Laura Kurgan, Chris Jordan, Lorrie Vogel and Assaf Biderman - Pop!Tech 2009 - Camden, ME

In Part One, Lorrie Vogel explained some of the work Nike is doing to increase recycled and organic content in their products. Our conversation continues with discussing how Nike designers are encouraged to use sustainable principles in their work.

SS: You mentioned something about rewarding designers for innovating around sustainability, how does that work?

LV: As with any company centered on innovation, the process begins with Nike’s designers. To influence the designers to make responsible choices, Nike designers are scored against the Considered Index. In order to get new Considered innovations adopted faster, Nike gives innovation points to designers who come up with a brand new idea, as well as to teams who adopt considered innovations in the first year.

SS: And how are employees outside of the design department scored against the Considered Index?

LV: At Nike, there are so many different groups in different matrices, a lot of them are expected to calculate their CO2 footprint. But the Considered Index is primarily for designers.

SS: Sustainability 101 and Step by Natural Step (mentioned in this press release)- are they teaching personal sustainability practices, or teaching employees how to spot opportunities to be more responsible in the choices they make in their jobs?

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This impressive footprint is Nike’s Considered Air Jordan XX3, their first basketball shoe designed using the Considered Ethos.

Lorrie Vogel is the general manager of Nike Considered, Nike’s in-house sustainability think tank. She holds a degree in Industrial Design from Syracuse, and numerous patents. Her work in innovating around sustainability has helped put Nike on Fast Company’s Fast 50 list multiple times. Considering how aggressive Nike’s sustainability goals have been, it’s even more impressive that they are on track to meet their targets.

Sustainability is second only to performance when ranking the critical factors of a product. Nike is committed to making their entire collection as environmentally responsible as possible. Lorrie Vogel spoke at the Opportunity Green conference in Los Angeles, explaining some of the ways Nike is meeting these targets. In this phone interview, Lorrie expands on some of the points she touched on in her presentation. The conversation is split into two articles, in order to go deeper into the many changes that need to happen to increase use of recycled and organic materials in apparel and footwear. We begin with a discussion about materials, and conclude with the human element needed to ensure these changes occur in a timely manner.

From Nike: The long-term vision for Considered is to design products that are fully closed loop: produced using the fewest possible materials, designed for easy disassembly while allowing them to be recycled into new product or safely returned to nature at the end of their life. By 2011, 100 percent of footwear will meet baseline Considered standards, apparel by 2015 and equipment by 2020 – creating better performing products while minimizing environmental impact by reducing waste, using environmentally preferred materials and eliminate toxins.

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For example, in the Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Desert Hot Springs and Coachella area, you could now get all your electricity free for the next 25-40 years for $10,000! That’s about $90,000 lower than you would have paid your utility for 25 years.

One Block off the Grid’s completely unique model of group buying combined with the financing of their partnering banker SunRun (which offers one of the few solar financing options to remain viable in the downturn) has made group purchasing the cheapest way for going solar ever.

The solar company 1BOG selected for this neighborhood; HelioPower is able to install that neighborhood for $5.49 a watt—the lowest rate 1BOG has ever negotiated for their group discount.

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The edible barrels replace oil drums, which cost approximately $6 per barrel to clean for re-use as feed containers in addition to the cost of the barrel.  Sun’s elegant waste reduction solution relieves farmers of this expense while practically eliminating the risk of oil-contaminated feed from poorly cleaned barrels.  It also eliminates waste or water pollution associated with the cleaning process, and it eliminates the cost (and carbon footprint) of returning used barrels for re-use.

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Zerofootprint already helps corporations and governments in evaluating and reducing their carbon emissions through various methods. It also helps households through innovative technologies such as this one. This new TalkingPlug is for corporations or households (or anyone with electrical sockets) and will have an initial price tag of about $50. The price may go down considerably if it can make the product on a larger scale.

How does it work? What are its advantages compared to Google’s PowerMeter and other similar up and coming technologies?

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Glass America has launched their new 44oz BPA free stainless steel Geyser collection. These huge stainless steel reusable bottles have an EQP of $6.99 with single color imprint. Although all Geyser bodies are finished stainless steel in color, the top accents are available in Black, Purple, Blue, Orange and Green.

At 44oz these are some of the largest stainless steel bottles on the market and will make excellent holiday gifts for any Ecopreneurist targeting the outdoor or active lifestyle set.

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Research by Sunbeam Hospitality and Andis Corporation shows that about 45% of hotel guests leave the bathroom light on as a night light while they sleep. Indeed night lights are so important to travelers that since 2003 the American Automobile Association TourBook includes the availability of night lights in their reviews of hotels.

Why? Perhaps because the National Safety Council reports that most accidents occur in the bathroom, and that poor lighting is the 6th leading cause pf accidents in the home and a major contributor to hotel room accidents. It seems that people just feel better sleeping with a light on.

