Archive for September, 2008
Deviants Unite!
September 30th, 2008 by Bill Baren
(reporting from the trenches of the West Coast Green Conference in San Jose, CA)
I am sitting and eagerly awaiting Al Gore’s arrival for his keynote address at the San Jose Convention Center, the location of the West Coast Green Conference. I am secretly hoping that what he is about to say is somehow different from what I have heard him say before. I want to hear, Al Gore, the thought leader. Yes, I do want him to inspire, but more than anything I want to see someone in his position be able to give us a blueprint of a solution that he believes will get us out of the mess we’ve gotten ourselves into. It’s time for the business community to be the solution and we need a leader with a simple, yet-cohesive plan. Industry by industry we can radically change and that change has to happen now.
So it was a good kick in the pants to hear Jerry Brown and Al Gore clearly direct us all to be leaders. Each one of us needs to be a change agent of the new movement arising out of a system that is currently failing. It’s failing itself and it’s failing the people in it.
Jerry Brown literally called us out. He said that visionaries tend not to run for office and so it’s up to us to be visionaries, not the politicians. It’s up to us to be the deviants. If we don’t deviate from the current culture, we will die with the culture. We need a big shake-up to create even a minimal shift.
Jerry Brown was a hard act to follow, but Al was up to the task of proving that he is the spokesperson for the greatest challenge facing mankind. The crowd noise was deafening and the energy was palpable as he walked onto the stage. What I love about Al Gore speech was that it was obviously more than a speech He is deeply passionate about global transformation and facing the climate crisis head on. He lives it and breathes it. And it is certainly infectious.
“If you want to go quickly, go alone; if you want to go far, go together” is an African proverb that Vice President Gore loves to change up a bit. Yes, we now need to go quickly and we need to go far.
“Enough baby steps!” So what’s the plan for going quickly and for going for in the sustainability movement?
To have a plan one needs to have a goal. It’s time for a bold approach. Al proposed to embrace the goal of having the U.S. produce and source 100% of our electricity from renewable resources and clean technology within the next 10 years. He talked about restructuring our entire electrical grid and empowering households to know where they are wasting energy. Gore also pointed out that we need to develop the technology to transmit energy (with less loss than now) from places where it’s cheap to create to urban centers where energy resources are more scarce.
“It’s time for us to make up our mind that we can provide this kind of independent energy leadership to the rest of the world. There’s been this bail out of the financial market. Well I think we need a ‘bail in’ of renewable energy and green building. I actually do think that the green revolution is the solution to the financial crisis, the national security crisis, the debt crisis, and the climate crisis.”
Martin Luther King once said that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. The same applies to the current climate crisis - increase of CO2 emissions anywhere is a threat to people everywhere.
Here’s an outline of Gore’s proposed solution:
20% - way of the way we deal with forests
25% - efficiency and conservation, including new ways of thinking
55% - new energy source with a new energy infrastructure
Yes, the situation is currently grim and the road ahead seems long and arduous. “So how do we maintain an adequate amount of hope in the crisis? … by being a part of the solution. Being on the sidelines doesn’t work.
“All the bad news can be depressing. But where there’s danger and challenge, there is an opportunity.
There are millions of people who are going through personal transformation – seeing with their hearts and with their minds the need for change.
As more people realize this, there will come a moment. There will come a time when there’s a monumental shift.
We will find that we are in the effective majority of people who are actively shaping the future. There will be a new way of thinking and new consciousness of who we are as human beings.”
We can all breathe a sigh of relief, Al Gore is still the “deviant” on the case.
Interview with Jonathan Storper, Partner, Hanson Bridgett
September 15th, 2008 by Patrick Dominguez
Hanson Bridgett is a San Francisco-based law firm that has taken an innovative approach not only in being a greener business - but also raising its profile as a sustainable business leader in the community.
Jonathan Storper, partner and chair of the sustainable business practice at Hanson Bridgett, explains both the business and personal benefits of becoming a more sustainable law firm - and the how they’ve overcome the challenges that come up on the journey to sustainability.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
- Why sometimes the greatest challenge to being more sustainable is employee resistance - and what to do about it
- What is a “B Corporation” and why Hanson Bridgett became one
- Why using china instead of biogradable plates became a big challenge
- Jonathan explains how competition is good for (green) business!
LISTEN NOW (press play below)
TRANSCRIPT
PATRICK DOMINGUEZ, GREEN BUSINESS INNOVATORS: Hello this is Patrick Dominguez from Green Business Innovators and I am here speaking with Jonathan Storper, who is a partner at Hanson Bridgett, and a chair of the sustainable business practice at Hanson Bridgett.
Interview with Tom Szaky, CEO and founder of TerraCycle
September 1st, 2008 by Amie Vaccaro
There is more than one road to success. Here is one formula: Dropping out of Princeton + Growing Pot = Potentially the world’s greenest consumer products company. Here’s another formula: Imagination + Things People Don’t Want = $3.5 million company. Yes, we’re talking about Tom Szaky and TerraCycle, a company that develops products made of and packaged from waste and sold at large retail chains.
Since 2001, TerraCycle products have received a Zerofootprint Seal of Approval, and the company has been inundated with a host of other awards. Its products include plant fertilizer, cleaning products, school supplies and bags - all made using trash.
CEO and founder Tom Szaky discusses how it all began, what has been most challenging, what he loves about his job, his views on greenwashing and more.
AMIE VACCARO, GREEN BUSINESS INNOVATORS: How did you come up with this idea for TerraCycle while at Princeton?
TOM SZAKY: My friends and I were trying to grow better pot and it turned out worm poop did the trick. It was also inspiring in that it was using garbage.