Today’s guest post comes from Cheryl Kollin, a consultant who specializes in social enterprises–that is, helping non profits achieve their social mission through earned income. Cheryl worked for 17 years at American Forests’ Urban Ecosystem Center, a citizens conservation group that advocates for urban forests by quantifying their ecosystem and economic benefits. Recently, she earned her MBA in sustainable business from the Bainbridge Graduate Institute near Seattle. Cheryl, who lives near me in Bethesda, Md., is now focusing on sustainable agriculture and food systems. She also co-leads the thriving community garden and fresh food donation program at Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation, the synagogue where we worship together.

Urban farming may sound like an oxymoron, but judging from the 375-person sell-out crowd at the first Urban Farm Summit in Washington, D.C., the idea is catching on like organics at Walmart.

The recent one-day event called, Sowing Seeds Here and Now, was organized by Engaged Community Offshoots (ECO), a fledgling non-profit urban farm based just outside D.C. in Prince George’s County, Maryland. The summit agenda spotlighted the reasons why urban farms are sprouting up all over: They increase food security by growing food locally. They give under-served urban neighborhoods access to fresh foods. They strengthen  local economies by keeping dollars circulating within the community. They engage consumers, who learn how food is grown. They reduce ‘food miles’ and fossil fuel use. And they create jobs.

Urban farms are growing more than food. They are growing community.

As a social enterprise consultant, I’m fascinated to watch new business models emerge. Nascent urban farmers are not only literally breaking new ground, but they are finding they enjoy competitive advantages over their rural counterparts. Buyers will pay a premium for custom-grown vegetables that can be picked and delivered the same day.

“I can walk in to a restaurant with a seed catalog and ask the chef what varieties of lettuce, zucchini, or beets he’d like me to grow, just for his menu,” explains Vinnie Bevivino, director of Urban Farming Operations at ECO. “He can also tell me when he wants delivery and I’ll synchronize my planting schedule with his seasonal menus. He won’t get that kind of customized service from a national produce chain.”

Yet to make their business work, urban farmers must contend with two challenges that rural farmers typically don’t face—accessing land and scaling operations large enough to be profitable. Urban land suitable for farming is expensive and, even when land is available it comes in smaller lot-sized parcels rather than in acres. Urban land is at such a premium that farmers have to get creative and grow more densely to make their business viable.

Innovators are finding a way to make urban farming work. Will Allen, the guru of urban farming and the creator of Growing Power in Milwaukee, has been able to grow enough food in 14 greenhouses sited on two acres of land in the middle of a food desert to feed 10,000 local residents. The non-profit turns millions of tons of food waste into compost to grow vegetables, and to feed Tilapia and Lake Perch in tanks. But even more impressive is Growing Power’s social return on investment: They include including engaging youth in work readiness, life skills, construction techniques, and writing skills; employing convicts for summer work; reducing crime in the neighborhood; and teaching adults from all over the world hands on urban farming.

Installing hoop houses at ECO

To spread urban farming, Growing Power offers an eight month training course. The Washington-based ECO staff, after completing it, is beginning to replicate such holistic practices as hoop houses (inexpensive structures made from curved tubular metal frame and covered with greenhouse plastic sheeting to grow food year round), rain catchment and drip irrigation systems for efficient watering, solar panels and anaerobic digesters that make electricity from waste.   They’re also starting closed-loop aquaculture, where plants filter waste from fish, and vermiculture, raising worms that turn food waste into nutrient-rich compost.

While operations can be replicated, ECO must figure out its own business model, tailored for its community’s needs, growing conditions and consumer market. ECO incorporated as a non-profit just six months ago. With grants and in-kind corporate support , the group has secured permission to use of county land just over the Washington DC border.

Vinnie explains how they make use of two small parcels:

We devote two acres just to make compost, turning 10 tons of food waste donated by Whole Foods and 30 cubic yards of wood chips donated by Pepco, our local utility company into 40 cubic yards of compost, which we will sell as well as use on our own farm.  On another half acre, we grow high-quality produce, fish and bee products to sell to local residents at farmers markets, food coops, restaurants, and public schools.

ECO just launched its Offshoots Farm Network. “The network is a group of interrelated agricultural enterprises established to train and employ our underserved community members to produce food for ourselves,” explains Christopher Washington, ECO’s Director of Business Operations. With a Kellogg Foundation grant secured by Crossroads Farmer’s Market, a farmer’s market located in Takoma Park, Maryland, ECO and the Offshoots Farm Network collaborate to help immigrant farmers. “We call this new generation of farmers ‘agripreneurs’ ”, says Christopher. The initial class of five is comprised  immigrants from Ethiopia and Latin American countries who were farmers in their home countries. Rose Sesero, one of the students,  explains why she entered the training program, “I am a hard working person, a fast learner and I would like to make a difference in my life. Also, I would like to help people to change their diet, by focusing on increasing vegetable consumption and having less meat. Back in Ethiopia I grew flowers as a hobby.”

Some students come with college degrees but may not speak English yet. They will learn how to navigate the business of farming in our society — by writing a business plan, selling at farmers markets, and  learning how to transact with SNAP and WIC (food stamps) forms of payment.

“Once they graduate, the agripreneurs can decide where they fit into the local food value chain. They might choose to continue working on ECO’s farm, or they could grow their own produce and sell it under the ECO brand label, or they might choose to strike out on their own,” Christopher says. “Whatever they do, we want to remain supportive.”