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This is not something I would recommend for everyday use. However we often get questions on the strength of the non-woven reusable shopping bags that are becoming such a staple for our industry, and this image seemed a great way to explain a point.

The point is green can be tough. A reusable non-woven bag does not mean a wimpy bag.

This is a photograph sent to us by our friends at Debco showing off the strength of their NW4060 FOLDING NON-WOVEN TOTE BAG.

The motor in the photo is a 1986 model year 20HP Yamaha, checking in at a weight of 110 lbs. The photo came about via a challenge that Debco put to their employees, asking them to really put the strength of their bags to the test.

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The evolve(TM) line from Norwood seems to be doing a bit of evolving itself.

Norwood now offers two new cyclist style water bottles in the line, the evolve(TM) Sport Bottle 20 oz. and the evolve(TM) Sport Bottle 28 oz.

Both bottles are made in the USA and certified BPA free. Like the rest of the evolve(TM) line, these water bottles are made from biodegradable high density polypropylene ethylene. Both come in natural opaque or white body finish.

The bottles are listed by Norwood as biodegradable within 1 to 5 years in managed landfill, and the bottles ship with a hang-tag that can be passed on to end users to educate them about evolve(TM) and the use of biodegradable materials in general.

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The new green-themed Reclaim made by Samsung is more than your standard phone with slick green branding — though there’s a bit of that too.

What’s green (or blue), smaller than a deck of cards and will remind you to unplug the charger from the wall after charging? The Reclaim, the new green-themed smart phone made by Samsung for Sprint, is loaded with a bunch of green content, a handful eco-conscious accessories and an attention to sustainable packaging that make it more “green” than most other phones out there.

But you can’t just slap a case made from forty percent corn plastic, dip it in green paint and call it green, can you? The folks at Sprint sent me the new Reclaim so I could answer those questions myself.

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As promised Ash City has really picked up their game for the 2010 season, offering more eco-friendly apparel items than most other manufacturers in the promotional items market.

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The EcoCoolie from Numo is playing dress up this Halloween with four pre-printed Halloween costume coolies, Vampire, Mummy, Witch and Frankenstein Monster.

These full color pre-printed units are a great way to give a practical, reusable Halloween promo item this season that will outlast the Halloween night itself.

The EcoCoolie line from Numo Manufacturing is made from at least 15% post-consumer recycled material. I think that is a low percentage, but it is a start and Numo gets some credit as the first vendor to market in the promotional items industry with a coolie containing any recycled materials. If anyone knows of other post-consumer coolies please let me know, as I would like to write about them as well.

The basic EcoCoolie has an EQP of $1.09. That is certainly a premium over the cost of Numo’s standard Pocket Coolie which has an EQP of $0.69, and I hope as more post-consumer recycled material coolies are sold this price will drop.

The Halloween Costume EcoCoolie actually relies on Numo’s full color imprinting process so they come in a bit higher at $2.79. But again that is for a full color, fully printed body coolie, so adding any full color logo or additional artwork to these Halloween Costume EcoCoolies is no problem.

If you are an ASI member with questions for Numo Manufacturing Tonya Luby is the woman to talk to. If you are interested in these items to promote your own business contact your local promotional items vendor or email info@proformagreen.com for information and pricing.

The green parts

Built from 80 percent recyclable material with 40 percent of the phone casing made from corn-based bio-plastic. The Reclaim is 80 percent recyle-able material, not recycle-ed material. That is fairly normal. The bulk of material in most other cell phones can also be recycled and that’s why there is a market for used cell phones.

To Sprint’s credit, included in the box is a postage-paid cell phone recycling bag for you to drop your old phone in the mail to be scrapped for e-waste (which I filled three old phones sitting in a drawer I’ve been meaning to recycle).

Sprint has committed to recycle ninety percent of the phones they make by 2017. With current recycling rates at roughly one-third, Sprint admits they have a long way to go but are also quick to point out that they have collected roughly 18 million phones thus far and have increased recycling rates substantially over 2007.

I like the idea of the green content portals. Easily-accessed content from Planet Green including Best of Green, Five Simple Things, All Things Green and a Green Glossary from Planet Green. These shortcut keys access fast-loading pages of green content and info. Don’t expect links, images, flash, etc. These are fast-loading pages that provide quick access to basic green info, and for that purpose they are excellent.

I was also too-easily amused by the chirps, ribbits and other preloaded eco-sonic ringtones that keep with the Reclaim’s green theme.

Fortunately, the instruction manuals were not big, glossy tomes reprinted in seven languages. Only the “essentials” in manual literature were included in the package, but considering that several pages were filled with full-color images of people enjoying their new phone way too much, even that seemed a bit too much.

The paper that was included in the package was printed with soy inks on a paper stock that clearly had some percentage of recycled content in it, but nowhere on the package was that clearly labeled or otherwise discerned. Other than the plastic FedEx package the phone arrived in, the package itself has very little plastic, only two small bags.

