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Conference Bags finally start to go green

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A while ago it dawned on me what a ridiculous waste of resources the obligatory conference bag is. Plastic carrier bags are not the only bag-related problem we face. Every time you go to a conference you get a bag you really don’t need or want. They’re often poor quality and fall apart quite quickly. So what would be a better approach showing some social responsibility. My friend Ed then came up with a great idea: One Laptop Bag Per Child. Nigel James had crystallised things for a lot of us. SAP to its great credit understood what we were talking and did something about it.

It seems like the shoe has finally dropped, that a lot of schwag is actually drek. I got news from Duke a couple of days ago: This year’s JavaOne backpack is made out of materials that can be recycled.”

Well now comes of more bag sanity from Web 2.0 expo. Cote’ just fired over a link from news.com.

Now that is a lot of gapingvoid designed bags from SXSWi. So apparently Web 2.0 Expo is trying to lessen the environmental impact of the throwaway Events industry.

“It’s a bit hard on the old conscience being employed in an industry (that) creates as much waste as the events industry,” wrote Web 2.0 Expo general manager and co-chair Jennifer Pahlka. “Much is made of the carbon footprint of an event, but I’m well aware of an even more daunting measure, the ecological footprint, which looks at the sum total of resources used. Take a look at all that goes into producing an event the size of Web 2.0 Expo (including what our sponsors, exhibitors, and speakers bring) and you can either get depressed or try to tackle the problem. We’re doing both… We have a long way to go, but I thought I’d share some of the changes we’ve implemented this year.”

Among the changes Pahlka mentioned: Using 100 percent recycled materials for the program guide, attendee direct mail, attendee bag, and event signage; reducing the program guide by a third; recycling badges; providing water coolers and encouraging attendees to bring their own bottles; and more.

Of course, even Pahlka acknowledged that the efforts are only a start. And I do wonder how many attendees will bring their own bottles or recycle their program guides–another initiative.

“One thing I’ve become painfully aware of is that recycling is a good step, but not generating the waste in the first place is orders of magnitude more beneficial to the earth,” Pahlka wrote. “That’s why ‘reduce’ should always be the real goal. We’re working with sponsors on further steps for reducing, and with our vendors on all three Rs. In some areas, we’re aware we’re taking risks. For instance, we’ve tried to limit the print run of the program guide this year, so there’s a chance we’ll run out if people don’t follow our lead and leave their used guides for others to reuse. We hope you will all be tolerant of any errors we make in support of this effort.”

Well done Event Organiser people!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Repak launch Carbon Calculator using AMEE

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We here at GreenMonk have written about AMEE several times in the past because we really support what they are doing (quick reminder – they enable any climate campaign to use a common standard for Carbon-Footprint Profiling and Measurement, for more, check out their FAQ).

Recently I’ve been delighted then to note that Repak have started to use AMEE’s services. Repak are an industry funded organisation based in Ireland. Repak was created to help grow packaging recycling in Ireland and to aid businesses comply with their legal obligations to fund the recovery and recycling of the packaging on the goods or services they supply, as set out in the Waste Management (Packaging) Regulations 2007(pdf).

Repak have just launched an easy to use household Carbon Calculator using AMEE’s backend. Answer a few quick and easy questions and you are presented with a report outlining your current carbon footprint.

Repak.ie's Carbon Calculator

As well as estimating your carbon footprint, you also get a comprehensive series of recommendations on ways to reduce your CO2 emissions with handy information and tips such as:

  • turn down your thermostat by just one degree – each degree drop can reduce your bill by 10%
  • think about the temperature on your immersion heater – can you reduce this by a degree or two?
  • as much as 15% energy (and CO2) savings can be achieved by turning down the brightness and contrast levels on your TV
  • a laptop, on average, consumes around 30% of the power of a desktop, whilst in ‘on-mode’.
  • a well-filled A-rated dishwasher load once a day will be more efficient than many kitchen sinks full of hot water, or a running tap, to wash many dishes
  • digital radios consume up to 5 times the energy of a traditional analogue radio.
  • travelling by rail will result in about a third of the CO2 emissions of the equivalent domestic or short-haul flight in Europe. A similar journey for two people in an average-sized car would result in under two thirds of the CO2 emissions compared with flying

This is a really cool resource to help people realise the impact their day-to-day activities are having on the environment. More importantly though the calculator goes the next logical step and gives practical advice on how to reduce those Kgs of CO2.

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Dell HQ – only buying Renewable Energy

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This news just in.