Washing lettuce at City Growers

Elsewhere, other models are being tested. Glynn Lloyd’s, City Growers LLC is an urban farm franchise business that Lloyd started in his home town of Roxbury, Massachusetts. “I wanted to address the interconnected issues of health, obesity, green jobs, and economic development,” he says. Last year, Glynn looked around his neighborhood and shook his head. “I saw a lot of vacant land, a lot of unemployed people, and an unmet demand for locally-grown food,” he recalls.

Glynn’s idea is to create a turn-key operation — but instead of a fast food chain, he is investing in training residents as farmers and turning vacant lots into urban farms. He’s improving the soil and installing hoop houses, irrigation, and fencing. By creating an urban farm social franchise, Glynn believes can eventually generate $60,000 per acre in revenue, while creating jobs and giving local control to the resident farmers. As a franchise, City Growers would take care of marketing, branding, sales, and quality control. This frees the farmers to focus on, well, farming. Glynn’s other business, City Fresh Foods Inc. , which he started with his brother Sheldon 15 years ago provides a ready market for processing the fresh produce and turning it into meals for Boston’s public schools, vertically integrating at least part of the local food system.

Glynn only launched City Growers this spring. He estimates that there are 800 acres of vacant land in the Boston area, but admits he’s facing hurdles around land acquisition. “On land owned by non-profits, we have to build consensus for using land as a farm. On private land, we have to challenge the current zoning laws that don’t allow farms, and on public land, officials are hesitant to encumber land that has development potential when eventually the economy improves.” Glynn says.  City Growers started with one-quarter of an acre of non-profit land in the middle of a Dorchester neighborhood and another 1-1/2 acres of land owned by private landowners in a neighboring town. Even though City Growers is a for-profit, the business has recently partnered with New Ecology, a non-profit to generate funding to support their social mission.

It’s much too early to tell which might prove the better business model for urban farming—ECO’s Agripreneurs or City Grower’s franchise. Some critics believe that urban farms won’t be viable in the long term if they depend on grants. Even Milwaukee-based Growing Power isn’t economically sustainable; it received $1 million in grants over the last five years to support its 40 full time and 40 part time staff, and it relies on 3,000 volunteers. Others say urban farms will never support a community’s food demand.

And yet re-localizing even part of our food system is about much more than providing food. How do we value creating more jobs, providing more fresh fruits and vegetables to underserved communities and reconnecting people more viscerally with their food? Glynn quotes Jared Diamond, the author of Collapse, who has written: “The rise and fall of a society starts with its food system.”

From small seedlings at ECO...big things may grow

Cities may not need urban farms to survive. But given the social, environmental and economic returns that urban food systems can deliver, we should find ways to nurture them to grow.

–

You can reach Cheryl at ckollin@verizon.net

Chances are, if you haven’t been living in a cave during 2010, you know something about the  iPad. A finger-friendly tablet from t Apple that runs iOS, the iPad builds upon the smaller mobile devices, like the iPod and iPhone, that have made Apple such a phenomenal  success in recent years.

Two key differences set the iPad apart. The first is its size. The iPhone and iPod Touch, with which it shares operating system and a library of applications, have only a 3.5 inch screen. The iPad has a 9.7 inch screen, which means that full-page documents, as well as entire books, are easily readable.

Suddenly a thin tablet with a touch screen, coupled with an impressive run time, becomes a real alternative to the pad and paper. Mass tablets of the past were simply not up to that task.

The second difference is this: I buy an iPad today. Being a big fan of tablets, I have followed their development, and I am even a long time user of the venerable TC1100 tablet. But the actual designs before the iPad were best used with a stylus, and definitely not designed for fingertip operation. Badly wanting a simple tablet designed for human hands, I have watched and anticipated so many, only to see them disappear into the vaporware ethers. The iPad is real.

Competition Is Good

Any other tablet that comes on the scene is going to be play catchup. That’s good, of course. Competition will force Apple, and others, to add features,  improve design, deliver greater capability or lower prices–or all of the above. This is where solar power could come into play.

Consider, as an example, another great technology upstart that once sent ripples through our lives. That  life-changing product? The lowly calculator.

When the calculator first came out, it was large, heavy, and required a lot of juice. You know, like laptops used to be. And over time, technology and innovation morphed the calculator from an expensive indispensable tool of the highest caliber to one that is cheap but gets the job done. In fact, a lot of checkbooks and notepads ship with a calculator mounted right to it–for free! And what is powering these inexpensive calculators? Solar energy.

Solar power has turned the calculator into a  tool that is always handy, and with power to spare.

Empowering the iPad

If solar power made the calculator as handy as a notepad, what could we expect to replace the notepad itself? The iPad and other soon-to-be-real tablets should be able to do the job rather well, so long as they are easy to use and always powered to go.

All we need to do is add a source of renewable energy that could keep the iPad always-on. Is it just a pipe dream to think that an iPad could sustain abd power itself, without the need for a charge? Maybe not.

Apple is always busy developing its next product; patents are part of that process. Patent Application number 20100079387, published April 2010 (which encompasses Fig. 10, left),  may reveal what the company has in mind. The application, entitled “Integrated Touch Sensor and Solar Assembly”, details the mechanics of just such a device. And does Apple have a device that would work well with a nice big screen to act as combination human interface / solar collector? Why yes they do, and it’s called an iPad.

The signs indicate that notoriously-secretive Apple is working on solar powered devices. For all we know they already have prototypes. While I sincerely doubt that we will see such a product in 2010 (or 2011), I would not be surprised to see it on the market soon after that. Just in time to leapfrog the competition once again.

