In an industry first, General Motors‘ Chevy brand has created a green label for its cars and will roll out the sticker bearing environmental data next month starting with the 2012 Chevy Sonic.

The Ecologic label (pictured below) will be affixed to the driver’s side rear window of Sonic sedans and hatchbacks in the U.S. market by the end of February, GM and Chevy announced today. The automaker also said it will place Ecologic stickers on all cars under the Chevrolet nameplate for the 2013 model year.

“We’ve taken an environment leadership role (with the Chevy Volt electric car) and we thought this was the next evolutionary step,” said Chevy Brand Marketing Manager Bill Devine.

“From a sustainability point of view what this signals, I think, is that we’re trying to provide consumers with relevant information that we know they’re very interested in,” said Mike Robinson, General Motor’s vice president of sustainability and regulatory affairs.

Devine and Robinson talked to me this morning about the auto company’s latest green initiative, which it undertook with the Two Tomorrows group as the validator of environmental claims.
The Ecologic sticker is the first voluntary and third-party certified label of its kind for autos, although environmental product labeling is becoming more prevalent in the U.S. for building materials.

Federal regulators, which require car companies to disclose fuel consumption data and other vehicle information on new cars sold in the United States, revamped their labeling last year to make it even more explicit. And in California and New York, new cars also must display a global warming scorecard.

Supplementing the mandated information, the sticker devised by Chevy tells prospective buyers about the environmental measures taken at manufacturing and assembly facilites, fuel-saving technology in the car, and the percentage by weight of material in the car that can be recycled.

The idea is to convey what Chevy has done to ease the environmental impacts of its cars during its lifecycle — or “before the road, on the road and after the road,” as Devine put it.

Although the sticker is about 7 by 14 inches, there’s not enough room to display other key environmental information about the cars, Devine said, so Chevy is launching a microsite that will provide further details: www.chevrolet.com/ecologic.

The site is expected to have expanded green data on the Sonics by the end of February and for now lays out why Chevy developed the label.

GM uses recycled content in car parts and interiors, but that info, as yet, isn’t included. Robinson said the Ecologic label will develop further as the firm collects and verifies more environmental data and refines how to communicate the information. “We view this as we view the larger sustainability efforts in the company, this is a journey, it never ends and it will evolve over time,” he said. “This is not a static, once-and-done type of thing.”

The company focused on Sonic for the green sticker in part because it is still a new addition in the Chevy line, and because it is the only car of its class made in the U.S. — a factor that resonates among car shoppers who want to buy American and makes it easier for the company to track the attributes included on the Ecologic label.

The initiative is part of a broader effort by GM to reduce the environmental impacts of its operations and products, curb energy consumption and carbon emissions, and save money.

GM’s green commitments include a goal to achieve zero-waste-to-landfill status at its facilities worldwide and a pledge to invest some $40 million projects that will reduce the company’s carbon emissions by 8 million metric tons.

The company also is increasing its public profile in emergency environmental efforts. GM made news when it promised to recycle the booms used to clean up the BP oil spill for making parts for the Volt. Then GM captured headlines again when the project turned out to be more successful than expected, diverting more than 212,000 pounds of waste from landfill.

The announcement of the Ecologic label came on the eve the Washington Auto Show and follows two earlier green developments by the company this month — the release of its latest sustainability report and plans for a special California edition of the Volt that will qualify for a $1,500 state rebate and a carpool lane sticker.

Asked if there are further projects in the offing, Robinson said: “You can expect a pretty consistent drumbeat of things coming from GM on the sustainability front.”

Image courtesy of General Motors and Chevrolet

Young Italian designer Giovanni Tomasini is pleased to present his latest project, the “Mino” garden gnome, a traditional lawn ornament made of compost:

The garden dwarf tradition is older than what is commonly believed. Originating in XVII century Germany, garden dwarfs were exported by an English nobleman to decorate his garden, and they have now become the globally widespread kitsch ornaments that we all know. Despite its jazzy colours, the modern dwarf is a melancholic figure, condemned to a purely decorative function within a domesticated and artificial environment. Mino, on the other hand, lives in a garden full of life, destined to survive for one season only to then die with pride by feeding the surrounding vegetation.