Of course buying green energy is only a very small part of a sustainability strategy. But its a darned good placeholder, especially when part of the solution is turning landfill gas into power. Stink sequestration? 😉

Dell is using all of the power generated from Waste Management’s Austin Community Landfill gas-to-energy plant, meeting 40 percent of Dell headquarters’ campus power needs. The remaining 60 percent comes from existing wind farms and is provided by TXU Energy.

Dell also announced today it is increasing green power use for its Austin Parmer Campus, provided by Austin Energy, from eight to 17 percent. The company is a leading participant in Austin Energy’s GreenChoice® power program. Dell also is powering its Twin Falls, Idaho, facility with 100 percent green power, 97 percent of which is wind power and three percent solar.

Why blog this? Because headquarters tend to reflect how a company thinks about itself. On the one hand you can argue improving the HQ is just green window dressing. But I prefer in this case to be more positive on Dell’s intentions. Its a corporate leader and a very well respected brand. So well done Dell for showing leadership in your power purchasing, although I could have done without the hardware pimping in the press release though. Stay. On. Topic.

What a surprise – Dell is leading when it comes to purchasing power. Sometimes core competence really does make sense in another context. Now if it could just start reselling green power to its customers…

Do you know of other corporations that have made the commitment to power 100% of their HQ operations using green power? German web hosting provider Strato is the only one I can think of off the top of my head.

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Xerox sustainability calculator

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Xerox has long been known for innovation and recently they released a Sustainability Calculator which helps companies realise the savings they will achieve by reductions in the number of printers they have.

The calculator is an online Flash application into which companies can enter information about the printers they have and see the savings they will achieve by reducing their number.

In the example below I entered different numbers of non energy star enabled mono and colour printers. I then entered the same number of printers and copies into the optimised scenario section but this time marking the printers as energy star enabled to see the difference an energy star rating would have on the results.

Xerox Sustainability Calculator

You can get results for Energy, Solid Waste or Greenhouse Gas. The results below are for Greenhouse Gas and predictably the only difference between the two columns is in Operating Energy Greenhouse Gas emissions.

Xerox Sustainability Calculator results

As printers are typically used only between 1 and 2 percent of the time, there is plenty of room for reducing their number in an organisation and still facilitating printing when required.

It may sound counterintuitive that Xerox are enabling companies to see the benefits of fewer printers but since Anne Mulcahy has taken over as CEO of Xerox, it has been heading towards 50% revenues from services and consulting business around document management. Telling companies how to save money and be more green is a growing business.

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Greenmonk Associates Gets a New Associate

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I am extremely pleased to announce that Tom Raftery, social craftsman and energy maven, has agreed to become a Greenmonk associate. He will now be a regular contributor to the Greenmonk blog, and we will also work together to build out a related consulting-oriented business. Its very early days for Greenmonk itself, let alone the Raftery relationship, but I am hopeful that I can help Tom establish the regular monthly income that will enable him to live in Seville in style. We plan to work together for a lower footprint.

Seriously though: Tom’s skill-set is right on the money. Greenmonk was always supposed to be about grassroots, open and social software approaches and methods, and Tom is an expert. I would be surprised if we don’t get some greenmonk podcasting going at some point. And Tom has real experience of building a hyper energy efficient data center. what’s not to like?

photo of the Alcazar Palace in Seville courtesy of John Picken under CreativeCommons Atrribution 2.0 license.

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Standing Around The Water Kula, Hanging Out

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One of the cool things about the twitter messaging platform is that the application programming interface (API) is really easy to use. The truly outstanding thing about twitter though is the amazing range of communities and cool people it has fostered. Greenmonk has a core belief that web technology is allowing a hitherto unprecedented lowering of barriers. We can all participate.

A good example popped up this week. Dan Light is a fellow East Londoner I had never heard of before a couple of weeks ago, when Hugh Macleod twittered about some great blog everyone should read. The blog, a review of a SXSWi, a hipster conference for people with Ruby skills and lazer-etched Apple laptops, is indeed excellent, a deeply personal manifesto for change.

But that’s just the back story. What’s the water kula thing about? Well- it seems that Dan had an idea last Friday. By Monday the WaterKula application was up and running. Its basically a social platform built on twitter that notifies you about cool stuff (a great great grandchild of boingboing). We had a similar experience building a social application over a weekend when we introduced the chinposin avatar capture service. I don’t buy the need to be reminded to drink more liquids, and like any cool new web service the revenue model is murky. But then the goal is clean fresh water for people that really need it.