By the time the solar power system is ready for market, chances are that the rest of the device will have been made cheap enough to make it practical for millions more users.

After all, the mechanical hard drive has already been replaced, and the circuit board in an iPad is small, saving room for the battery. Everything seems to be lining up for the product to be possible. The world needs a real alternative to the tree consuming notepads. We can’t have a solar-powered iPad soon enough.

Note from Marc: For more technical detail on the patent, see this post at Patently Apple.

Melissa Schweisguth photo credit: TIME

This is third guest post on eco-friendly running from Melissa Schweisguth. (Here’s the first, on clothing and shoes, and the second, about racing, training and tech.) I’m featuring Melissa’s post because running and the environment are two of my passions, and she’s done a beautiful job of marrying the two.

Melissa is a 36-year-old fellow sustainability professional and writer who also enjoys running. She puts me to shame, and not just because she clocked an impressive 3:11:07 in the Eugene (Oregon) Marathon this year. Melissa hasn’t thrown anything into a landfill since 2006, which earned her notice in Time magazine (due to non-consumerism and creative reuse.). She thrives on an organic, whole foods, locally-based and almost exclusively vegan diet, (as does famed ultra runner Scott Jurek). She’s been working on improving her running footprint to avoid trampling people or planet and has written three blogposts on running “au naturel” for her blog, Living Acoustically, which she’s kindly agreed to let me share here.  I don’t expect most runners to be as “green” as Melissa, but my hope is that she’ll inspire you, whether you run or not, as she has inspired me to make a change or two in your lives. When she isn’t running, Melissa works a freelance writer and consultant on sustainability issues and media relations, and as director of membership and development for the Food Trade Sustainability Leadership Association.

Here’s my last post about my efforts to maximize and improve running performance while honoring a guiding principle that defines sustainability for me: “live simply so that others may simply live.”

As noted…This is being shared for informational purposes only and not intended to be preachy or judgmental, as neither is my style. We all have different backgrounds and resource demands in our lives, and I’m the first to admit there are many things I can improve!

Food

I grew up eating home-cooked whole food, much of it homegrown organic, and eat exclusively organic whole foods sourced as locally as possible now, and fuel my runs the same way. When I trained for and ran my first race, a marathon, in 2000, so-called energy bars, gels, etc. were emerging and unknown to me. Oatmeal with nuts and raisins worked well enough for me to train for and finish that marathon in 3:39:30.

Clif bars greeted me at the finish line and I had two jobs that routed free samples my way so I started to eat them periodically before long runs and longer races (with the trusty oatmeal) and later added Clif Shots/Bloks/Moons moons for some long runs and races. After deciding to save my trash for a year and realizing the wrappers made up quite a bit of my waste, I made a tote bag from the wrappers, returned to just oatmeal and started making my own energy gels (rice syrup, honey, molasses, cacao powder, salt –provides key electrolytes: sodium, potassium, magnesium, with an initial kick and sustained energy from sweeteners with different glucose/fructose ratios).

All ingredients are from my food co-op’s bulk section, except rice syrup (jar), making for 100% organic shots with no packaging waste for 20 cents each versus $1 or more for packaged ones. I mix with water and put in plastic bottles (#2), not ideal but haven’t found a workable metal one yet. They’re simple to make, flavors can be customized, no need to take water separately and squeeze bottle is easier, faster and cleaner to deal with than packets. For caffeine, add instant coffee or eat coffee beans or chocolate-covered coffee beans.

After running a marathon (3:11:07), a trail 50k (4:53) and some shorter races (10-mi 1:04:30; hilly 6 mi 38:22) fueled by these, generally improving (NB: times listed for context, not self-promotion), I can say they work as well or better than store-bought. People have different needs and preferences. Check sweetener composition (gel recipes, too) and nutritional data to find what works best.

For solid food on runs, there are lots of energy bar recipes online and many long-distance runners eat real food for training/racing and share info online. (Scott Jurek’s a good one to follow: blog, twitter.) Pitted dates stuffed with cacao nibs and nuts are an energizing snack, and a cheaper, no-waste version of a Clif Nectar or Lara bar.

Beyond my anecdotes, there’s plenty of evidence that no-frills sustenance suffices. Before special ‘performance enhancing’ products existed, elite runners performed incredibly well with real food, honey, water, salt tablets and the like. Today, the Tarahumara, made famous in the book ‘Born to Run,’ still stay fueled with cornmeal and water and hold their own against technically-fortified elites. The book birthed a growing barefoot running movement, but didn’t ignite an all-out embrace of what one might call “organic” or “au natural” running. Curious, since the Tarahumara don’t rely on any of today’s must-have synthetic, miracle-laden “food,” drinks and gear.

For those not inclined to make gels, organic products such as GloryBee’s Liquid Gold and Clif Shots and Blocks are good options. Liquid Gold is 100% organic and comes in a #5 plastic reusable bottle that can be recycled in some localities. (Thisgel recipe looks close to Liquid Gold. Regular molasses works, just use more to get the potassium level you want and reduce honey accordingly. I found this too sweet and energy was less sustained than rice syrup.) Clif Shot is 90% organic and Bloks are 95% organic, with packaging that generally isn’t recyclable locally, though they have a recycling program for bar wrappers.