The designer notes on Inhabitat that he’s currently seeking
a company to invest in his design…

2012 is not going to be easy. Against a backdrop of economic stagnation in the west, civil society unrest in all sorts of places, and continued volatility in commodity markets, the going will be tough for business. It’s also possible that progress towards sustainability might falter.

But not if you download these apps, designed to do two things: Help any forward-thinking sustainability practitioner respond positively to three key trends for 2012, which in turn will help navigate the likely turbulence of the next 12 months.

App 1: the “How to (Begin to) Rethink Capitalism” App

2012 will see increasing numbers of business leaders question whether the current form of capitalism is fit for purpose. Back in 2008 at the beginning of the current economic crisis hitting the U.S., U.K. and Europe, the response was tactical, with policy-makers and business leaders crossing their fingers, hoping that the glory days of high GDP growth would return soon. We now know that Europe and the U.K., and maybe the U.S., face a decade of austerity, and there are no short-term fixes.

Paul Polman, CEO at Unilever, has publicly said he wants an “equitable, sustainable capitalism.” Even the Harvard Business Review has called on CEOs to “fix the system.”

And there is of course the Occupy movement. Not anti-capitalist as such, just anti-this-current-version — which only works for the minority (probably even less than 1 percent).

This app will help you begin to think about how your business, big or small, could play its role in creating a different, more useful form of capitalism. Enter the notion of sustainable capitalism — where we factor in environmental assets, and recognise their true value.

Without natural resources and a stable climate, it’s hard to see how any form of capitalism will work into the future. Unfortunately, there isn’t a spare planet knocking about on to which the human species can decamp.

On a macro-economic scale, by placing a value on environmental assets, from bees to rainforests, it becomes easier to design financial instruments to protect them (think forest-backed bonds). Similarly, by measuring success in terms of market share, profitability and social impact, investment decisions can be made to deliver outcomes that work both commercially and in terms of improving people’s quality of life.

At the level of an individual business, understanding the true value of the natural resources on which you undoubtedly rely, and working to reduce these input costs, will mean that when the cost of these resources soars in response to rising demand and declining availability, the business has inbuilt resilience.

Similarly, by understanding both the true social cost of getting your goods and services to market, as well as their social value, when transparency trends and rising labour costs in developing economies hit your business, again, the business is not blown off course.

The first question this app asks is, “what happens to your business in the event of the end of free nature and free labor?” Starting to think about your answer to this question in 2012 would be a wise thing to do.

App 2: the “How to Get Serious About Collaborative Consumption” App

Collaborative consumption, the term used to describe the rapid explosion in swapping and renting goods and services, often through peer-to-peer (P2P) businesses, will break through in 2012. An example of a business in the collaborative consumption space is AirBnB, a website where you can rent out your spare room. It started in 2008 and now has rooms in 19,000 cities in 192 countries. That sort of rapid geographical penetration is the kind of success most hotel chains can only dream of.

Collaborative consumption could mainstream in 2012 for two reasons; first, economic austerity will force people to cut costs, and look for cheaper ways of accessing goods and services; and second, the ongoing digital revolution will increase people’s ability to access these new P2P business models.

This app will help you understand how you could rethink delivery of your own business’s goods and services, using P2P models, and in so doing, avoiding being locked in to market delivery mechanisms (such as an out-of-town retail outlet), which could soon become redundant. And it will also help you understand how to maximise the social value of your product or service. The best thing about collaborative consumption is that it gives people what they need. Imagine that.

App 3: the “Taking Sustainability to Consumers” App

2012 will see the practice of taking sustainability to consumers, rather than waiting for them to demand it, mainstream. Pioneering companies such as M&S and Unilever are already saying they will try to shift what people buy and how they use their products in the home. Going further is the clothing brand, Patagonia, which raised eyebrows with its Thanksgiving advert in the New York Times telling readers “Don’t Buy this Jacket.”

