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Volkswagen has flipped the switch on a gigantic new solar park that will help power its ultra-green Diesel Passat factory in Chattanooga, Tenn.

The park is the largest solar installation ever built in Tennessee. A veritable ocean of solar modules –  33,600 in all – occupy 33 acres and produce enough electricity to power 1,200 homes each year.

"We are proud to power up the biggest solar park of any car manufacturer in North America today," said Frank Fischer, CEO and Chairman of Volkswagen's Chattanooga operations.

The new solar system will provide 12.5 percent of the energy needs for the factory, which in late 2011 became the world's first factory to earn LEED Platinum Certification and has been called "the world's greenest auto plant" by the U.S. Green Building Council.

"Powering up the solar park also validates the awarding of the LEED Platinum certificate to Volkswagen Chattanooga, which is still the only car factory in the world that has earned such an honor,” added Fischer.

Touring the 1.5 million-square foot facility, one could be forgiven for thinking that Volkswagen spared absolutely no expense in its effort to build the world's most sustainable car factory.

A case in point: When you flush a toilet in the bathroom on the factory floor, it's rainwater you're seeing go down the drain. That rainwater was collected on the roof of the factory and is also used to cool the welding machines. The water is pumped by gravity, saving electricity, and the bathroom itself doubles as a tornado shelter.

And that's just the beginning.

The forklifts and carts are plug-in electric vehicles; the tile is made from recycled post-consumer waste; the exterior is lit by energy-efficient LED lights that have a relatively benign effect on local wildlife; the land on which the factory rests also houses EPA-protected marshland that provides a habitat for 17 confirmed bird species; the plant itself was built on brownfield land that was revitalized after being used to manufacture TNT; and so on.

In bringing manufacturing back to the United States, Volkswagen has cut down on the energy needed to ship its cars to the U.S. market. In Chattanooga, Volkswagen found a U.S. city that apparently holds sustainability in as high regard as the automaker itself.

Carsten Krebs, Director of Communications for Volkswagen Group of America, said that the short list for building sites came down to Huntingdon, Tenn., Detroit, and Chattanooga. Ultimately, the enthusiasm with which city officials embraced Volkswagen's sustainability agenda tipped the scales in Chattanooga's favor.

Chattanooga, which, like many other blue-collar American cities, suffered from economic depression and depopulation as industry fled to cheaper foreign markets in the 1970s and 80s, has embarked upon an ambitious effort to revitalize its economy with sustainability as a core strategy.

Downtown Chattanooga is peppered with symbols of its sustainable urban development plan. A five-minute stroll down Broad St. brings a pedestrian past an electric vehicle charging station (complete with a Chevy Volt parked beside it) and a row of bicycles available as part of the city's new bike-share program.

Mayor Ron Littlefield said he and his colleagues "have been enthusiastic" about Volkswagen's involvement in Chattanooga because the company "represents so many qualities that have helped Chattanooga become a leading city in the industrial economy.”

Acknowledging that Chattanooga once earned the dubious distinction of America's dirtiest city in the late 1960s, Littlefield said that Volkswagen's vision of sustainable industrial production dovetailed with his own.

"We've come a long way," said Littlefield, "and Volkswagen is... the crowning glory of Chattanooga's resurrection from its industrial past."

Full disclosure: travel to the factory was covered by Volkswagon; opinions are my own.

Ohio State University (OSU) expects to shave nearly $1 million off its energy bill in 2013, thanks to a 20-year power purchase agreement that entails buying a whopping 50 megawatts (MW) of clean, renewable electricity from more than 100 wind turbines in northwestern Ohio. The wind-generated electrical power is being produced at the Blue Creek Wind Farm in Van Wert and Paulding counties and delivered to OSU via American Electric Power (AEP) transmission lines, according to a report from the Columbus Dispatch.

OSU has set a goal of becoming carbon-neutral. More than 400 researchers are studying energy issues at the state university, and energy was recently singled out as one of three priority focus areas for university instruction and community research for the next ten years, according to Columbus Dispatch's report.

Working both inside and outside the institution of higher education, “Together, we will make Ohio State a national leader in sustainability, while investing in renewable energy produced right here in Ohio,” OSU president E. Gordon Gee was quoted as saying when the wind power purchasing agreement was signed.

Direct purchase of wind power contributes to OSU's sustainability drive

OSU has been spending some $35 million annually on electricity. The high cost of purchasing wind-generated electricity had held OSU from negotiating agreements earlier, OSU senior energy adviser, Scott Porter, told Columbus Dispatch. “We were willing to pay a premium for clean energy, but we still had to be good stewards of taxpayers’ dollars,” he was quoted as saying.