Water + Drink

I never got into bottled water and drink unfiltered tap water since local supplies have good testing reports (free, public info – check them and save the cost and waste of filters). For pre- and post-race water, I bring my own filled, reusable metal bottles since some races have only bottled water. I used to run with a reusable plastic water bottle but switched to stainless steel for my larger sizes to avoid toxins that leach from plastic and eliminate petroleum-based materials. I still use plastic bottles (#2) for smaller sizes and should get metal replacements. No need for a special ‘hydration pack’ – these fit in an old money belt/waist pack, shorts pockets or pockets I sewed on my running top. For those who like handheld bottles, ponytail holders, large produce rubber bands or a loop of elastic work with less weight than a special bottle holder.

During races, I used to keep cups from aid stations and compost them but that was clunky so I started carrying my own collapsible cup. This doesn’t slow me down any more than taking a single-use cup.

I don’t use sports drinks but for those so inclined, organic powdered mixes like Clif Bar’s electrolyte drink mix are a good option, choosing the bulk canister versus packets.

All for now…happy trails!

Note from Marc: Happy trails to you, too, Melissa! Thanks so much for sharing.

Melissa Schweisguth photo credit: TIME/Bob Pennell

This is second of three guest posts on eco-friendly running from Melissa Schweisguth. (Here’s the first, on clothing and shoes. Tomorrow she’ll write about food and drink.) I’m featuring Melissa’s post because running and the environment are two of my passions, and she’s done a beautiful job of marrying the two.

Melissa is a 36-year-old fellow sustainability professional and writer who also enjoys running. She puts me to shame, and not just because she clocked an impressive 3:11:07 in the Eugene (Oregon) Marathon this year. Melissa hasn’t thrown anything into a landfill since 2006, which earned her notice in Time magazine (due to non-consumerism and creative reuse.). She thrives on an organic, whole foods, locally-based and almost exclusively vegan diet, (as does famed ultra runner Scott Jurek). She’s been working on improving her running footprint to avoid trampling people or planet and has written three blogposts on running “au naturel” for her blog, Living Acoustically, which she’s kindly agreed to let me share here.  I don’t expect most runners to be as “green” as Melissa, but my hope is that she’ll inspire you, whether you run or not, as she has inspired me to make a change or two in your lives. When she isn’t running, Melissa works a freelance writer and consultant on socially responsible business and media relations, and as director of membership and development for the Food Trade Sustainability Leadership Association.

This is the second post about my efforts to maximize and improve running performance while honoring a guiding principle that defines sustainability to me: “live simply so that others may simply live.” As noted…This is being shared for informational purposes only and not intended to be preachy or judgmental, as neither is my style. We all have different backgrounds and resource demands in our lives, and I’m the first to admit there are many things I can improve!

Racing

When choosing races, my inclination is to stay as local (for simplicity and cost rather than environmental reasons), where I can bike or jog to the starting line. (I also start runs from home or bike to a park 1 mile away.) When travel is involved, carpooling is a good solution, and of course public transit, where available. I volunteer to help set up and handle recycling at local race, and have started to share tips for making races greener, from the Runners World/Nature’s Path Green Team.

Races usually involve freebies, t-shirts, race numbers and medals. I generally decline the bag and swag, being stuff I wouldn’t use anyway and small sample sizes with a lot of packaging waste.

If shirts are optional, I decline to get one. Otherwise, I give it to my dad to wear in the garden or volunteering for Meals on Wheels to share new stories with his clients. Old shirts can easily be made into reusable tote bags. Cut off the sleeves and sew up the bottom and sides. Sew the sleeves together on the diagonals, sew across the bottom and attach inside the neckline to make a pocket (and no waste). Make handles with two old shoelaces, strung inside the neckline on alternating sides (for a drawstring closure). You can also just zig zag the cut arm holes instead of sewing them fully closed to make handles, but the bag will have less capacity.

Race numbers can be recycled through some mail-back programs, but you can also make a cool bag and other things out of them. Awards can be donated to organizations that reuse them give for awards and encouragement. Check out Medals4Mettle, ask local trophy shops if they know of programs in your area or give them to someone who’s inspired you. I used to give mine to my Grandma, a champion and inspiration for me.

Training + Tech

Enhanced watches, garmins, iPod +, iPhones with GPS, heart rate monitors and other tech items are favorite runner toys. Call me a Luddite but I just use the stopwatch on my geriatric sports watch for timing and take 10 seconds to measure my heart rate if so inclined.

For regular runs, I just settle into a pace that feels challenging yet maintainable for the conditions. For intervals, tempo runs, etc., I run on a bike path with quarter-mile markers to gauge speed (The McMillan Pace Calculator is a good tool to pick a pace). My parents were math teachers and I listened to Multiplication Rock a lot as kid, so mentally calculating my pace and progress against goal time is second nature, and it helps pass time.

My body is pretty good at hitting a steady, challenging training speed and finding a good race pace, which I attribute to years of piano, speed training and a bit of great coaching from runner friends Ralph & Lois (Brommer, “PA Hall of Famer“) Duquette (who got me into speed training initially, another natural performance enhancer).

I used to depend more on my watch for pacing but after my battery died at the beginning of a marathon with no one calling time at the mile markers, I found myself challenged to maintain a goal pace I knew I was capable of based on training and realized the need to focus on being able to ‘feel’ my pace better. Greg McMillan has a great article on calibrating ‘inner GPS.’

iPod…don’t have one but wouldn’t run with one for safety reasons. Best to be able to hear the rejuvenating and wise symphony trails offer, as well as bigger wildlife, mountain bikers, cars, etc. sharing various terrain.

Till next time…Happy trails, and may we tread lightly!