The realization that it is possible to drive brand loyalty through sustainability issues, and that it will be increasingly impossible to be credible on sustainability issues without addressing the use phase (up to 80 percent of a product’s impact), will mean that many more brands will take sustainability to their consumers.

But how? This app will take you through some do’s and don’ts:

• Do wrap sustainability into the brand DNA. Sustainability has to be part of the brand essence, otherwise it appears as an add-on, and won’t be viewed as authentic;

• Don’t talk about sustainability first. Make the primary message the one that you know your consumer really cares about. So, it’s nutritious — and sustainable, it’s well designed — and sustainable, it has the right price point — and is sustainable.

• Do feedback. Make sure your customers know that their actions count. Tell them how their purchasing decisions can both save them money — and make a positive difference to others.

Sadly, these apps aren’t quite ready. But don’t let that stop you. The three trends are very real and how to respond is based on our current reality. Use your imagination, be bold, be creative — and 2012 might well see progress towards sustainability accelerate.

_{Crystal Ball photo via Shutterstock.}

Shatler's Caipirinha in a CartoCan

In June last year, I wrote that “the revolution in the bottling industry is on”. It seems to be working out that way, as recently we have seen some very interesting developments in beverage cans. No, not the well-known metal can, but beverage cans made from paperboard. These developments are pioneering in the aseptic can as well as in the paperboard packaging field.

After the, in Germany developed, Cartocan for 250ml energy drinks entered the market in 2010, a new Euro patent application (EP 2017178) emerged, relating to an identical drinks can made from paperboard. The third development, although not for beverages, but for motor oil, is from Sonoco UK.

Why these developments in paperboard cans for liquids? Beverage cans, traditionally made from metal, aluminium or tinplate, have become more expensive over the last years, whereas paperboard has remained consistently cheaper. But there is one more reason. Paperboard cans are favoured by the European packaging laws. The paperboard can is classified as ‘Ecological Favourable Packaging’, a German typification in its “packaging laws”, which add 25 eurocents (a refundable packaging tax deposit) to the price of all metal cans sold by beverage resellers.

Kirei no Susume, launched by Shiseido on July 21, 2010, is packaged in a Cartocan

It is not surprising of course that all three are European developments. In the USA we don’t see a packaging tax, refundable or not, to protect the environment and stimulate recycling, and consequently we don’t see, as we see in Europe, the implementation of ‘packaging laws’ stimulating developments of more environmental friendly packaging formats.

Let’s have a detailed look at these three paperboard beverage cans.

// Article continued at BestInPackaging.com.

When you look at the official US drought monitor map, you immediately see that many American cities may be in the wrong places for long-term water sustainability.  In particullar, note the presence of “long-term,” severe-to-extreme drought conditions across most of Georgia, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona.

It’s a very sobering set of facts, especially when you consider that essentially every high-growth part of the US is experiencing significant dryness.  Now let’s look at a second map, this time world-wide

:

This is not just a US Sun Belt problem but a major international problem.  Here are a few facts and projections extracted from a very good summary of the issues by Jay Kimball on his blog 8020 Vision:

• By 2020, California will face a shortfall of fresh water as great as the amount that all of its cities and towns together are consuming today.
• By 2025, 1.8 billion people will live in conditions of absolute
water scarcity, and 65 percent of the world’s population will be water stressed.
• In the US, 21 percent of agricultural irrigation is achieved by pumping groundwater at rates that exceed the water supplies ability to recharge.
• There are 66 golf courses in Palm Springs. On average, they each consume over a million gallons of water per day.
• The Ogalala aquifer, which stretches across 8 states and accounts for 40 percent of water used in Texas, will decline in volume by a staggering 52 percent between 2010 and 2060.
• Texans are probably pumping the Ogallala at about six times the rate of recharge.

