USELESS - a People brand and not a Consumer brand….

I came across this blog tonight and the first posting caught my eye right away - there was a logo like the one you’re seeing here “USELESS”.  How brilliant!  We should definitely use less!  I went on and read the article, it discusses how “people” are not always “consumers”; in fact, we should try to be people and not consumers!  I like the idea.. and I agree with the concept.  

Some of the products are very interesting:

• the messenger bags are made of used billboards: 700,000 billboards are used annually (and discarded annually) in the US!
• the “USELSS earth” costs $25 and you can by it made of 100% nothing  - all proceeds go into funding clean water projects 
• all products “locally” made in US
• 10% of all sales go to funding clean water projects

Have a look at the website and this blog article, i enjoyed both!

Are you a consumer or a person?

Chapter 1 of The Challenge Series - the story of Vancouver’s Olympic Village at Southeast False Creek: Millennium Water

The Challenge Series is an online book, it tells the story of Vancouver’s Olympic Village at Southeast False Creek: Millennium Water. It will be published in eight monthly installments, available on the web and in print, it focuses on the visioning, planning, design and construction processes and celebrates collaboration and sustainable innovation.  This is the first month and it was published on May 22!  

This introductory chapter provides a glimpse into the history, policy and personalities that shaped the development of a sustainable community in Southeast False Creek (SEFC).  Formerly an important industrial hub for Vancouver, SEFC occupies a key piece of waterfront real estate adjacent to the city’s downtown core. The future of SEFC became a focal point of discussion in the early 1990s, following the city’s decision to release the SEFC lands from the industrial land base. It became clear that the redevelopment of this 80-acre, centrally located site presented an opportunity to make a statement about the direction of future development in Vancouver.

 

In 1991, after years of discussion, consultation and weighing of options, Vancouver’s city council determined that the SEFC lands should be a model sustainable community: “On the south shore of False Creek, develop a neighbourhood that is the model of sustainability, incorporating: forward-thinking infrastructure; strategic energy reduction; high-performance buildings; and high transit access.” This proclamation marked a momentous achievement for the City of Vancouver, and a turning point toward a sustainable approach to urban design. In the ensuing years, city staff and countless people from local interest groups and the professional community became involved in the visioning process for the site’s redevelopment.

 

Chapter One of The Challenge Series describes SEFC’s past and future, discussing the importance of sustainable community development. It looks at the influences that led to the policy development and design of a new sustainable neighbourhood.

from the Challengeseries.ca website

CBC’s one million acts of green project

Have you signed up for CBC’s one million acts of Green?  This is a project on CBC with The Hour host George Stroumboulopoulos. Essentially this project is to help us realize that small things we do have big impacts!  The website is pretty fancy, i’ll need to spend a little more time to look into it.  

As of today, according to the website, there is a total acts of green of 1,641,800 and GHG emissions saved 92,382,927 kg!

Today’s Green Act - composting at home.

Food for thought - Pepsi’s Tropicana finds its carbon footrpint

I previously blogged about PepsiCo and their Green vending machines; this article is about another of their green initiatives - life cycle carbon footprint for PepsiCo owned Tropicana Pure Premium Oranage Juice.  It was concluded that a 200mL glass of Tropicana has a carbon footprint of 180g of CO2-equivalent.  That amount is similar to driving 720 metres in a compact car or using 11443.7 staples!  Although it may not sound a lot (the driving analogy), think about how many people drink orange juice each morning!

What is a “life cycle” carbon footprint for a product?  They are also called “cradle to grave” carbon footprint, which literally means the accounting of carbon for a product starting from raw material and (usually) end in the landfill. Using the Pure Premium organe juice as an example, the life cycle carbon footprint would include carbon associated with:

• Growing the oranges
• Harvesting and transporting oranges to be processed
• Processing of the oranges to orange juice
• Bottling orange juice
• Tranporting “made’ orange juice to grocery stores
• Transporting orange juice to households
• Disposing of orange juice boxes

You get the idea.  Personally I like the idea of product life cycle carbon footprint, as long as the boundary is set properly.  In this case, we don’t really know what the boundary is because I don’t have the actual study.  I think that PepsiCo has decided not to include the carbon footprint assocaited with producing the juice box, but the disposal of the juice box is included in the carbon footprint.  The problem with that is that if there is a life cycle carbon footprint analysis done on the juice box, then the disposal of the juice box would be counted twice, which would not be correct.  How to fix this problem?  Well, in an ideal world where all products needs a carbon label, there’d be regulations (one’d hope).  This is just a really small problem in this case which may happen in other cases, but the bottom line is that this is great and I hope more and more products having life cycle carbon footprint and creating carbon labels!  

By the way - 60% of the life cycle carbon footprint is from juice production (not surprising), but 58% of the 60% (or 34.8% overall) of the life cycle carbon footprint is from growing the oranges (more surprising)!  I’ll have to look for other examples but that’s quite significant if it is the benchmark for most processed food products!  

So what is PepsiCo doing with the result of the life cycle analysis? They have started looking into alternative approach to growing the oranges, they’re even considering organic approach since it can reduce the fertilizer usage and thus the ccarbon footprint!  Of course it’s not that easy - growing orange oranically will likely reduce yield and thus increasing carbo nassicated with irrigation, transportation, and so on….  What else is PepsiCo doing?  They will be releasing carbon footprint for several other products in the near future!

The evolution of video game console energy efficiency

A refrigerator in the 1970’s and 1980’s uses 1400 kWh/yr.  A refrigerator in the 1990’s uses about 700 kWh/yr; an energy star refrigerator today uses 425kWh/yr.  My point is that refrigerators, as boring as they might be, use less than 1/3 of the energy it used to 30 years ago.  You think that all new technologies are more efficient?  Think again….  This is a table extracted from Noah Horowiz’s Improving the Energy Efficiency of Video Game Consoles article published in November 2008. 
 

WOW… other than Nintendo Wii which has a power rating lower than previous Nintendo consoles, the power rating for XBox and PlayStaions are just - crazy. For Xbox, the first generation of Xbox360 uses about 3 times as much power. The newer generation Xbox360 has been improved and uses slightly less power, but still, the newest version of Xbox360 uses almost twice as much power as Xbox. The figures are way more rediculous for PlayStations. PlayStation 3, when it first came out, actually uses 23.6 times more power! I understand that new game consoles are like a computer and thus usese more power than old ones, but I’d like to think that there are energy efficiency opportunities in these game consoles! Also worth noting is that for Xbox360 and PS3, they draw just as much power when it’s idling!! The reason is that it’s like a computer is running as long as you have it on!