OSU's direct purchase of wind-generated power from Blue Creek also marks a milestone for Iberdrola Renewables. “This is the largest university purchase of wind power in our company’s history, and we look forward to a long and fruitful partnership,” Iberdrola Renewables' vice president Barrett Stambler stated.

More wind power capacity was installed in the U.S. in 2012 than any other source of electrical power – more than double the amount of coal-fired power generation brought online last year.

The surge in U.S. wind power capacity in 2012 was propelled higher in particular by the likelihood of the key federal production tax credit (PTC) for installed wind power generation capacity expiring at year-end 2012, an incentive that was extended for another year as part of a deal that helped the US government avoid going over the so-called “Fiscal Cliff.”

Iberdrola's Blue Creek Wind Farm

With wind power generation capacity rated at 304 MW, Iberdrola's Blue Creek Wind Farm is the largest in Ohio, which topped the ranks of U.S. states in terms of percentage growth in wind power generation capacity in 2011. Completed in June 2012, a total of 152 Gamesa 2.0 MW wind turbines manufactured primarily at a plant in Pennsylvania standing on 100-meter-high (328 feet) towers are up and running on site.

Each turbine can produce as much as 2 MW of clean, renewable electrical power, enough to meet the needs of around average Ohio homes. In total, Blue Creek generates enough electricity annually for approximately 76,000 homes, according to Iberdrola.

Generating electrical power from wind energy at Blue Creek avoids around 1.6 billion pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per year, the equivalent of 158 Ohio Stadiums, planting some 138,000 acres of trees, taking 114,000 cars off the road, or reducing oil consumption by more than 2.1 million barrels per year, according to Iberdrola.

“If electric cars were widely available, this project would produce enough electricity to power 479,000 electric cars for a year. It also avoids the consumption of 408 million gallons of water per year,” the Spanish multinational renewable energy provider states on the Blue Creek project page of its website.

In addition to avoiding carbon and greenhouse gas emissions, building the wind farm has provided a substantial green economic boost to Ohio's economy. The Blue Creek Wind Farm generated some $2 million in annual lease payments to local landowners, $2.7 million in annual PILOT payments to local tax authorities, 15-20 new permanent jobs and more than 500 construction jobs at peak. Local spending during construction amounted to some $25 million.

Microsoft is at it again. A leader in corporate social responsibility and social enterprise initiatives, now the information technology giant is boosting its environmental stability chops within its corporate citizenship agenda. Scientists within the company’s research division are now partnering with the United Nations Environment Program’s World Conservation Monitoring Center (UNEP-WCMC) to develop an exhaustive biodiversity modeling for ecosystems throughout the world.

In an article in the journal Nature, the Microsoft Research and UNEP authors make the case that such a computer model would accelerate understanding about biodiversity and conservation. This general ecosystem model, or GEM, is similar in concept to computer modeling projects that have helped scientists understand the implications of climate change. In plain English, think of this as a three-dimensional system akin to Google Maps, but with a cross section view instead of a relief map, and laden with biological instead of traffic data that anyone could tap into.

This general ecosystem model would simulate the steps that would occur within an ecosystem, and follow the transfer of nutrients within organisms in addition to feeding, decomposition and reproduction. Imagine such a model that would map out a forest in the Pacific Northwest. Data, ranging from plants of all sizes from giant trees to ground cover; animals both wild and domesticated; creatures that eat smaller creatures; organisms that live off other organisms; and just about information about any life form from lichens to bacteria would be included within this system. According to a release on the UNEP site, this general ecosystem model would allow scientists to model what would happen to groups of life forms over time under various conditions.

The concept of a general ecosystem model goes back a generation ago. Scientists at Penn State, for example, developed a modeling system to gauge the conditions of wetlands. The Microsoft-UNEP model, however, could have the capability to measure life activity in all forms, and within any environment.

One prototype, the Madingley Model, is a step towards a holistic and robust general ecosystem model for both land and marine ecosystems. The system can simulate the fate of just about every organism from a few unicellular plankton to the largest marine whale--just at this point, not those IN the soil. As one scientist on the project quipped, “you have to start somewhere.” The goal of the Madingley Model’s team is to launch more competing models and engender suggestions, or even replacements, for this project. In the end, such a model could give businesses, academics and public officials better data to make more informed positions on conservation policy. As for Microsoft’s involvement, we have another example of how collaboration between large global companies and NGOs or government agencies can build capacity to do great things.

Leon Kaye, based in Fresno, California, is a sustainability consultant and the editor of GreenGoPost.com. He also contributes to Guardian Sustainable Business; his work has also appeared on Sustainable Brands, Inhabitat and Earth911. You can follow Leon and ask him questions on Twitter or Instagram (greengopost). He will explore children’s health issues in India next month with the International Reporting Project.