With increasing rises in the temperature of the earth’s surface and atmosphere, this problem seems only likely to get worse.  The geographic details may shift from one season to another, but the long-range trend is toward further diminishing of our sources of water.  A major problem with so many environmental issues, including this one, is that the damage occurs slowly, so that people are lulled into gradually accepting additional increments of deteriorating conditions without alarm.  But that doesn’t change the facts.

Looking at the US, we’re not realistically going to shut down the whole state of Texas, along with Atlanta, Oklahoma City, Albuquerque and Phoenix.  We’re not going to stop those places from growing, either, pipe dreams of some ardent environmentalists aside.  (Nor are we going to shut down North Africa, every country bordering the Mediterranean, India, and large parts of China.)

So, what to do?

This is not going to be a post that pretends to have all the answers, many of which are going to have to come from agriculture, which is outside my expertise.  But I’ll offer a few thoughts about some answers that must also come from how we grow our cities.

For example, a decade ago, my colleague Deron Lovaas co-authored a reportdemonstrating how the spread of pavement caused by suburban sprawl prevents water from recharging underground reserves.  From a summary released by NRDC with its research partners American Rivers and Smart Growth America:

“In Atlanta, the nation’s most rapidly sprawling metropolitan area, recent sprawl development sends an additional 57 billion to 133 billion gallons of polluted runoff into streams and rivers each year. This water would have otherwise filtered through the soil to recharge aquifers and provide underground flows to rivers, streams and lakes.”

EPA research shows that building 1000 new homes in a watershed at an average density of eight units per acre instead of four units per acre could save as much as 27 million cubic feet of runoff per year in a typical watershed.  (Building at eight units per acre instead of one unit per acre could save 137 cubic feet of runoff per year.)

Greater average density also means less irrigated urban land per household.

In addition, I’ve been arguing for some time that “green buildings” aren’t really green if they contribute to sprawl, and that “smart growth” isn’t really smart unless it includes green buildings and infrastructure.  Doesn’t the presence of long-term drought conditions argue even more strongly for the notion that smart growth should include water-efficient technology and green infrastructure to filter rainwater before it becomes runoff?

Finally, could this be another argument in favor of reviving, rather than abandoning, our Rust Belt cities in order to take growth pressure off the Sun Belt?

Move your cursor over the images for credit information.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment.  For more posts, see his blog’s home page. Please also visit NRDC’s Sustainable Communities Video Channel.

Sometimes things are worth the wait. In this case, allowing Chuck Bennett’s and my schedules to align was a lesson in patience for both of us but as expected, it was well worth it.

Chuck is Aveda’s Vice President for Earth and Community Care at Blaine, Minnesota-based Aveda. We chatted about everything from the origin of his job title, the company’s commitment to Cradle to Cradle design, their work on alternative energy (something near and dear to Chuck’s heart), customer engagement, packaging, as well as their synergistic relationship with parent company Estée Lauder, which bought Aveda in 1997.

Aveda is a beauty products company founded by Horst Rechelbacher in 1978. They sell products ranging from skin care to hair care. From its inception, Horst had the vision of creating a company that produced products derived from plants and that were safer and more efficacious than ones that were in use — a mantra that permeates through the company to this day even as it has grown exponentially.

In fact, today Aveda has a little over 29,000 employees worldwide and around 125 stores in the U.S. It’s one of the five biggest brands of Estée Lauder, the $8 billion a year cosmetics giant, which bought Aveda for about $350 million back in 1997.

For a company whose growth is directly correlated with high performance as well as its reputation as a sustainable company, Chuck has his work cut out for him. And he loves it.

Particularly interesting to me was our discussion regarding the aforementioned Cradle to Cradle design administered by McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry as well as their commitments to alternative energy. I do love that they run their Minnesota manufacturing facility on wind power that they purchase off of the grid. They also recently put up a solar array on their distribution facility in Tustin, Calif., near Los Angeles — producing half of the energy there.

It has to be reassuring to sustainably minded employees and customers to know that support still comes from the top, with company president Dominique Conseil often heard saying, along with Chuck, that sustainability at Aveda is not a program but rather a philosophy.

