Sustainable Brands Conference next week!

This year’s conference aims to bring together leaders in green marketing, design, and research in Monterey, CA from June 2-5. With over 500 professionals already signed up, there’s only a few seats left. Testimonials on last year’s conference are posted here and interested attendees can register here. They’ve got an all star speaker line up, with companies like Method Home, IDEO, GOOD Magazine, DOW, Interface, Clorox, Steelcase and many more sharing their progress on the sustainable front.

www.sustainablebrands08.com

Design Green Now

We’re here at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, CA live-blogging the Design Green Now evening of sustainability talks. Things are getting under way with an intro from Sam Grawe (editor of Dwell). First up, Yves Behar.

Fuseproject is a design, packaging, strategy company. What is green design for fuseproject? It’s not their specialty, but rather they look at the ecosystem of a product. How does it fit into the world at large? Talking about the value of design to companies. That’s why firms like fuseproject exist. Designers are not stylist, they are glue - bringing together the values of business, marketing, environmental impact. Likes working with two types of companies. Startups, because they have more of a say, to use a stronger glue with the design projects. Other type is civic projects.

New project category between startup (making money) and civic (no money). Doing good while making money.

Citing leaf light for Herman Miller. 5 year project, wanted to work with LED’s, but technology was off. Developed mixing warm and cool leds (a first). LED’s are 60% less energy than light bulb, with less impact than CFL’s.

Y-water. Approached by a company to rethink childrens drink. Less sugar, more nutritious. But, didn’t want to use standard plastics. After lengthy search, no suitable substitute was found. They then changed focus to reuse. The package can link together to let kids build objects from empty water bottles.

OLPC. In Nigeria you carry your most precious thing on top of your head (shows image of woman carrying OLPC on her head). Says it’s the greenest laptop ever. Low energy consumption, reduction of materials, social cause. It’s the result of engaging with a particular audience (kids).

Condom dispenser. 36 million condoms for free distributed to New Yorkers. Taps a social cause.

Next up, Dawn Danby, sustainable design consultant and all around awesome person!

Stay tuned for a wrap up of the evening’s discussion.

Green Technology Conference: Joel Makower Keynote

Covered by Cutter Hutton of Kaiju Studios.

Yesterday in Providence, Rhode Island the Brown Forum For Enterprise held its Green Technology Conference where a wide range of “green” related presentations were made. Kicking off the event was Joel Makower’s excellent keynote, Business, the Environment and the Bottom Line. For those unable to attend, his presentation was a diverse discussion of sustainability in the business world, a few of the key points being:

- Industries that were traditionally unrelated are finding themselves in the energy business as sustainability becomes a driver. Automotive firms will need to focus on the nation’s electrical infrastructure to implement plug-in cars, while Tyson chicken is attempting to use its 2.3 billion lbs of chicken fat waste as bio-fuel.

- Surprising savings can be had when a company begins to measure where its environmental impacts and inefficiencies lie and addressing those issues with innovation solutions. By replacing traditional wood pallets in its manufacturing plants with cardboard versions, GM was able to save $100,000 a day in costs, and switch from a non-recycleable waste product to a recyclable alternative which is purchased after use by outside firms, saving an added $50,000 a day.

- Many companies are silent on the environmental improvements they are making out of fear of enlightening consumer’s to a problem they were unaware of, and that this would lead to demands of more improvements or face a consumer backlash.

- Joel uses 3 questions to determine if a company is “good enough” in improving their green impact.

1- what do you know? You have to know your impacts to solve it.

2- what are you doing about it? There has to be tangible action to improve those impacts.

3- what are you saying about your improvements? How are you telling the public about what you are doing.

Joel’s talk was an informative and entertaining opening to get the audience primed for the other presentations at the conference. He also provided the take-away line of the day: “Sustainability is like teenage sex; everyone says they do it, few actually are, and those that are doing it don’t do it well.” Find out more at Joel’s site, where you can read his fantastic blog Two Steps Forward.

For more information about the Brown Forum For Enterprise click here.

Greener Gadgets: Competition Winners

The results are in: EnerJar, designed by Matt Meshulam and Zach Dwiel, walks away with the $2500 prize!

See the other winners on Core77.

Greener Gadgets: Chris Jordan

Chris enlightened the crowd with his interpretation of consumption. His medium? Photography. He shared his body of work and environmental philosophy which focuses on creating visual statements from trash. Powerful as they are conceptual, the images are incredible translations that give meaning to somewhat abstract statistics.

As an American consumer myself, I am in no position to finger wag; but I do know that when we reflect on a difficult question in the absence of an answer, our attention can turn inward, and in that space may exist the possibility of some evolution of thought or action. So my hope is that these photographs can serve as portals to a kind of cultural self-inquiry. It may not be the most comfortable terrain, but I have heard it said that in risking self-awareness, at least we know that we are awake.

His message was strong: the green movement needs a champion, a hero to guide it. His metaphor was Michael Jordan’s long baggy shorts. Jordan introduced the fashion idea, and because of his ‘cool’ factor they changed basketball shorts on basketball courts around the world. There is no one cool leading sustainable design, so it remains on the fringe in the general public. He says the electronics industry has the opportunity to be that Michael Jordan.

www.chrisjordan.com

Compostmodern in San Francisco

The one day AIGA event brought together some artistic and practical minds to talk (green) shop. While we were in Chicago spreading the word with NAU, Unbeige attended and posted some indepth Compostmodern coverage.

http://www.mediabistro.com/unbeige/compostmodern/default.asp

Ecolect & NAU meet up: Chicago

Dear Chicagoans,
Forward-thinking apparel company NAU will be hosting Ecolect’s “3rd Coast” launch party in your forward-thinking city on Friday, January 18. Please join us for product giveaways, sustainable material samples, local green designerati sightings, drinks, and hors d’oeurves (plus the introduction of new Ecolect site features). Let us know you’re coming; RSVP to party@ecolect.net.

Click for map

West Coast Green September 20-22, San Francisco

One of the largest event on residential green building on the west coast will take place at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium of San Francisco.

The program and speakers promise this conference to be quiet exceptional :

“Central to the success of this conference are the exceptional speakers and presenters who will share their technical knowledge, on-the-ground expertise, and visionary wisdom on a wide range of topics from building science and public policy to technology and global ecology. This year our programming will expand to offer over 150 new presentations and pre-conference workshops and will reach over 14,000 people with incredible ability to affect change”

the program of the conference

the speakers

West coast green website