[Image credit: Leon Kaye]

Imagine cars as "cool" as an Apple iPad or iPhone where you play games that generate real cash rewards or that can connect you with that hot-looking person driving next to you. That is the future I saw at the 2013 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS). Almost every manufacturer at this show was launching new cars equipped with electrification technologies that will turn driving into a digital engagement delivering value by saving money at the pump, reducing tail pipe emissions and potentially hooking you up with your future significant other.

Farmville for a dashboard?

Unlike past car shows, the biggest trend at the NAIAS wasn't about horsepower. It was about morphing the dashboard into a game center experience. Think Farmville or Angry Birds next to your digital speedometer. This digital engagement will influence how safely or fuel efficiently you drive, rewarding your efforts with real money saved through lower fuel consumption and, probably some day soon, insurance rates. Or even imagine driving by your favorite retailer and having your car search for special offer sales!

Find me someplace romantic

How far could this go? Ford is now following the digital mobile world and opening their SYNC® central-console computer to third party app developers. Beyond today’s GPS map displays, this screen will offer voice-activated app searches. “The future has arrived” with enabled Ford car owners now being able to perform searches like “What are some good date ideas nearby?” through a third-party-developed app called BeCouply.

Fun, fuel-efficient and green: Ford C-Max Energi Plug-in Electric Hybrid

Ford flew me up to their Dearborn headquarters to test-drive their new fleet of cars built around electrification technologies. I had a blast. Here’s a 2-minute video of my test drive of the C-MAX Energi with Ford’s Global Electric Fleet Manager Julie D'Annunzio as cameraperson. If you dig cars or digital tech, you really have to get in the driver's seat of cars like the C-MAX Energi to see how much fun these cars really are. If you are praying for technology solutions to climate change, then take some assurance in the fact that car companies like Ford are investing heavily in electrification as a solution to both pain at the pump and tail pipe emissions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8GXdGnUiRc

This is the last of a four-part case study on how Ford is going green. Their best practices can be used by every business to grow revenues and win customers. The first article in this case study series profiled Chairman Of The Board Bill Ford and CEO Alan Mulally on Ford’s CSR vision and how it is driving sales. The second article profiled Ford’s Go Further brand messaging tied to sustainability. The third article profiled the range of Ford’s electrification technologies.

Travel and accommodations to NAIAS in Detroit were covered by Ford. Opinions are my own.

Bill Roth is an economist and the Founder of Earth 2017 He coaches business owners and leaders on proven best practices in pricing, marketing and operations that make money and create a positive difference. His book, The Secret Green Sauce, profiles business case studies of pioneering best practices that are proven to win customers and grow product revenues. Follow him on Twitter: @earth2017.

Hmm...not so sure if this says something good about IKEA or something not so good about their domestic competitors here in the U.S., but as a matter of fact it looks like a foreign company has just laid claim to being the biggest solar power owner in our Sunshine State of Florida, other than utilities.

Aside from who gets bragging rights, that's an interesting development on at least two levels. The era of big-box stores like IKEA is far from over, and solar power gives these retailers a great opportunity to squeeze extra value from their real estate. The era of stuff is also far from over, and generating or using clean energy gives stuff-happy retailers - and of course, we consumers - a chance to offset the pressure we're putting on the Earth's resources in the face of skyrocketing population growth.

IKEA solar power in Florida

The global home furnishing giant IKEA gets to be the non-utility King of Solar Power in Florida by virtue of its newest solar power installation, a 1,057 kilowatt (kW) array on the roof of its store in Sunrise in South Florida.

When you add in a 967 kW solar array at IKEA's Orlando store and a 1,189 kW solar array at its Tampa store (both completed last summer), according to the company it is now the largest non-utility solar owner in the whole state.

The fact that all three installations were engineered by the U.S. company REC Solar, Inc. doesn't quite take the sting out of it. There are plenty of American based, big-box retailers in Florida. Where are they hiding when it comes to solar power?

Energy independence for IKEA

The Florida installations actually a drop in the solar power bucket compared to IKEA's U.S. operations overall. The Sunrise installation is the 35th solar power project it has completed on its U.S. stores and four more are in the works, adding up to a grand total of 38 megawatts.

All together, the 39 installations will account for 90 percent of IKEA's U.S. facilities, but that, too, is just the tip of IKEA's renewable energy iceberg. By way of comparison, the three Florida installations total a little less than 13,000 solar panels, and IKEA has already installed a total of 250,000 solar panels worldwide as well as owning and operating about 110 wind turbines in Europe.

The company's ultimate goal is to be energy independent by 2020.

Sustainability and consumer loyalty

Aside from gaining access to low cost, renewable energy, that's the kind of sustainability initiative that could lead to an uptick in business. According to some surveys, consumers are already showing a strong preference for products made with wind power, so solar power and other forms of renewable energy can't be far behind.