Again, sustainability philosophy within companies = increased sales and customer loyalty…not to mention employee engagement and loyalty as well. Win-win.

Regarding customer loyalty, Chuck says, “The beauty is that we really don’t get a lot of feedback [from customers] that suggests that what we are doing in the sustainability realm is not to their liking. If they are unhappy, we hear about it. And one of the things that we find reinforcing and reassuring is the extent that our consumer base supports what we are doing by defending the brand if we come under attack in, for instance, the social media space.”

We even had time to talk about the positive impact they have had on Estée Lauder to broaden their sustainability portfolio. And Estée Lauder encourages Aveda be who they always have been — a company with a heart and soul (and really good-smelling products).

George Papoulias edited this podcast.


Chuck Bennett, VP, Earth and Community Care, Aveda by chrissycoughlin

Nature of Business radio, created and hosted by Chrissy Coughlin, is a weekly show on business and environment.

Jim Ales, Monterey Bay Aquarium

Marc Alt, Marc Alt + Partners

Rolan Atwood, Director of Community Relations, American Apparel

Eric Benson, Partner, Outreach Lead, Re-nourish

Janine Benyus, Founder, Biomimicry Institute

John Bielenberg, Founder, Project M

Jean-Charles Boisset, President, DeLoach Vineyards and Boisset Family Estates

Jay Bolus, Executive Vice President of Benchmarking and Certification, MBDC

Stewart Brand, Founder, Whole Earth Catalog and Editor, CoEvolution Quarterly

Lester Brown, Founder and President, Earth Policy Institute

Blaine Brownell, Architect and Sustainable Building Advisor, NBBJ

Majora Carter, Founder, Sustainable South Bronx

Jamais Cascio, Writer, Ethical Futurist and Co-founder, Worldchanging

Valerie Casey, Founder, The Designers Accord

Allan Chochinov, Editor in Chief, Core77

Yvon Chouinard, Founder and Owner, Patagonia Inc.

Dawn Danby, Program Manager, Autodesk

Eames Demetrios, Filmmaker, Writer and Founder, Kymaerica

Pam Dorr, Hale Empowerment & Revitalization Organization

Brian Dougherty, Designer, Celery Design Collaborative

Frank Escher, Senior Editor, Dwell Magazine

Amy Franceschini, Principal, Futurefarmers

Robert Freling, Executive Director, Solar Electric Light Fund

Tom Friedman, Journalist, Author and Op-ed Contributor, The New York Times

Michel Gelobter, Climate Strategist and Founder, Cooler

Mark Galbraith, General Manager, Nau Clothing, Inc.

Saul Griffith, Inventor and Founder, Makani Power

Chris Hacker, Chief Design Officer, Johnson & Johnson

Phil Hamlett, AIGA National Board, Co-architect of The Living Principles

Paul Hawken, Environmentalist, Entrepreneur, Journalist and Author

Daniell Hebert, MOTO Development Group (part of Cisco)

Dan Imhoff, Author, Watershed Media

Corey Jones, California College of the Arts Materials Lab

Van Jones, Founder, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights

Kalle Lasn, Founder, Adbusters Media Foundation

Joel Makower, Writer and Founder, Greener World Media, Inc.

Dawn Maxey, Spoken Word Artist, Stanford Spoken Word Collective

Jacinta McCann, AECOM

Greg Moore, Executive Director, Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy

