taken aim at how bottled water is marketed.
Veterans of the advertising and branding industry, the folks behind Tappening launched an advertising campaign late last month to challenge what they call “the notion of Truth in Advertising while embracing an opposing concept. Lying.” Undoubtedly inspired by the Truth anti-smoking campaign, they are claiming that filtered tap water marketed with luxurious cascades flowing from snow-covered mountain-top springs is as much malarkey as the idea of smoking a Marlboro is a) cool and b) will equate you to a rugged, all-American cowboy impervious to all danger.
“Puffery is one thing, but some advertising is simply lies. I’ve observed that there are two types who perpetrate this: Those who admit it and those who don’t,” noted Tappening co-founder, Mark DiMassimo in a press release. DiMassimo’s partner added: “We’re not just admitting it up front, we’re bragging about it. We want people to know we’re blatantly lying in our new campaign…and, most importantly, that everyone should pay close attention to what’s factual in marketing and what’s – not so much.”
Taking Cues from Birds to Green the Airline Industry
Three airliners fly in formation to increase fuel efficiency
Stanford University research group takes biomimicry to whole new heights
At this summer’s Airbus “Fly Your Ideas” competition, an international call for sustainability innovation in the airline industry, one Australian team of graduate students walked away with the first place cash prize of 30,000 euros for a green passenger cabin concept. Derived from castor oil, their bio-composite cabin is an attempt to reduce dependency on non-renewable resources in the construction of airplane interiors.
While the majority of the finalists at the competition—including the winner—focused on materials and biofuels to offer eco-friendly alternatives to flight travel, one team garnered a significant amount of head-turning by looking at how planes fly. A team of doctoral students from the Aeronautics and Astronautics program at Stanford University conceptualized a way for commercial planes to save fuel by flying in formation. “In principle, the idea of flying aircraft in formation is the same as for migrating birds,” said Tristan Flanzer, one of the team members. “While in formation, birds experience lower drag and therefore can fly further. Aircrafts can take advantage of the same principles to reduce their drag.”
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