Along the same lines, IKEA has also undertaken a long string of other consumer-friendly initiatives. Here's a brief rundown from the company on its U.S. efforts:

"...recycling waste material; incorporating environmental measures into the actual buildings with energy-efficient HVAC and lighting systems, recycled construction materials, skylights in warehouse areas, and water-conserving restrooms; and operationally, eliminating plastic bags from the check-out process, phasing-out the sale of incandescent light bulbs, facilitating recycling of customers’ compact fluorescent bulbs, and by 2016 selling and using only L.E.D. bulbs. IKEA also has installed electric vehicle charging stations at nine stores in the West."

[Image (cropped): IKEA merchandise by stellar678]

Follow me on Twitter: @TinaMCasey.

 

 

What do you think is the top issue women feel pressured about? Being thin? Getting married? Making sure their children do well at school? No, no and no. Women, apparently, mostly feel pressured about being environmentally conscious. At least, that's what you can learn from a new survey that was conducted for Clorox Green Works.

Where is this pressure is coming from? Shekinah Eliassen, Green Works brand manager, explains that “women are feeling this pressure because somewhere along the line green became a status symbol, now everyone has an opinion about how you aren’t doing enough to be eco-friendly.” On its Facebook page, Green Works added that it found “that consumers have been overwhelmed by green, and that’s mostly because they feel like they can’t do as much as the eco-fanatics and the rich in time and resources.”

So let me see if I got it right - eco-fanatics and rich people have made “green” into a status symbol that makes many women frustrated because they feel the bar is too high and they do too little, which doesn’t really count and hence they’re still part of the problem rather than the solution. Sounds a bit odd? Not to Green Works, which built an entire marketing campaign around these findings, proclaiming that “You Don’t Have to be Ridiculous to be Green.”

Worried about all these women that are out there worried sick that they’re not green enough, Green Works’ new campaign is “trying to alleviate that pressure with a little bit of humor, with the goal of making everyone feel like their green efforts count.” It started with a “green housewives” video clip, which is a parody on the “housewives” cultural phenomena, presenting Michon “Anxious Eco-Snob,” Jamie “Eco-Socialite” and Elyse “Queen of Green.” The three are making a trip to a local farmers market and you can see what happens there in the clip below. Let’s just say that they provide a perfect example of what an extreme, obnoxious or ridiculous green persona is exactly.

While the use of humor can be a great way to make your point in a green marketing campaign (remember SunRun ads?), it seems that here not everyone thought the housewives theme was smart or funny. “This is actually really offensive to women. I'm so sick of the 'housewife tv show' kick. Poor choice,” or "The 'green without the ridiculous' message is drowned out by the portrayal of women as being excessive shoppers and party throwers who are only concerned with 'out housewifing' other women through fashion and appearance. What message does this send?” were some of the messages on Green Works’ Facebook page.

In fairness, there were also many others that found the video hilarious, but in any event, it did seem that this campaign got some people irritated and the reason, I believe, is the message rather than the messenger.

Here’s how I see it: Clorox Green Works has a great advantage – it provides very affordable, eco-friendly cleaning products. The company decided to characterize the choice in its line of green products as the choice of reasonable people who want to do the right thing for themselves and the planet. So far, so good. The problem starts with the decision to do it by creating a storyline where “green” has become a status symbol with high standards set up and maintained by eco-fanatic and rich people that all the rest feel pressure to meet, but mostly can’t, and hence feel like they just don’t do enough to be green.

While this is an appealing story, I’m not sure how realistic it is. First, the whole pressure to be green doesn’t make much sense. I haven’t found any other research or study that will back up the finding that being green is on the top of the list of issues women feel pressure about. In addition, if this was the case, wouldn’t we expect to see greater adoption of practices, which are as green as it gets as well as affordable, like sharing-based services?

And what about Green Works itself? If this is really a green "working class hero," why does it sell relatively so little in the first place ($60 million in 2010)? Why did this line of affordable green cleaning products fail to become a hit if the market includes so many women under green pressure looking for affordable alternatives?

The answer to the latter might come from the Regeneration Consumer Study  that looked into consumer attitudes and behaviors of consumers worldwide. While the study agrees with Green Works’ finding on affordability being an important factor for consumers when switching to greener products, it also explains the following:

Making a product that’s good for our planet is important, but, for consumers, it’s not enough. Aspirational consumers crave what we call 'total value’: products that deliver practical benefits like price and quality but that also negate buyer’s remorse by providing societal and environmental good and provide “tribal benefits” that help them feel connected to a larger community that shares their values.

So Green Works got it right when it decided to focus on the tribal benefits, but for some reason it chose to portray it as the best way to reclaim green from Tesla owners and Portlandia residents rather than focus on its positive attributes. Doesn’t it look ridiculous to you?