Robin Petravic, Owner, Heath Ceramics

Emily Pilloton, Founder, Project H Design

Ron Radziner, Principal, Marmol Radziner+Associates

Peter Robinson, CEO, David Suzuki Foundation

Hans Rosling, Professor, Karolinska Institute and Founder, Gapminder

Paul Saffo, Institute for the Future

Jane Savage, Director, Nike Considered

Michael Schwab, Principal, Michael Schwab Studio

Nathan Shedroff, Chair, MBA in Design Strategy, California College of the Arts

Cameron Sinclair, Co-founder and Executive Director, Architecture for Humanity

Derek Smith, Sustainability and Printing Consultant, Derek Smith & Associates

Ted Smith, Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition

Alex Steffen, Executive Editor, Worldchanging

Bruce Sterling, Futurist and Author, Wired Magazine

Scott Stowell, Founder, Open

Richard Nelson Swett, US Ambassador to Denmark, 1998–2001, Swett Associates

Andrew Wagner, Senior Editor, Dwell Magazine

Jeff Walker, Principal, VSA Partners

Adam Werbach, Saatchi & Saatchi

Philip White, Orb Analysis for Design

Have a speaker who should be listed here?
We welcome you to email us with your suggestion and we’ll add them to the list!

This is the third and final piece in a series exploring cork from designer and educator Daniel Michalik. As a prelude to this series, Michalik produced a beautiful photo gallery documenting the cork harvest.

I am sometimes asked about a rumored “cork shortage” which has fueled the popularity of synthetic bottle closures such as plastic stoppers and screw caps. There is a 20-acre paved lot in the Portuguese city of Coruche, 100 km NE of Lisbon that answers the question in a rather awe-inspiring way.

Standing along the elevated perimeter of the site, one looks across a vast landscape of cork bark, piled high in mountain after mountain. Some of the hills glow with the intense orange of freshly harvested bark. Others have been sitting outside, uncovered for a year, their color turned a slate gray.

It is in this lot that a portion of the yearly cork harvest awaits the sorting, boiling and trimming necessary for it to be made into billions of stoppers for wine bottles. The facility is one of several in the area belonging to Amorim & Irmaos, the world’s largest producer of cork stoppers and related products.

Quality control classifications at Amorim. The left column indicates thickness, the right indicates quality.

As the leading manufacturer of cork products, Amorim’s industrial facilities exemplify the many layers of re-use and value-adding that typifies the industry. Touring their factories throughout Portugal I found an industrial system comprised of closed, interlocking loops, where a sustainably sourced raw material becomes a product (wine stoppers) then is repeatedly transformed into new objects of value. Moreover, what remains after these loops have run their course is still not considered waste, but biomass: a source of energy to power the factories that keep the loops in motion.

Prior to the mid-1990’s the natural cork industry controlled 95% of market share for wine bottle closures. With the advent of synthetic closures the market dominance was cut by nearly one third in less than a decade. This trend is rapidly turning around however. In 2010 preference for French wine producers was 87% for natural cork closures and in Italy it was 90%. Bottle closures are still by far the most profitable use for the cork. However, the market shake-up has led to significant investment in alternative uses for cork and in the environmental optimization of the industry.

Left: a stack of cork awaiting sorting. Right: hand-cutting to size.

Broadly, the cork industry is predicated on the concept of repeated value-addition into what would otherwise be waste. There are numerous profitable applications for the material after stoppers are made, such as flooring, wall covering, insulation and home accessories. This diversity of application has led to factories that are built around using material as efficiently as possible.

Most wine corks are made by hand. Sections of bark roughly 5×5x40 cm are conveyed to a technician that operates a power-assisted punch, punching out stoppers one at a time. The process is rhythmic and highly skilled. Speed is key, but equally so is accuracy and material quality. Watching the cork-maker is like watching a percussionist, simultaneously operating the punch with his foot while moving the material along with his hands and using his eyes to find the best sections of material. While robotic sorting machines and stopper punches are humming away nearby to produce lower-quality corks (and higher reject ratios), it is still profitable to engage trained eyes and hands to read the bark and choose where to strike.

VIDEO 1: Hand-punching bottle stoppers from bark. The physical process involves a foot operation of a power-assisted punch, along with quick and skilled hand-eye coordination to select which sections of bark will produce the best quality and yield. Depending on quality, a stopper ranges in price from a few cents to a few euros per piece, so it pays to have a skilled puncher. VIDEO 2: A robot feeding sections of bark to the robotic punch. VIDEO 3: A robotic stopper punch. This machine does not read or select for quality. Therefore the level of “waste” is quite high, as a high percentage of the stoppers produced will have air cavities. These are sent directly for grinding and re-use.

