If we were to consider the individual populace collectively and compare its carbon footprint to that of any one corporation, the public would always win. Individuals have the greatest potential to reduce carbon emissions than anything else.
I'm not saying that we should go all Ed Begley Jr., but we should make an effort. Most people can agree the recycling and keeping trash out of landfills is important, but what about how much energy we use? How can we make a difference there?
Personal wind turbines and solar panels* are a given, but what about just reducing how much energy we use period? It would help if we could track how much energy we use in a given day or even a given hour, then we can find ways to curb it.
Think of people who own hybrid cars and the development of hypermiling. Once people could see how much gas and electricity they were using while driving, people started to find ways to reduce how much they used. They would turn it into a game of sorts - drafting off of other cars, turning off their car at stoplights, even re-engineering the cars to run more off of battery power than gasoline.
Now what if people applied hypermiling to their homes? First people would need to be aware of their energy consumption and then they would need a tracking system to compare one hour's, day's, or week's energy usage. The UK has a few options for doing this, the one that I think has the most potential for gaming, in this case constantly tweaking and strategizing to lower household energy consumption, is Wattson & Holmes. Wattson's little price meter is great, but Homes' graphing application is genius. One is a glowing reminder, the other helps you really understand the effect of your efforts over time.
In the US we recently got WattzOn. It's not as good as Wattson & Homes, because it relies on your input to produce an estimate of your energy usage. It's accuracy depends on our accuracy and our willingness to feed the database, while Wattson & Holmes is almost completely automatic. Here is a PopTech presentation about the Wattzon application and the potential scarcity of energy:
Okay, so we have these tracking systems, now what? What if we networked it like Nike+? What if we could compete for the lowest energy use among our friends and relatives, or even perfect strangers? I'd like to be able to challenge me twitter followers or my Facebook friends to a who-can-use-the least-energy duel. Or how about a Biggest Loser type contest of most reduced carbon footprint? If we make it fun and we make it something people can do together (a la Herd), then we have a greater chance for success.
* Even now there are doubts as to the environmental impact of solar panels. Hopefully new, less toxic manufacturing options will arise soon
Okay, if you are or will be in London on November 30th and are not attending the PSFK Good Ideas Conference/Get Together then you will be missing out. Especially if you work in a field that requires any innovation.
Just go. You can thank me later.
I've been reading a lot lately on recycling and thinking a lot about who is responsible for products once they have reached the end of their intended lifespan. The seller or the consumer? Do we truly own what we buy or should we view everything as a conditional lease to be taken back to the manufacturer once we're done with it?
If you ask Treehugger, recycling is a crap way of transferring the manufacturer's responsibility for the end life of the product onto the consumer, via taxes and whatnot, and the only way to truly be a ecologically sound citizen is to stop consuming. Not realistic. I see his point, but I still have to brush my teeth and eat and build a proper wedding registry.
If you were to ask Popular Mechanics, recycling just makes sense. It keeps trash out of the landfills, saves energy, and reduces the need to harvest raw materials. It doesn't matter whose responsibility it is, the producer or the consumer, it just needs to be done.
I believe the responsibility it equally shared. The producer made a disposable product available and attractive for purchase and the buyer chose to consume said product. The burden of keeping the product's waste out of the landfill is carried by both parties - Producers need to make an effort to use recycled materials in the manufacturing of their products and take careful consideration into how their products can be disposed of with simply being tossed in the trash, and consumers need to make the effort to buy more products made of recycled materials and making sure those products are properly disposed of.
This is why I'm a big fan of companies like Simple Shoes and Preserve. I think they have the right idea of how companies should source their raw materials and consider the disposal of their product after it has outlived it's usefulness.
Simple Shoes may come up short when it comes to recycling their own product, but they do wonderful job of finding ways to reuse other forms of waste. Plastic bottles, bike tires, car tires, and inner tubes are commonly used to make their shoes along with organic or environmentally responsible raw materials. They even make their shoeboxes from recycled paper.
I hope to see some partnership efforts with Newton Running in the near future.
Preserve is a company that covers both ends of the life cycle. They use recycled plastic containers to make their products, which range from toothbrushes, to cutting boards, to disposable plates and utensils, and they ensure a closed loop by making it easy for their consumers to send back the Preserve disposable products they've bought directly to the factory to be recycled and used again.
I don't see everyone in the world separating their trash and mailing it back to the company that made it (which is also trading space in the landfill for a carbon footprint), but its nice to see that level of responsibility from any company. My view is that if your product isn't easy to recycle in any given area which it is sold, then you should take extra measures, like mailing it back, to ensure that the loop can be closed.
Britta recently strengthened its green credibility by partnering with Preserve to have its disposable filters sent to Preserves recycling plant to be made into something new. A nice touch considering how hard they promoting themselves as the environmentally sound alternative to bottled water. Real green efforts can be as easy to spot as greenwashing is transparent.