Our goal is to use WaterKula to raise money for WaterAid, possibly through some form of sponsorship. This will only become possible if we can attract enough followers, so please tweet the word far and wide, and help us make water cooler.

Dan should really hook up with the people at Akvo, an ambitious clean water initiative, which regular readers will know recently achieved second round funding, and might be interested in a potentially revenue-raising game. It has never been easier to be a social entrepreneur.  If you want to make a difference you can. Dan does. Mark does. The barriers to entry are dropping. You don’t need anyone’s permission to make a difference. Why not try and make water cleaner by hanging out at the virtual water cooler?

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Data Center Energy Efficiency: money in the bank

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Barclays Bank and technology provider HP have just signed a deal to roll out new cooling technology at Barclays’ new Gloucester data center. According to the press release

HP’s Dynamic Smart Cooling (DSC) solution contributes significantly to a package of energy saving measures which will allow Barclays to save up to 13.4% of total energy used for its data centre. These energy saving measures will significantly reduce its carbon footprint by approx 7470 tonnes of CO2 per year.

Barclays joined the CBI climate change task force last November. Its climate change targets for 2006-2010 include:

• Reduce CO2 emissions by 20 per cent by 2010 (using 2000 as the baseline year)
• Reduce carbon intensity from 16.8 tonnes to 12.9 tonnes CO2 per £m of UK income(using 2005 baseline.) Carbon intensity is a measure of emissions relative to business growth and it allows comparisons to be made between companies.
• Reduce energy consumption in offices and branches by 20 per cent per employee (FTE) (using 2005 as the baseline)

The data center is as good a place as any to start, but it would be interesting to hear more about Barclays energy efficiency plans for its large real estate portfolio.  I also think its a shame that Barclays isn’t putting a pounds sterling figure on potential savings. To be a beacon for others it needs to translate the technical gubbins and low carbon talk into simple bottom line improvements. Shouldn’t be that hard for a bank. On the other hand of course, your carbon mileage may vary (that is, energy prices will certainly change).

According to Greenbang the big Wall Street investment banks, in conjunction with a number of energy companies, have also made some useful progress in establishing best practices for energy investment with a Carbon Principles scheme.

This effort is the first time a group of banks has come together and consulted with power companies and environmental groups to develop a process for understanding carbon risk around power sector investments needed to meet future economic growth and the needs of consumers for reliable and affordable energy.

JPMorgan, one of the banks involved, this week made its own bold gamble in carbon trading, acquiring ClimateCare, a British company that pioneered carbon offsetting. According to the Guardian ClimateCare “makes reductions of greenhouse gases such as C02 on behalf of individuals and companies around the world, and invests in wind power, hydro power, biomass, human energy and cooking-stove projects in developing countries.”

Like many others I am very skeptical of current approaches to offsetting. The idea that I can fly as much as I want as long as I later pay my absolution: “It’s not just about confession and saying my Hail Marys.” That said, its clear that the mechanism businesses find most compelling, to the point of fetish, is that of the market. Markets are a religion for some people, and they are the people with money to invest. Carbon trading could end up defining business in the 21st Century in much the same way that oil consumption defined the 20th.  I am not alone – according to S2 Intelligence businesses will spend $595 billion by 2010 on systems to support green accounting (yet again thanks Greenbang). Or as Computerworld puts it Green IT spend to outstrip Y2K within two years.

Finally I would just like to say JPMorgan’s research arm should be strongly applauded for making some of its climate-related research publicly available, for example this study into Europe, airlines and climate change targets.As I have argued before wider access to solid information is key to better outcomes. Well done old blue blood Wall Street bank.

Regarding the photo above I had not heard of carbon neutral bank cards before- this one from Barclaycard. Thanks very much sh1mmer for allowing me to use the photo with a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license.

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Announcing EnergyCamp 2008

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And for my next trick, April 28th I will be mostly be fostering conversations about more efficient energy utilisation at EnergyCamp, an unconference that is set to piggyback on Interop. I am really excited about the event but its a big responsibility – I am going to be the main compere/host. If you’re going to be at Interop in Las Vegas (grrrrr….) in April please consider joining us.

Whether you’re an end user of technology, an IT professional, a vendor of hardware, software or infrastructure solutions, or an industry observer with an interest in technology’s energy consumption, Energy Camp is for you. Energy Camp is a collaborative forum where industry stakeholders will gather together to discuss the growing impact of today’s energy costs on IT’s bottom line, and the overarching importance of energy conservation and utilizing greener IT solutions and methods.