Festooned with a litany of certification labels and brands, Sprint has clearly made some attempts to get the Reclaim some green cred — and most of it is deserved. Overall, I think Sprint has done more than pull of a green marketing coups. They have taken real steps towards cleaning up an industry that contributes an incredible amount of material into the global e-waste stream.

That is not to say there isn’t any room for improvement. Cutting back even more on printed materials and packaging waste and giving more attention to labeling and transparency would make the Reclaim even greener.

If this phone does anything, it helps show an industry that little steps can make a big difference when they are being manufactured at thousands of pieces at a time. Hopefully leading us to the day where a phone that pays attention to sutainability and cradle-to-cradle principles will become the norm, rather than the exception.

All photos except first one via Tim Hurst. Follow Tim on twitter.

Readers may have noticed that in my last few posts I have been focusing on promotional items that can be used by Ecopreneurists for marketing in two rather large October events, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month and Halloween.

Both of these events can provide Ecopreneurists an opportunity to involve themselves in their local community, while also raising awareness of their services.

Indeed our office just donated custom printed biodegradable Halloween bags to the Denver Children’s Museum for their Trick or Treat Street event. (FYI Denver Children’s Museum is still looking for an additional 3,000 bags, if anyone is interested in sponsoring them please email me directly). I am sure every Ecopreneurist can find deserving organizations to support in their own communities.

Anyway, to help us all out with ideas, Raining Rose - the first in the promotional items industry to offer a USDA certified organic promotional lip balm - is getting ready for October by introducing several new Breast Cancer Awareness theme and Halloween theme lip balm background art wraps ready for the addition of your company’s logo and contact information (see all wraps here).

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The U.S. Air Force, which has been soaring into the wild green yonder on alternative fuels and other sustainability measures, has added paint to its roster of more earth-friendly maneuvers.  At Robins Air Force Base in Georgia, the Air Force has been easing away from toxic formulas, using PreKote to protect its aircraft from corrosion.  PreKote is a propriety nontoxic base coating manufactured by Pantheon Chemical of Phoenix, Airizona.

The new coating replaces highly toxic and potentially carcinogenic anti-corrosion products based on chemicals such as hexavalent chromium, which the Department of Defense has targeted for elimination throughout the armed forces, using the force of an urgently worded memorandum issued last spring.

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The big drawbacks are the cost ($1600 retail price) and the need for electricity.  While standing, the DH9 uses 80 Watts, and while actively filtering, it uses 500.

Researchers in Stuttgart, however, have solved one of those two problems:  their system is completely based on renewable, on-site energy. 

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From green gadgets and gizmos, to DVDs and loose-leaf teas, I get the occasional product sent to me for a review.  In most cases, I like to give it a thorough once-over before I’m comfortable putting a stamp of (dis)approval on it.

If I take a long time to review a product, it is usually because: the product stinks and the manufacturer wouldn’t want me to publish anything anyway; the product really stinks and I don’t want to waste my time or my readers’ time with it, or; the product is actually quite good and the length of time spending reviewing it is extended because I’m trying to find something bad to say about it — but can’t. In the case of the DOT-it LED lights Sylvania sent me, the reason for my slow turnaround is definitely the last one. These lights are great.

The first of the two lights sent to me by Sylvania was the DOT-it Golden Dragon (pictured top). The ninja-sounding Golden Dragon is the Cadillac of Sylvania’s puck-style LED lights.

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Compared to conventional remediation that involves weeks, months or even years of work along with a potentially huge carbon footprint for transporting or capping soil, the solar-powered exhaust systems took mere hours to install and resulted in an immediate 95% reduction in TCE vapors within the homes.  The EPA plans to extend the program this fall to other homes affected by the Delfasco site.

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Debco has recently released a version of the MoMA I Am Not A Paper Cup which they are calling the DA4299 COFFEE MUG and selling at an EQP of $9.73, which is nearly half the $18.08 cost of the MoMA model. Aside from the fact the DA4299 COFFEE MUG does not come in MoMA packaging and is not printed with the MoMA logo, there is nearly no difference in quality between these two models.

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October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month and as I wrote before, from a marketing standpoint, the month of October will be filled with awareness raising events in which companies and organizations are often asked to show their support through donations of time, resources, and yes promotional items.

Here are a few more eco-friendly ideas for Ecopreneurists looking to support local Breast Cancer Awareness events and organizations with branded promotional items.

One item that groups always seem to need are gift bags, and the pre-printed non-woven Breast Cancer Awareness bags from Leeds give the Ecopreneurist a chance to donate a stylish “pink” bag at a low cost.

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2k Manufacturing based in Luton, England has come up with a process that can take any type of plastic - clean, dirty, or defected - and remake it into what they’re calling ‘EcoSheets’.  These EcoSheets are a composite material made to have the same mechanical properties as plywood.  They are the end result of a process called powder impression molding, which takes all forms of plastic and makes it into a fine powder.  The powder is then sandwiched in between two polymer films and is heat treated to form a viable substitute for plywood, a ubiquitous building material.

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