[Image credit: Clorox Green Works]

Raz Godelnik is the co-founder of Eco-Libris and an adjunct faculty at the University of Delaware’s Business School, CUNY SPS and Parsons The New School for Design, teaching courses in green business, sustainable design and new product development. You can follow Raz on Twitter.

By Anne Michelsen

“Green” is rarely black and white. More often, it comes in multiple shades of gray. And in the case of one “green” product, those shades of gray come in every color of the rainbow.

The demand for soy-based ink is rising as corporate sustainability moves into the mainstream. First developed by the newspaper industry in the 1970s in response to rising petroleum prices, soy and other vegetable-based inks offer a healthier, environmentally friendly alternative to conventional ink.

Or do they?

There are many popular notions surrounding soy ink. Some may be true. Some are blatant misconceptions. And most fall somewhere in between.

Is soy ink really a good environmental choice? If so, could it be better? This article is an attempt to shed some light on the matter by exploring four common myths about soy ink.

Myth #1: “Everything in soy ink comes from soy.”

In Reality: “The biggest misconception people have is that all of the components of soy ink are made from soy,” says Gary Jones, Vice President EHS of the Printing Industries of America.

 

Oil is just one component of ink.  Other ingredients include pigments, resins and film formers, and various additives to lend desired characteristics to different kinds of ink.

Some of those other components may come from renewable resources, but many do not. Pigments, especially, are generally mineral in origin and it’s not uncommon for them to be toxic. For instance, carbon black is widely used as the pigment for black ink and is classified as a Group 2B carcinogen.

What may come as a surprise to many people is that most veggie inks contain substantial amounts of petroleum.

“In order for an ink to use the American Soy Association’s Soy Seal logo, it only needs to contain the specified amount of soy oil or soy oil derivatives. No other specifications regarding the other components of the ink are identified,” explains Jones.

“For example, in order for a heatset web offset lithographic paste ink to be considered a ‘soy ink,’ it must have 7 percent soy oil content. Therefore, a heatset litho ink that contains 7 percent soy oil and 93 percent of other ingredients such as methyl ethyl death would be considered a ‘soy ink’ and can carry the Soy Seal logo.”

Depending on the type of ink and its intended use, an ink’s oil content must be a minimum of 6 percent to 40 percent soy in order to qualify for the Soy Seal logo. The most common use of soy oil in ink occurs in offset lithographic ink – the kind most commonly used in commercial printing. Black offset litho ink must have at least 40 percent soy oil content to qualify as a soy ink.

Mark Nelson, Web Press Advisor and Director of Manufacturing at the John Roberts Company, a commercial print shop in Minneapolis, explains why: “If you don’t get the percentage correct it won’t dry properly. It’s a lot like adding ethanol to gasoline – too much and it won’t work well.”

Myth #2: “Soy ink emits fewer VOC’s (volatile organic compounds) than conventional ink.”

In Reality: “It’s important to realize that VOC content and VOC emissions are two different things,” says Jones. “The EPA has a specific test method (Method 24) that is required to be used to determine VOC content. Using that method, there’s less VOC in soy ink.

 

“However, vegetable oils will absorb oxygen from the air, which cross links in the vegetable oil to cause it to dry. When the vegetable oils cross link, they produce and emit VOCs. So even though the actual measured VOC content may be lower, it’s not uncommon to see a higher veggie oil content resulting in more VOC’s actually being emitted.”

While this may be true in the lab, those who use the inks on a daily basis have a different perspective.

“One of the wonderful side effects of (switching to vegetable inks) is that (our shop) doesn’t smell like a print shop anymore,” reports Dee Bisel, owner of Minuteman Press in Overland Park, KS, who has switched exclusively to using vegetable based inks in her commercial printing franchise. “We have reduced our VOC’s 22 percent and HAP’s (hazardous air pollutants) by 93 percent by switching from petroleum-based ink to soy and vegetable ink.”

Bisel adds, “Once you switch to the soy inks, you have to go to new cleaners and solvents – they all have to change.” She believes the switch to less volatile solvents is a major contributor to the improved air quality.

Nelson agrees. He also notes that John Roberts (which, like Bisel’s shop, is certified as a Green Printer through the Sustainable Green Printing Partnership) has reduced the total volume of solvents used on a daily basis. “We recycle our solvents through a distilling process. We don’t order in nearly as much fresh solvent as we used to. I can guarantee it’s half as much.”

Myth #3: “Soy ink facilitates paper recycling.”

In Reality: “That’s a case of “Don’t believe everything you read online,” says Jones.

 

You may have read that soy ink is easier to remove from paper pulp than conventional ink. This observation is based on a 1991 laboratory study done at a major Midwestern university.