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Crucial Memory: Best Green Pitch Ever?

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I came across an ad today that seemed so outrageous, so very very very wrong, that I just had to click on it. Green memory? Never heard of it, I thought. Pure spin. But when I followed the link to Crucial Memory I had to smile. You see the argument is really simple – don’t buy a new PC, but buy more memory for your existing machine instead.

And, you’ll help eliminate the need to dispose of your old system — something that’s great for the environment. Approximately 70% of heavy metals (including lead and mercury), in landfill sites come from e-waste. That’s reason enough to hold on to your system.

Well said. It would be hypocritical, and overly curmudgeonly, not to applaud the spin, given the fact Greenmonk has written about why you shouldn’t always upgrade just for the flash new thing, the latest Apple or whatever.

There is also a deeper truth at work here. Memory invariably is the bottleneck on a Windows PC. Very often the best way to improve the performance of Windows XP is more RAM. If you buy a new machine however, Vista will likely run just like your old machine did (with a slicker interface its true). New PC- same speed, old PC-upgraded more speed. So for speed and sustainability go buy some RAM. Its like darning socks. Crucial may be greenwashing, but its greenwashing containing an important truth.

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Clean Water, Open Info : AKVO earns second stage funding

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I can’t say how pleased I am that Thomas Bjelkeman has just received funding for his important AKVO project. I am especially proud and pleased because I serve on the advisory board of Movement Design Bureau, and have helped AKVO co-founder Mark Charmer with his marketing and social software strategies in getting to this point. Clean from the roots up. How could you not want to help? Given Mark’s strong focus on open source methods for research, advisory, and fund-raising… you can see why I got involved. Akvo’s mission:

To provide free and open working knowledge, a collaborative community, finance solutions and a marketplace for the water and sanitation community.

Akvo is the first internet based open knowledge platform dedicated to small scale water and sanitation solutions; easy to access, great to work with and delivering practical information.

Akvo will make it possible to connect funds directly to local initiatives. By doing so it will significantly reduce transaction costs, and makes it easier to attract additional sources of funding to provide the poor with water and sanitation. Through Akvo you will see how money is spent and how projects develop in a transparent and visual appealing way.

Why?

More than 1.1 billion people have no safe drinking water and 2.6 billion people lack basic sanitation around the world.

Each year, as a result, 1.8 million children die of diarrhoea or other diseases, 440 million school days are missed, and in sub-Saharan Africa alone US$28.4 billion are lost in productivity and opportunity costs. UN Millennium Development Goal 7, target 10 states that by 2015 we must halve the number of people in the world who lack clean drinking water and basic sanitation.

So what is the news, exactly? Akvo can now move from stalking horse to production platform- it can really begin to drive partnerships and begin to roll out clean water initiatives. Akvo was an idea. Now its an organisation. That is quite a burden. Hopefully I can continue to help.

A group of eight investors led by Netherlands Water Partnership (NWP), Partners for Water and UN-HABITAT has agreed to finance Akvo in a signing session in Rotterdam, Holland. This unique new water venture will reduce the cost and complexity of providing clean water and basic sanitation to the world’s poor through open source internet tools, methods and working practices. The agreements were made during Unicef’s World Water Day matchmaking event, hosted by Prince Willem-Alexander of Orange and the Mayor of Rotterdam, Ivo Opstelten.

The investment, comprising at least €400,000 of cash grants and €100,000 of in-kind support, will enable Akvo to develop its core product, extend its global network and complete arrangements for a further €1m loan. This is the second funding round for Akvo which was created in autumn 2006 and grew with €212,000 of seed investment from NWP and Partners for Water. New investors include Aqua 4 All, ASN Bank, IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre, NEDAP, Union of Waterboards and Simavi.

Akvo has this month signed agreements with implementation partners in the developing world to support over 75 projects this year. These NGO partners are Women in Europe for a Common Future, Rain Foundation, NWP NGO Platform, Institute for Communication and Development (IICD), WASTE, Simavi, Practica Foundation, AquaEst and FODRA. Other strategic partners include Acacia Institute, AT@Work, WESNET India, Arghyam, Rural Water Supply Network, Micro Water Facility and the Informal World Water Forum 4 Appropriate Technology Network.

I am pretty sure Mark and Thomas will be at the pub right now. They deserve it. Today beer, and tomorrow back to cleaner water. One of the things I particularly like is Mark’s iconoclastic approach to marketing. See the poster above.