Melissa Schweisguth photo credit: TIME

Two of my passions are running and the environment. I do my best to marry them: I’ve recycled my old running shoes. I currently run in Vibram FiveFinger “barefoot” shoes, which are light weight and last a long time. I mix my own Gatorade from a 3 lb. 3 oz. can of powder, which saves plastic bottles. But I also use high tech equipment (Garmin GPS, Monster headphones, iPod shuffle), own dozens of T-shirts from races that are stuffed in a closet and drive 2-3 miles most days just to get to the place where I start my run. Over the years I’ve flown to marathons in Chicago, San Diego, Big Sur and Athens, Greece.

Melissa Schweisguth is a 36-year-old fellow sustainability professional and writer who also enjoys running. She puts me to shame, and not just because she clocked an impressive 3:11:07 in the Eugene (Oregon) Marathon this year. Melissa hasn’t thrown anything into a landfill since 2006, which earned her notice in Time magazine (due to non-consumerism and creative reuse.). She thrives on an organic, whole foods, locally-based and almost exclusively vegan diet, (as does famed ultra runner Scott Jurek). She’s been working on improving her running footprint to avoid trampling people or planet and has written three blogposts on running “au naturel” for her blog, Living Acoustically, which she’s kindly agreed to let me share here.  I don’t expect most runners to be as “green” as Melissa, but my hope is that she’ll inspire you, whether you run or not, as she has inspired me to make a change or two in your lives. When she isn’t running, Melissa works a freelance writer and consultant on sustainability issues and media relations, and as director of membership and development for the Food Trade Sustainability Leadership Association. Here’s her first post, about clothing and shoes:

Sometimes we need new, ready-made things, but, more often, we can reuse, buy used, or make something easily, and get a better, cheaper, more healthful product. It’s easy to forget this since marketers are skilled at wooing us, we’re encouraged to seek upward mobility and novelty, and our culture has devalued making things ourselves: gardening, basic cooking and the like.

While running, I’ve sought to maximize and improve performance while honoring a guiding principle that defines sustainability to me: “live simply so that others may simply live.” (Or, following this blog’s theme, unplug from consumerism and run acoustically.) Below are examples of things I do, some long term and some more recent changes. This is being shared for informational purposes only; it’s not intended to be preachy or judgmental, as that’s not my style. We all have different backgrounds and resource demands in our lives, and I’m the first to admit there are many things I can improve!

Clothing

When I started running, “technical” fabrics and performance-optimizing clothing weren’t on the market. I wore basic clothing and never really bought into the marketing around newfangled stuff. More apparel uses fabrics marketed as environmentally friendly, such as organic cotton, wool, bamboo, hemp and recycled poly, which are great if new things are needed. However, the most sustainable choices are items we have or can get used, which also saves money. I’ve found great shorts, tops and running tights at thrift stores and yard sales. Last fall, arm sleeves made of bamboo grabbed my interest but I made my own from old kids’ leggings (super easy) and a tank top (a bit more work). Old nylons and wool socks also do the job with no sewing required. Retired apparel can be donated if still in good shape or used to stuff pillows, stuffed animals, etc.

Running bras and socks I prefer new, so I look for durable, responsibly made products, sourced and manufactured as close as possible. Patagonia’s recycled poly bra has held up (no pun intended) for more than two years and thousands of miles. I hand wash it in shower water and air dry it (like the rest of my running clothes), which probably helps. For socks, I look for recycled poly and organic natural fibers. “Eco-friendly” materials aren’t guaranteed to be grown, harvested or manufactured with good labor or environmental practices. Bamboo may be grown on deforested rainforest and processed with harsh chemicals, for examples, and sweatshops are a reality in the U.S. and abroad. More businesses are sharing supplier information (check websites) so it’s easier to size up options. Companies that aren’t transparent lose the race with me.

Shoes

While some may say barefoot running is the most environmentally friendly way to go go go, I like wearing shoes and think they’re generally better new. This is one of the more challenging areas since options are limited and those don’t fit every foot or situation.

For road running, Brooks’ Green Silence is marketed as the greenest option on the market, with 60% recycled content, biodegradable components, less materials, and other positive attributes. Brooks has several environmental initiatives and a great supplier responsibility program. Check out an article I wrote on the shoe and company here.

My preferred terrain is mountain trail. Brooks’ Cascadia is a great, durable trail shoe with recycled content and a biodegradable midsole, though a bit heavy for me. I like the New Balance 100, which is light and thus saves on materials but otherwise not distinct in terms of sustainability. New Balance retains some US manufacturing presence and has good environmental practices. They also sponsor ultrarunner Kyle Skaggs, who’s an organic farmer, which gets big points from me.

Old shoes are great for walking and hiking after their life in the fast lane ends. They can also be donated for reuse or recycled, and many stores and races collect them for such programs. I started planting things in them to extend their useful life and try to close the loop on my end.

Note from Marc: Melissa gives new meaning to the words shoe tree…

Tomorrow: Racing, training and technology

Today’s guest post comes from Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb of Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation in Bethesda, Md.

Fred is my rabbi, and he’s a great guy; he was “green” before green was cool. In 19990, during his  junior year at Brandeis, Fred set off on a 3,300-mile walk from Los Angeles to New York as part of a project called the Global Walk for a Livable World. Today, he serves on the national boards of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL) and as Chair of Greater Washington Interfaith Power & Light. Fred believes, as I do, that clergy of all faiths can and should play a greater role when it comes to teaching people about the environment, and the impact of their consumption.