After the stoppers are made, the remaining material fans out across a diverse spectrum of factories that grind the byproduct into precisely calibrated granulate. Much of the granulate is then cast, either through compression, expansion or extrusion back into solid forms. The raw material is thus reborn and sent to factories to become the products mentioned above. In these factories waste is seen as opportunity. Collection systems suck up leftovers of all shapes and size, which are then reground, remolded and used again.

3mm cork veneer, used for punching out discs.

A small ratio of binder (on average 3% of binder by volume) is needed to mold cork using compressive forces. Amorim has recently developed a binder that is free of urethanes and formaldehyde, which were the binders of choice until recently. To make the blocks from which other products can be made, a rectangular mold is filled with the granulate/binder mixture, and the volume is compressed roughly 60%. Held in compression, the molds are then sent to a kiln to allow the form to cure.

Robots load underlayment onto belts for flooring production.

While this method is efficient, there is a factory in Southern Portugal that uses a fascinating process of heated, pressurized expansion to produce insulation blocks that are free of binders altogether. At Amorim Isolamentos, granulated cork of lower grade is sent into steel autoclaves, which are sealed and injected with steam to heat the cork to roughly 300 degrees C. The granulate then explodes like popcorn, quadrupling in volume and pressing against the sides of the chamber. The intense heat liquefies the natural suberin resin in the cork to act as a binder. When the autoclave opens, a steaming, red-hot block of blackened cork rises up onto a trolley, where it is injected with cooled water vapor to stabilize the block and prevent deformation from residual heat.

Above: Autoclave and hopper. Below: After molding, the blocks are cooled and expansion is stabilized.

When cork granulate can no longer be used for profitable application (usually because it is too fine and has become dust), it becomes biomass. Each of the Amorim factories has a furnace to burn the cork dust at over 900 degrees C, providing on average 63% percent of the power needed to run the factories. Because it comes from trees that have absorbed millions of tons of CO2, the smoke from the furnaces (unlike the burning of fossil fuels) adds no new carbon to the atmosphere.

Above: The beginning and the end of the cork process. On left, raw bark from the forest, awaiting the first processing stages. On right, bag of cork dust and particles. This material is used as fuel to power the machines in the factories making products from cork, post stopper production. As opposed to the burnign of coal and petroleum, biomass fuel has a net zero carbon release (since the trees absorb carbon). Between these two photos, countless cycles of material release occur, creating a closed-loop, virtually waste-free industry. On average, Amorim factories are 63% biomass-powered. Below: Dark cork dust bound for the furnace. The dark cork factory in Vendas Novas is 90% powered by biomass.

While concepts of material efficiency and waste upcycling are not new, the industry and agriculture of cork has achieved a special level of integration, from forests that provide raw material while absorbing carbon and protecting habitats to manufacturing systems that absorb and reuse virtually all waste. While one could this industry as a fascinating curiosity, one would be wise to identify the points within it that can be transferred across materials and applications. How can we engage an industry like that of cork farming and production as a model by which we can improve other forms of material process?

For more from the Lifecycle of Cork series:
» Cork: Letting the Material Lead
» Men in Trees: A Look at the Annual Portugese Cork Harvest
» PHOTO GALLERY: How Cork is Made

Author and activist Paul Hawken argues that our natural resources are “the foundation of our economy.”  Without our water, timber, air and land our economy would cease to function.  Communication designers must realize the importance of designing with people and the environment top of mind. They can do so by minimizing their waste of our natural resources like water and trees and reduce CO2 emissions through choosing recycled materials, and by working with vendors also committed to the same cause. As this movement grows it is important to make sure that the communication design profession collectively selects the most logical sustainable path to maintain our planet and our craft. This means setting guidelines for growth in our industry and accepting responsibility in regards to our people and planet. 