There is no reason to doubt the validity of the study; however, it was conducted using ink that had been aged for only 4 weeks. Industry experience reveals a different truth. It turns out that once veggie ink is truly aged in the field it can be much harder to remove from paper pulp than conventional ink, due to the increased oxidation and crosslinking that occurs when vegetable oils dry.

Myth #4: “Soy ink is good for the environment.”

In Reality: If only it were so simple! The fact is, no ink is good for the environment. The question is: Is soy ink truly a better choice?

 

Soy is one of the major crops used in conventional agriculture’s monoculture system, which severely limits biodiversity and inhibits ecosystem resiliency. Over 90 percent of U.S. soy fields are planted in genetically modified soy; GMO’s present a range of environmental concerns. And, the increase in global demand for soy products contributes to large scale deforestation in the Amazon rainforest and elsewhere.

Soy may be a renewable resource. But it does take diesel to grow soy, so thinking that each drop of soy ink used is a drop of petroleum saved is a fallacy. (For comparison, one reliable estimate for biodiesel production is about 2.5 gallons of soy biodiesel per gallon input of standard diesel fuel.)

On the other hand, soy beans require minimal chemical input compared to many other crops. There’s no denying that even vegetable inks containing mineral components are usually far less toxic than conventional inks. And, veggie inks are proving to be more biodegradable as well.

So are soy and other veggie based inks really better for the environment?

Nearly all sustainability experts say, “Yes!”

But perhaps Jones puts it best: “From a global sustainability aspect, the more (renewable content) that’s incorporated the better, because that way you’re at least moving in the right direction.”

What do you think? Has your company made the switch to veggie ink? What drove the change, and what’s been your experience?

***

A freelance copywriter and principal of Green Ink Copywriting, Anne Michelsen helps companies  promote their sustainable products and services while remaining compliant with green marketing guidelines.  She also enjoys writing about environmental issues. Anne publishes a monthly newsletter of green marketing and compliance insights.

Image credit: Pixabay

Coworking is hot. In a recent TriplePundit article, Lonnie Shekhtman talks about an inspiring example of coworking at The HUB. Coworking spaces are popping up all over the world, each with a specific set of services, targeted population, and physical design. The website, Deskwanted, allows workers to find coworking spaces in their city, and WNYC, a New York City public radio station, created a map of New York’s coworking locations.

Before the rise of coworking spaces, coffee shops with free wi-fi, and libraries were the de facto workspaces for the office-less worker. Now, some innovative librarians and enterprising libraries are redesigning their spaces to create their own, official, coworking environments. Meg Knodl, a Minnesota librarian and coworking advocate, developed a librarian position at CoCo, a coworking space with locations in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Knodl also educates librarians about how coworking can fit inside libraries.

The timing seems perfect: libraries are struggling to maintain relevance as more material is available for free online, and workers are looking for space to plug in their laptop, meet with collaborators, and even host events. A Sustainable Economies Law Center article on Shareable notes that libraries have long been centers for the sharing economy and with digitization, libraries can be more creative with physical space.

Thomas Scott, a member of CoLab Nashville, says that a good coworking space should be:

Flexible - Offering multiple workspace options for different types of businesses and accommodating businesses as they grow and change.

Collaborative and inspiring - With spaces that encourage conversation and interaction between workers.

Affordable - Coworking is attractive to startups, freelancers and artists, groups who need pricing options that fall below a traditional office space.

Just this month, the Brooklyn Public Library’s central branch opened the Shelby White and Leon Levy Info Commons. This new addition to the library features workspace for 70 laptop users, meeting rooms with flat screens (including one room that doubles as a recording studio), and a training lab for classes and workshops. Creative entrepreneurs are looking for ways to save money, connect with their communities and thrive in inspiring workspaces. Could this be the future of libraries?

[Image Credit: Wordshore]

We would be remiss in writing about the sharing economy without talking about Wheelz. And not just because they, as Chief Sharer, have done so much to make this series possible. Wheelz’ innovative peer-to-peer (P2P) business model and their use of technology puts them right out at the cutting edge of this rapidly evolving movement. There is no need to put any extra spin on a company that is already ahead of the curve.

Self-described, not as a company, but as, “a peer-to-peer car sharing community that connects drivers who need a car with owners who want to share their cars with those around them,” Wheelz is serving both college campuses and cities.

Most new ventures start from a basement or back room and try to get from there to a better place. The founders of Wheelz actually started at Better Place (the swappable battery company) and went from there to helping other people get to where they needed to go without buying a car that would only end up sitting still most of the time.

CEO Jeff Miller told me that “one of the things you think about when you’re working on EVs is how often cars are parked, since that’s the only time you can recharge them. It’s a horribly inefficient use of resources. It seemed like there was a real opportunity to make the transportation ecosystem a lot more efficient by applying a similar approach to vehicles and vehicle ownership that Airbnb was applying to homes and home ownership. So we spun this out of Better Place: Aaron Platshon bringing his automotive marketing background from Tesla and Akhtar Jameel who had spent a lot of time at Mercedes Benz thinking connecting automobiles to the web.”