This is a letter that Fred wrote last spring in the Adat Shalom newsletter under the headline “You Can’t Take It With You”:

Recently, while wrapping up the Book of Leviticus, we read Parashat Behar. This Torah portion is basically one chapter, Lev. 25 — and it’s at the very top of my list of favorite biblical passages. Behar outlines the every-seven-year Sabbatical (Shmita) during which the fields lie fallow, and the every-fiftieth-year Jubilee (Yovel) when debts are forgiven, slaves are freed, and land is returned to its original owner. It’s the Jewish source for the notion that “you can’t take it with you”.

Leaving aside the scholarly debate over how thoroughly these teachings were practiced and enforced during Temple times, as a values statement there are many vital messages for us today in this teaching, from the political to the personal. Four short examples:

Economic: What a great balancing act the Yovel/Jubilee is, between unrealistic communism and unbridled capitalism! The Torah is way ahead of modern society in suggesting a middle way — a way that preserves people’s personal incentive to work hard and get ahead (and thus advance society as a whole), while recognizing that imbalances accrue across the generations and becoming self-replicating after a time. Be capitalist for a whole generation, but every fifty years level the playing  field. The implications of this value system for our household economics are enormous, since Judaism teaches that you can’t take it with you — and oughtn’t leave it all for the few lucky enough to be
your heirs, either. [MG: This suggests that the authors of the Torah would agree with former Treausury Secy. Robert Rubin, union leader Richard Trumka, hedge fund guru Julian Robertson and heiress Abigail Disney that we should restore the estate tax.)

Ecological: In our chapter we are commanded: “you shall not sell the land beyond reclaim, for the land is Mine; you are strangers and sojourners with Me.” This is the consciousness that the world so desperately needs now — the land is not ours, and our land use decisions need to take a Higher Power into account.

Plus a bonus:  Would you believe a plug for sustainable agriculture, as in letting your  fields lie fallow every so often to re-fix nitrogen into the soil and to prevent erosion? It’s right there in the Torah! You can’t take it with you — but you can leave a lot of damage behind you if you’re not careful.

Energetic: As the land needs a rest every seventh year, so does the farmer, plantation owner and migrant fruit-picker alike, the Torah goes out of its way to remind us. And so do we. Why has ‘sabbatical’ been retained only in academia and religion, when everyone needs and deserves a chance to step back from their day-to-day work, and to recharge their batteries?
Shabbaton/sabbatical is a value for us all. You can’t take it with you – but while you’re here you can refocus periodically on what really matters, and recharge so that you do it better going forward.

Emotional/spiritual: As in macro-economics, so in the inner realm — the Jubilee reminds us that the goal of life is not to accrue ‘stuff’ and stocks and savings, but wisdom and friendship and meaning. I had occasion to offer a eulogy during the week of parashat Behar for a lawyer who happened to work on estate issues, but more importantly was a beloved dad and grandfather, husband and friend. And this was the upshot: you can’t take it with you. Important as his work was, the Torah reminds us that all of life is one big estate-planning exercise. All ‘things’ depreciate; it’s only a matter of time before we give it all back, one way or another. But a life well-lived is of enduring value, and the love and goodwill generated in that lifetime does in fact continue beyond our numbered days.

You can’t take it with you — but you can leave a legacy of love.

The decision is ours to make, with every priority we set and every bit of time we allocate. Remember, every minute of every day — we don’t take it with us, but we do make a difference.

In between, by coincidence–or perhaps not–I stumbled across a couple of NPR interviews. Diane Rehm talked with Dr. Herbert Benson of Harvard Medical School about his new book, Relaxation Revolution, and Terry Gross of Fresh Air interviewed Matt Richtel of The New York Times about his excellent series of stories, called Your Brain on Computers, which explores how digital media is changing our lives, our culture and, yes, our brains. The interviews were so compelling, and so timely, that I listened to both programs, in full, this morning. (They’re available on iTunes.)

Both were, in a way, about the same thing: how stressing the brain affects health. And while many things are more stressful than being “always on,” facing  tight deadlines and being nagged by that feeling that you haven’t checked your email, oh, in the last 45 minutes,  most of us will never go to war or perform surgery, so these are the of stresses that touch us every day. They can literally be deadly–Richtel won a Pulitzer Prize this year for his terrific series of stories, Driven to Distraction, about the risks of talking and texting behind the wheel. (One of my very top pet peeves is people who talk on the phone while driving.)

Matt Richtel

Richtel had some fascinating things to say about people (and you know who you are) who can’t sit with their own thoughts for even a few minutes while standing on line at the supermarket or coffee shop, and have to pull out their smart phone to check email or play a game. Constantly being barraged by information, it turns out, may make it more difficult for us to absorb and remember things; the brain, it seems, may need downtime to recharge itself, even if it’s only a few minutes a day. He also said (and this makes total sense to me) that being connected all the time gets in the way of daydreaming and “boredom,” where many of our most creative thoughts occur. (I try to occasionally drive my car without the radio on, and my mind sometimes takes me to interesting place.)

Richtel also talked about why we need vacations, and in particular about an excellent story he wrote about a trip he took with a group of brain scientists who went off the grid  for a few days. Scientists, it turns out, are starting to study what happens when we step away from our devices and rest our brains.