Recent acceptance of the green movement into corporate America has also led to “greenwashing”, where misleading or false claims of environmental friendliness have confused consumers and have not helped the sustainable industry or planet. To combat this issue, Terrachoice created the Seven Sins of Greenwashing and disseminated them to the public. However, these guidelines are not specific enough to provide concrete steps for the graphic designer to follow to truly design in a sustainable manner. The Re-nourish Sustainable Standards are an attempt to clarify the issues and provide a comprehensive system of providing sustainable accreditation to print (packaging and environmental) and digital design projects as well as studios and printers.

The Re-nourish Sustainable Design Standards

What makes a printed or digital project sustainable? How can one tell on first glance without transparency? As more and more greenwashing is entering our marketplace, it is important that we help our clients and each other understand sustainable design principles. The Re-nourish Sustainable Standards are not a certification, but instead a logical set of tiered benchmarks for continued improvement towards a more sustainable economy and future. With this assurance that specific design criteria have been met and verified, designers now have the power to demonstrate their sustainability efforts, facilitating the implementation of sustainable design practices throughout the industry.

The Re-nourish Sustainable Design Standards (for projects) are divided into three sections: Print (includes packaging and environmental), and Digital. The Standards require that prior to the launch of any design project, that the constituents involved spend time deliberating a larger systems thinking approach to a solution.

The Re-nourish Sustainable Standards for print and digital is further divided into three tiers: one, two and three. Tier One is the premiere level of achievement and should be sought as the ideal for every print, packaging, or digital project. Tier Two and Three are stepping stones towards a more sustainable designed project that allow Re-nourish to publicly acknowledge those who are moving closer to a sustainable model and encouraging those who haven’t begun the process to start today. 

 The Re-nourish Sustainable Design Standards can be found here.

Americans have come a long way in their commitment to preserve and protect the environment since a groundbreaking survey from 1990 took the pulse of their green attitudes and behavior. Conventional wisdom holds that increased knowledge about the environment leads to more action and empowerment on the part of Americans.

And certainly, their knowledge has risen. Today, 73 percent say they know a lot or a fair amount about environmental issues and problems, up from 50 percent earlier.

So, what does action look like [PDF]? This basic question led to the pioneer study, The Environment: Public Attitudes and Individual Behavior, which I was a part of back in 1990. The study, commissioned by SC Johnson and executed by GfK Roper, was the first, large-scale survey to measure both green attitudes and behaviors. We wanted to understand whether — if equipped with the right tools and knowledge — it is possible to change consumer behavior, or action, for the greener.

Compared to 20 years ago, twice as many Americans are taking proactive steps to help the environment. Today, 58 percent of Americans recycle, 29 percent buy green products regularly and 18 percent commute in an environmentally friendly manner. What is so encouraging — and what we really need to understand — is that these small, green steps are indeed impactful.

For example, simply recycling one aluminum soda can yields enough energy to power my laptop for five hours or light up my office for 20 hours using a 60-watt energy-saving light bulb. These individual steps are made possible because individuals have a desire to modify their behavior, but also because businesses and governments have taken a leadership role in facilitating these changes by providing the right tools, products and processes.

While progress is being made, we have a way to go. The survey finds that consumers are more interested in the convenience factor rather than the impact a product has on the environment. That is a challenge we all need to overcome — both individuals and businesses alike.

In fact, consumers do want businesses to go green. Three-in-four respondents agree that “a manufacturer that reduces the environmental impact of its production process and products is making a smart business decision.” Those are much higher marks than Americans gave business in 1990.

Taken together, these changes in consumer attitudes and actions may have extraordinary impact on the environment in the future. Individuals place themselves higher at 38 percent and rank businesses lower at 29 percent when asked who should take the lead in addressing environmental problems and issues.

After all, as we like to say, the customer is always right. We all have a role to play to protect our earth, and 75 percent of American consumers say they feel good when taking steps to help the environment. That’s huge. Through increased environmental knowledge and with the right products and tools, we can all appeal to that sentiment to make smarter choices for a greener lifestyle.

_{Green shopping photo via Shutterstock.}