They took that vision and turned it into truly new way of thinking about getting around. The Wheelz P2P platform, together with its DriveBox^TM in-car technology and mobile access, offer a simple, efficient, P2P rental experience that turns idle cars into grocery runs, coffee dates and weekend getaways. As they like to say, “We’re not reinventing the wheel, just how you use it.”

Says Platshon, “When you’re working in transportation, user experience is critically important and one of the areas we’ve focused on is our custom Drivebox^TM which gets installed on all vehicles in the program. It makes it more convenient for drivers because they can find and access the car on the go, from their mobile device. You can find it because of the GPS signal and you can unlock it because it wires directly into the car’s door system. You can honk the horn and flash the lights to make it easier to locate, which makes it a much easier experience for drivers. It’s also very convenient for car owners, too, because they can rent their car out whenever they want, and don’t need to take the time to go meet up with the renter to facilitate the transaction.”

Wheelz has raised more than $15 million to date, including a $13.7 million round of funding led by investors Bill Ford’s Fontinalis Partners, and Zipcar, their lead investor, which was recently acquired by Avis.

I asked Miller what the main differences were between Zipcar and Wheelz, in their customers and in their reach.

“I think that peer-to-peer (P2P) is something that can appeal right now, especially in the early phases of its development to a younger generation that’s more familiar with Facebook and Airbnb and have a greater level of trust for these P2P type transactions. As it goes more mainstream, I’d expect that age to increase while more of the older generation is still looking at the options and saying I’m going to stick with Zipcar for now.

Zipcar’s model differs in that they own their cars which you rent from them. Some people, like CV Harquail, have suggested that Zipcar is not really sharing at all, but rather just a really well-implemented car rental service.

Sometimes sharing is co-owning and sometimes it is renting, both concepts which have been around for a long time. The thing that makes it “sharing” in the business sense, or collaborative consumption as it is perhaps more accurately labeled, and therefore new, is a customer experience that is so transparent, so effortless, courtesy of mobile and social technology as to have transcended the boundary that once existed between the transactional and the personal. I mean we share and borrow stuff with members of our own family, right? So the question is can ubiquitous mobile computing make the whole world, one big family?

Not exactly, but in certain cases, it can take us one step closer. Close enough to create what you might call the “economic intimacy,” that I think is really the key to the sharing economy.

Yes, Zipcar is, in fact, a well-implemented car rental service. It certainly goes well beyond what Hertz #1 Gold and their imitators ever dreamed of, in not only doing away with the retail counter, but putting the car right in your neighborhood where you can walk to it, open it and drive away with nothing more than your smart phone and a reservation. The thing that makes it sharing, really, is the fact that according to UC Berkeley, every shared car replaces 13 owned cars. This means that, in essence, by participating in a Zipcar transaction, you are essentially, co-owning that car with a number of total strangers and we have taken one tiny step closer to the world-as-family idea and away from what we might look back on someday as the ownership economy.

Wheelz then, takes this all a step farther, combining all the convenience of a technology-enabled service like Zipcar’s with the community building potential that only peer-to-peer can deliver.

According to Miller, “One way of thinking about this is that we’re in the consumer behavior change business in the sense that most people historically would not buy a new car and share it with complete strangers. What they are wired to do is to share it with people that they already know. What we’re hoping to do is to formalize that and extend it to a broader definition of community than what people currently share with. That will take time to become pervasive. But it doesn’t have to become totally pervasive to have a massive impact.”

Because, he says, “if only 1 percent of car owners were to put their car into a P2P community, that’s 2.5 million cars, which is more than double the traditional car rental fleet and the existing car sharing fleet combined. So with 1 percent consumer adoption, you’ve introduced maybe one of the most disruptive factors in the transportation space, because now you’ve got a car available on every block in every major metropolitan area, that you can access from the palm of your hand, with complete diversity of vehicle choice, anything from a sports car to a truck, no matter where you are.”

What blew my mind, perhaps most of all the things we talked about, was when I, as a more or less traditional business traveler, suggested that airports would remain strongholds for the traditional car rental model for years to come, Miller agreed, but then added, “You can imagine a swapping service where you go to the airport and pick up somebody else’s car and somebody else picks it up yours so that instead of paying for parking you are getting paid for the use of the car.”

If nothing else did, surely that impressed upon me that this is really a whole new ball game.

Photo Courtesy of Wheelz

RP Siegel, PE, is an inventor, consultant and author. He co-wrote the eco-thriller Vapor Trails, the first in a series covering the human side of various sustainability issues including energy, food, and water in an exciting and entertaining format. Now available on Kindle.

