Green Options

You drink coffee. Tea. When it’s at home, it’s organic, and when you’re out, you do your best. In so many ways, you live a green lifestyle. And yet, there’s one sticky point: the cup.

Evening Breeze sustainable bedIt’s summer in the Northern hemisphere, and for many, that means going on holiday to warm, tropical locales. And using air conditioning. Lots of it. In fact, in some tropical places, nearly 80% of energy use in a hotel room is for air conditioning. 1200 to 2000 watts on average.

Evening Breeze is an interesting solution: It’s a canopy bed that has adjustments for both temperature and humidity, and delivers it quietly, overhead, using only 400 watts. As [...]

Here’s an idea that comes from outside the green business world, but has much to offer us and I think should be repeated all over.

In London, KiosKiosk is a simple, powerful, powerfully fun idea: Create an attractive temporary space for upcoming (but ready to sell) businesses to be at, in a high traffic area. At no cost.

Backed by the London Sustainable Development Commission, businesses just need to submit a brief form describing what they’d like to use the kiosk for, [...]

That once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that both warms one’s heart and instills a swarm of nervous stomach butterflies came about for me last week:  giving a commencement address at my old high school, Glenbrook South in Glenview, Illinois. 

While it ranked an honor to receive the distinguished alum award, the five-minute speech proffering advice for the 2009 graduating class proved to be a unique challenge for me, requiring me to think about and process the “Lisa Kivirist” from 1985 when I graduated, when the only “green” I knew was the one in the padded paychecks I aspired to earn, to the green rolling hills of our Wisconsin farm and B&B today, Inn Serendipity and helping others launch green businesses through my book, ECOpreneuring.

Detours with a dose of serendipity quickly arose as the theme song for my last twenty years, a refrain that I wanted to leave with the graduating class.  Life may take unexpected turns, but remember, as I learned, to keep connected to the core values, your earth mission, figuring out ways to craft a life and livelihood based on your passions.

Here are some excerpts from my speech:

OPEN (Organization for Pakistani Entrepreneurs) Silicon Valley is holding their Forum ‘09 this Saturday, June 13th at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. This year, the forum will include a Cleantech track that will bring business leaders, entrepreneurs, investors, and policy makers together to discuss different perspectives of clean and sustainable technologies for the future. If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area and want a new and interesting perspective on the subject, head out to Mountain [...]

Unless you’ve been laid up in bed all this week, you’ve heard that Apple is releasing a new iPhone 3G-S with an amazing array of features But one you may not have heard of is a brilliant bridging between the iPhone and Zipcar.

These two are as they say peas in a pod, technology enhanced life(style) enhancements, for a demographic that I imagine likes that they get to both have what they want, when they want it, and do good by [...]

A Green Printer interview with Carmen Spagnola, entrepreneur and owner of m.

1. What made you want to start m?
I started m because I was a frustrated consumer.  I decided that  if I want to have access to smarter, more beautifully designed, more  responsible products and amenities for my home and family, I was going
to have to create more demand.  Markets are a bit of a chicken-and-egg  relationship.  Many retailers will tell you that they only provide  what their customers want.  That is only part of my modus operandi.
I want to showcase the possibility of a better performing future, so  much of what I sell and promote is currently considered ahead of the market.  But how will the market know what it wants if we don’t inspire it to want more?

Mokugift was inspired by Marion Cotillard (2007 Oscar) to launch a program that enables actors, musicians and athletes to inform, inspire and empower fans to plant trees with them. Mokugift has found a base within the hip hop community that has always been environmentally conscious.

Online, ecopreneurs should explore partnership models with low barriers. Lowering the barrier, increases the breadth of partnerships that can be experimented with. Relationship can be deepened and customized once traction is proven.

“Empower people in the US to realize that they have power to influence the global economy through their purchasing choices.” That isn’t some pie-in-the-sky wistful, unrealistic dream. That inspiring vision forms the Earth Mission, that driving force behind World of Good as they aim to transform how we shop by connecting us directly that individual who made our product, even if they are half-way around the globe.

Fostering an economy based on social and economic justice, World of Good, launched by co-founders Priya Haji and Siddharth Sanghvi — just after they graduated from University of California Berkeley Business School — features unique gifts and handcrafts from artisan communities around the world. By selling through an ever-expanding distribution network of retailers nationwide, they are building a whole new economy based on Fair Trade.

Ten percent of their profits get funneled to their sister non-profit organization, The World of Good Development Organization, which helps support artisan communities and works to strengthen international fair wage standards.

“Our aim is to make it easy to help customers make a good choice — not to buy more, but to buy differently,” explains Priya. “They can expect quality, convenience and style — yet the products can be made in a way that actually helps the people who make them. Right now, our products are women’s accessories and housewares. As World of Good grows, our aim is to make the choice for people-positive products easy to find in every category of daily life. We want every human-made product to be a tool of relationship and empowerment for the person who crafted it. Imagine every product not as a material thing but as a bridge of connection and transformation.”

Today the Center for Small Business and the Environment (CSBE) launched a new initiative aimed at the 111th Congress and the Obama Administration, reminding them that the best way to revive the ailing U.S. economy is to think green – green entrepreneurism that is.