Dr. Herbert Benson

Benson, who is in his mid-1970s, is a pioneer of mind-body research. His book, The Relaxation Response, was a best-seller in the 1970s, and he argues that all of us would enjoy better health if we could find 10-20 minutes a day of quiet time–meditation, yoga, prayer. I’ve never been able to maintain a meditation practice (running’s the closest thing) but I have no doubt that this is true. Many successful and busy business people, notably Ricardo Levy, who is very wise on this topic, carve out quiet time every day.

None of this will come as news to people steeped in Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism and, probably, a bunch of other religions with which I am less familiar. Buddhists understand the value of quieting the mind. Practicing Christians and Jews observe a day of rest. There are lots of good books about this but let me plug Sabbath Sense: A Spiritual Antidote for the Overworked by my friend Donna Schaper, a United Church of Christ minister.

What does all this have to do with sustainability? Well, at the most superficial level, we all need rest to keep doing what we are doing. Being “always” on is ultimately unsustainable. More that that, the idea of resting and restoring (the earth, your workforce) are part of a sustainable business practice.

So I will head off on vacation with a clean conscience and the hope that I can mostly stay off email. (AT&T absurdly high international data rates will help; my wife and I are going to Italy.) I won’t be blogging, but I’ve arranged for several guest bloggers to take over for the next week or so. Later this week, you’ll be hearing from Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb who will share some ancient wisdom on sustainability. I’ll be back after Labor Day–yet another reminder that most of us need to build more down time into our lives.

Darell Hammond of KABOOM!

Fifteen years ago, Darell Hammond, a 24-year-old college dropout who was raised in group home outside of Chicago, had an idea. He wanted to build playgrounds for kids who needed a place to play. He started with a playground in southeast Washington, D.C., raising money from the Home Depot Foundation and others to pay for the job, and assembling a group of volunteers to do the work. Then he built another. And another. Since then, KaBOOM!, the nonprofit that he started  in 1996 (again with help from Home Depot, which remains a supporter to this day), has built 1,800 playgrounds across America, more than anyone. Lately KaBOOM! has done something even more unusual–it upended its business model, and decided to share everything it has learned about play and playgrounds, which happens to be quite a lot, with the rest of the world.

“We decided to open-source our model online,” Darell told me recently, when we met in the group’s playful surroundings–toys are scattered everywhere–on Connecticut Avenue in northwest Washington. “We realized we were a drop in the bucket, when compared to the demand.”

I’d run across Darell now and then over the years, but we’d never sat down to talk until then. He’s an impressive guy and, more importantly, he has built an impressive and deep organization. KaBOOM! brought in about $21 million in revenues last year, and it has a staff of about 75 people, including former senior executives from Ben & Jerry’s, U.S. Food Service, and Discovery Communications’ Animal Planet. More important, KABOOM! built 162 playgrounds last year, and mustered 40,880 volunteers to do so.

In every case, people from the neighborhood where the playground is located play get deeply involved in planning and building it. Typically, they spend three months planning and designing the space, involving kids and adults,  before as few as 200 and as many as 1,200 people gather to construct the playground in a single day. “Organized chaos,” Darell calls it. What happens next matters, too: Neighorbood groups often build a second playground, or organize a crime-watch group, or lobby a city for better services.

“Right from the building, we weren’t just about building playgrounds,” Darell says. “We were about building community. We use the playground as a mechanism to build social capital. It’s Trojan Horse.” (His thinking around empowering communities was influenced by studies he did with the Asset-Based Community Development Institute at Northwestern Univeristy, which has studied KaBOOM!)

You probably don’t need to be persuaded that America needs more playgrounds. As KaBOOM! explains:

Play is on the decline throughout America. Not enough playspaces are being built, and those that exist are often in disrepair. Fears surrounding lawsuits and safety are trumping common sense, resulting in sterile, uninspired play environments. Recess is being eliminated from our nation’s schools. Kids are overscheduled, and in their free time, many choose to stay indoors, lulled by television, computers and video games.

But until I sat down with Darell, I didn’t realize how much demand there is for the work done by KaBOOM! The organization got about 14,000 requests — 14,000! — for playgrounds last year. Most came from individual parents or kids, but many came from community groups, schools, PTAs, churches or businesses with the capacity to get the job done. Kaboom built hundreds of playgrounds; thousands were needed.

This is where KaBOOM!’s new model came into play. Back in 2004, Darell was preparing to get married when he came upon The Wedding Channel, a compendium of resources about weddings. Why, he wondered, couldn’t KaBOOM! do something similar for playgrounds?

According to the Monitor Institute, which produced  a report about KaBOOM! (available here), the nonprofit had already “documented and codified its building processes, published handbooks and developed in-person training sessions for local leaders.” Hammond had seen Meetup help people organize themselves, and he admired the open-source software movement. But KaBOOM! was taking the Web 2.0 to the next level, he explained:

We saw no examples of nonprofits using online platforms to empower people to self-organize around the nonprofit’s own model for community change. But to us, it felt like the natural next step.

To get the project going, Darell managed to raise $6 million from the Omidyar Network, a “philanthropic investment firm” that is market-friendly and all about empowering individuals. Early results of the open-source model are very promising. Last year, for instance, KaBOOM! says it provided help online that helped get 1,800 playgrounds, much of it practical advice about things like vendors of playground. Omidyar has given another $9 million to KaBOOM!

Besides going open-source, KaBOOM! has been going green, Darell told me. The group wants to build playgrounds with “less equipment and more nature,” in part because that’s what research shows kids enjoy. They did one playground in Hawaii with no equipment at all. “Everything on the property was native from Hawaii, and reclaimed instead of new,” he said.

