Increasing the Ripple Effect of Green Design

Last Thursday, 60 or so green designers gathered at BIF member Continuum’s Newton, MA offices to spend the day talking about green design. Included in this conversation were 8 green believers who are trying to change the world. They came from all walks of life and from their stories, we were all trying to answer two big questions: what is sustainable design and how do you build (or evolve) a business model around it?

Where’s the Urgency? Green & Bullish Behavioral Change
Let's begin with Robin Chase. Robin is the co-founder of Zipcar and GoLoco and most of you will remember her from the BIF-3 summit last October. Zipcar is a car-sharing service she sold a few years ago that allows members to rent cars online for short periods of time. And GoLoco is her ride-share start-up that debuted earlier this year. It’s a transportation 2.0 business model that merges social networking with carpooling. What was clear to me after hearing her speak for a second time is that Robin continues to hone her pitch if you will and her talking points around global warming are spot on. She’s able to achieve what many politicians and scientists are not and that’s quickly create a sense of urgency on a subject that far too many people don’t seem to understand or believe. We had an interesting conversation about the lack of adequate messaging around global warming. Part of the reason Robin is so successful is that she doesn’t make the case for global warming. It just is. As much as I appreciate GoLoco and the transportation revolution Robin is trying to achieve, her real gift may be her ability to cut through both the green-washing jargon and convoluted science. Authenticity drives revolution and Robin has that in spades. She is a person who can drive behavioral change.

The afternoon session began with Lewis Pugh. Lewis is an explorer and endurance swimmer who holds 21 world titles. He’s also the first man to swim the geographic North Pole. An unbelievable fete – the waters there are colder than where the Titanic sunk – Lewis is a man who truly put his life on the line for this expedition. And he did it for two reasons: one because he’s that rare breed which actually thrives on these types of experiences and two, because five years ago he wouldn’t have been able to do it. The ice caps are melting at an alarming rate and Lewis felt this was a golden opportunity to prove it. Awareness building is critical and just like Robin, he presents an urgent and compelling case for immediate behavioral change. (Watch his video here.)

I'm a believer. So now what?
Paul Murray is the Director of Environmental Safety & Sustainability at furniture maker Herman Miller. He is a former chemistry teacher who believes that every problem has a design solution. He’s also a BHAG keeper (that’s big, hairy audacious goal keeper). The story of Herman Miller's "journey to sustainability" is a good one. The company has repeatedly been selected by Forbes magazine for its "Platinum 400" list of the Best Big Companies in America. The company is also a leader in innovative design and their furniture designers have included the likes of Charles and Ray Eames. Yet the company's economic and design strength is only half the story. In 1992, Paul created an internal working group, the Environmental Quality Action Team (EQAT), which involves more than 300 employees from all areas of the company working to improve the company’s environmental performance.

With the full blessing of their then CFO, now CEO Brian Walker, EQAT developed a comprehensive approach to designing for the environment that extends through their entire supply and distribution chains. Today, they have a thorough knowledge of each and every material that goes into the manufacturing and distribution of their furniture as well as a reliable way to measure their environmental performance.

Every piece of furniture they design and manufacture must subscribe to four basic tenants: durability, longevity, manufacture with minimal impact and innovative design. It’s taken years, but their ecologically intelligent design is now integral to their product development and economic systems. What’s next? Paul told us that the company has a goal of being 100% footprint free.

We also heard from Jennifer van der Meer of 02NYC talked about the five stages of becoming a green designer. She talked about how manufacturers can extend obsolescence through the use of life-cycle analysis. The Europeans are way ahead of us on this and have ingeniously integrated ecological concerns into their standard process for years. Here in the US, we do not have to reinvent the wheel and there are in fact a number of best practice protocols out there. Here are two destination sites that Jennifer shared to learn more about it: www.pre.nl and www.lca.jrc.ec.europa.eu

And then there was Dr. David Berry, principal at Flagship Ventures. This well-known, early stage VC firm is putting a lot of dollars into clean technologies. It was really interesting to see the types of projects this firm is funding which include everything from solar quantum dots to carbon nanotubes to synthetic biology and metabolic modeling. If Robin Chase is focused on the next five years, I expect that David Berry will have a hand in the next twenty.

Living on the Green Edge
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention two other speakers who are making big changes on small dollar amounts. Amy Smith is an inventor, MIT lecturer and Lemelson-MIT prize winner. Her focus is on creating sustainable business models in third world countries which an approach that merges energy, environment and economics. Ninety percent of design she said is only focused on ten percent of the planet. Her multi-disciplined, collaborative approach centers on developing a set of integrated low-tech and affordable technologies to people who live in poverty. Each year, she plays host to a four-week International Development Design Summit to identify problems, cobble together prototype solutions and determine those that might work in the real world. Her latest projects are merging peanuts and charcoal through the Full Belly Project Sheller and the Fuel from the Fields Charcoal Project. (Amy spoke at TED last year and you can watch her video here.)

And finally, there was Heather Clark, founder of Busycle. She was a good way to end the day. With unbridled enthusiasm, this affordable housing developer and sculptor has embarked on a bold strategy to rethink green housing. Although her Living Cell project is bound to hit a number of roadblocks along the way, I’m convinced that we will be seeing much more from this bright entrepreneur.

Closing Thoughts
With all the challenges facing our planet, it's difficult to just answer the question, where do we start? Our focus here at the Business Innovation Factory is on business model innovation. I'll close with a great quote from famed eco-architect William McDonough, who understands that ultimately, green design requires a complete systems change. It's about creating "a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy, and just world, with clean air, soil, water, and power -- economically, equitably, ecologically, and elegantly enjoyed, period."

"The conventional design criteria is a tripod: Can we profit from it? the company asks. Will the customer find it attractive? And will it work? Champions of "sustainable development" like to use a "triple bottom line" approach based on the tripod of Ecology, Equity, and Economy.

But in practice we find that it often appears to center only on economic considerations, with social or ecologic benefits considered as an afterthought rather than given equal weight at the outset. Businesses calculate their conventional economic profitability and add what they perceive to be the social benefits, with perhaps, some reduction in environmental damage.

The real magic results when industry begins with all these questions, addressing them up front as "triple top line" questions rather than turning to them after the fact. ... In fact, often a project that begins with pronounced concerns of Ecology or Equity (How do I create habitat? How do I create jobs?) can turn out to be tremendously productive financially in ways that would never have been imagined if you'd started from a purely economic perspective."

—William McDonough, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things (2002, North Point Press)

My thanks go out to Continuum for a great day of learning. This firm is taking great strides to incorporate the ideals of green design into everything they produce and shattering the myth that environmentally responsible products and designs are inferior quality, dull, or uncomfortable. If anyone can merge the concept of eco-friendly and consumer appeal, it'll be Continuum.

RELATED
Want to learn more? Three books were highly recommended by several of the storytellers are Paul Hawkin’s Ecology of Commerce, William McDonough's Cradle to Cradle and Bruce Sterling’s Shaping Things.

Posted December 10, 2007 08:43 AM by Chris Flanagan | Permalink