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Last week the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco hosted a headliner for sustainable business enthusiasts: Chip Bergh, CEO, Levi Strauss & Co. and Rick Ridgeway, VP of Environmental Affairs at Patagonia in conversation with Greg Dalton, Founder of Climate One. The subject of the talk was Clean Clothes - What lies ahead for product labeling and making the $200 billion U.S. clothing industry more sustainable?

Both Patagonia and Levi Strauss boast impressive, sector-leading environmental initiatives to lower their industry's impact. However, it turns out that both companies' green stories are tightly interwoven with their customer engagement.

Levi Strauss and Patagonia engage with consumers on sustainability issues and incorporate their feedback into future iterations of their sustainability programs. Through this customer engagement each company has found the key to ensuring that that sustainability initiatives boost the bottom line. Here's how they do it.

Include customers in conversations about the products you make

Two Black Fridays ago, Patagonia made headlines the world over with its full page ad in the New York Times urging customers: Don't buy this jacket, which asked consumers not to buy new when old would do. When questioned about the impetus for this campaign, which would seem to be at odds with the retail apparel business's drive to sell more product, Rick Ridgeway said, "The recession was starting to hit hard. It was an important shift. People were investing in more expensive products that would last a long time, rather than disposables. We wanted to engage with these people – these were our people. Engaging around quality products is a great way to lower the impact of our products." Patagonia was able to find a core segment of their customer base who values high-quality, well made goods and strengthen their relationships with these consumers. They also managed to educate that group and the larger population of NYT (and blogs about the NYT) readers about the environmental dangers of fast fashion.

Levi Strauss found cause to engage with consumers when they conducted a life cycle assessment of their products and realized that 60 percent of the embedded energy and 40 percent of the embedded water use in a pair of jeans came from washing them at home. Levi Strauss has been able to parlay that information into a few cool initiatives designed to engage with customers: back in 2009, they released updated care tags to encourage people to wash their jeans in cold water, line dry them, and donate them at the end of their natural lives. More recently, they launched the Water<Less campaign, pairing a product line which boasts drastically reduced water usage with a consumer education campaign.

Both organizations have used sustainable products and timely advertising campaigns as a medium for connecting with consumers about their products. They walk the fine line between educating and engaging and, in both cases, have managed to create some loyal fans along the way.

Reduce environmental footprint while maintaining performance

Patagonia, in particular, struggles with providing high-performance gear that contains potentially harmful materials. When speaking about Patagonia's Footprint Chronicles, which showcase the good, the bad and the ugly within Patagonia's supply chain, Ridgeway said, "We started to wonder if we should even been making a product because it’s that bad... This is a tension that goes on every day in our company. There isn’t an apparel company in the world that considers environmental issues that doesn’t face this issue. We like to dialogue with customers because some of these issues are so thorny that you can’t address them without help."

In the case of Patagonia, a particularly toxic waterproofing agent caused these introspections. The company used the Footprint Chronicles to share the information it had gathered about the negative environmental impacts of this substance. Customers agreed that the best course of action is to continue using it, while searching for a better solution that will provide the same performance.

Consider brand value at product end-of-life

It can be difficult to talk about what happens when a treasured object becomes a piece of garbage. Moderator Greg Dalton wondered if a focus on material re-capture would have a negative impact on the brand. Said Chip Bergh, "I don’t think so. I think it enhances the brand because it speaks to the long-term quality. Many consumers feel good about the program because it speaks to the long term value of the product." Consumers appreciate that their goods are so valuable they are worth talking about when they become closer to trash than treasure.

Both organizations have initiatives dedicated to collecting products at the end of their useful lives. Patagonia has the Common Threads Initiative, to make it easier to repair, recycle or regift. Levi Strauss has the Goodwill initiative mentioned above - each care tag includes a reminder to donate products at the end of their useful lives.

Encourage transparency for all

Both leaders spoke highly of a growing European movement to create nutrition-style labels for apparel which showcase the environmental and social impact of that garment for prospective buyers. Levi Strauss was recently part of a trial in France. "We’re believers in it," said Bergh. "The more transparent we can be with consumers, the more they’ll care about these issues. The key for us is that it be based on science." The metrics used to create the labels must be clear, consistent and replicable for companies to get on board.

But when it comes to government enforcement, Bergh wasn't so enthusiastic. "The issue is that every government may mandate something different and then you have chaos. The industry should take the lead on what’s the most effective way." Industry leadership will mean that the label is something that is streamlined and manageable.

Ridgeway agreed. "Labels are inevitable. The challenge for us is to work with government so that the solutions that they end up with are not necessarily watered down or weakened. The Sustainable Apparel Coalition is advocating for something robust. But, it needs to be something realistic for companies to follow. A consumer-facing label that allows consumers to understand environmental social health impacts of the product is crucial."