Without corporate support, KaBOOM! would be nowhere. The Home Depot Foundation has been its best ally, giving a total of about $55 million. Other corporate funders include Kraft, 24-Hour Fitness, Foresters (a Canadian insurance company), Huggies, JetBlue, KoolAid, Mutual of Omaha and MetLife, the NBA, Nestle and Giant/Stop & Shop. Businesses typically pay all the costs of building a playground, and KaBOOM! manages the project and engages the neighborhood.

This weekend, on the 5th anniversary of Hurricana Katrina, KaBOOM! will build its 135th and 136th playgrounds in the gulf since the storms. Its funders there include Jim and Donna Barksdale, The Home Depot Foundation and Marriott International, which has worked with KaBOOM! before. Joe Blanchek, general manager of the New Orleans Marriott convention center, told me by email:

I truly enjoyed watching the children show their creativity by drawing their dream playground.  There is a lot of excitement in the room when the kids get out the crayons and start “designing”….Then [building the playground]  is truly a rewarding experience for all.  It is great to have the children watch you with wide eyes as they see their future playground coming together!

Darell will be there, of course; he gets to about one playground build per month, but he takes even greater satisfaction in knowing that more work than ever is getting done without him. “We want to go further and faster,” he said.

Here’s a cool time-lapse video of KaBOOM! and Marriott, building a playground in New Orleans. Enjoy!

Improbable? Sure.

Impossible? Perhaps not.

An important conversation to start? Absolutely.

So, at least, says Aron Cramer, the CEO of Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), a nonprofit association of companies, whose mission is to promote a just and sustainable world.

“The American model of consumption cannot be extended to the entire world, and won’t be, because the planet simply can’t support it,” Aron told me, when we spoke by phone the other day. Yet billions of people around the world want to improve their standard of living. Figuring out how they can enjoy a better life, without destroying the environment, “is the mother of all innovation challenges,” Aron says,

Last month, BSR published a 26-page report called The New Frontier in Sustainability: The Business Opportunity in Tackling Sustainable Consumption [PDF, free download). It’s an attempt to get business leaders to think about what sustainable consumption might look like.

The topic “has been the third rail of sustainability politics,” Aron told me, but he added, with his usual optimism, that “more companies are ready to have this discussion.”

If nothing else, the report makes clear the urgency of the issue. Citing a WWF report [PDF], it says:

By recent estimates, our global footprint now exceeds the world’s capacity to regenerate by about 30 percent, and if our current demands continue, by 2030 we will need the equivalent of two planets to maintain our lifestyles.

And yet:

…countless people have insufficient access to basic needs like food, clean water, and adequate shelter, and they also lack access to the resources they need to improve their lives. In 2006, the 1.2 billion people in the OECD countries had an average annual income per capita of US$30,580, while the 5.4 billion people in the rest of the world earned an average of US$3,130. Of those, 19 percent suffer from hunger, 28 percent are drinking polluted water, and 29 percent are illiterate.7 More than 2 billion people continue to rely on less than US$2 per day to meet their needs.

The question is, what business opportunities, if any,  await companies that figure out how to give poor and middle class people what they want in a sustainable way?

The report points towards a few:

In fast growing emerging markets, it says, companies can create “different ways to improve well being” that enable “the leapfrogging of resource-intensive infrastructure in favor of light materials and digital services.”

Second, sustainable consumption also creates market opportunities for companies that use information technology to deliver positive outcomes for consumers.” Examples: Smart buildings, smart homes, a smart grid.

Third, companies have an opportunity to appeal to “the rising generation of consumers” who are “likelier to favor products whose sustainability attributes are clear.”

Finally, the report says, “embracing sustainable consumption provides a shield against price volatility and potential supply shortages of key commodities”

I asked Aron for examples of companies that are thinking, or even better, acting along these lines. Utility companies like PG&E and Southern California Edison are encouraging conservation and efficiency, he said. True enough, but they’re in a unique position—regulators in California have “decoupled” their profits from sales, so unlike most businesses, the power companies can make more  by selling less.

Chevron, he noted, has an advertising campaign called “Will you join us?” that encourages conservation. “They’ve spent a lot of money to try to convince consumers to use less gasoline,” he said.

Other companies exploring what sustainable consumption might mean include eBay, which wants people to buy used stuff, rather than new, for obvious reasons, and Zipcar, which promotes car sharing. Best Buy sees an opportunity in helping its customers to be more efficient and save money. (See Why eBay is a Green Giant and Best Buy wants your electronic junk) Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iTunes dematerialize books and music. Other companies, meanwhile, are promoting reuse and recycling, or trying to transform products into services: Interface, Recycle Bank and Herman Miller, among others, come to mind.

But, IMHO, that doesn’t add up to much—not yet, anyway. Chevron’s conservation campaign is mostly marketing. Admirable as they are, EBay and Zipcar have unique business models. Cradle-to-cradle design is a niche, not a movement.

I hope Aron and BSR prove me wrong—really, I do—but I don’t think we should count on corporate America, or small business, for that matter, to drive sustainable consumption. Companies can help us consume smarter; clearly there’s a business opportunity in energy efficiency,  and an even bigger one in renewable energy, particularly if governments tax or limit carbon emissions.

But consuming smarter goes only so far.  We also have to consume less of just about everything, and that bumps up squarely against the business imperative, which is to sell more of just about everything, including a whole lots of crap that adds little or nothing of value to the world. If you doubt it,  tour the nearest mall.

So who will lead the way? Religious leaders, we’d hope. Educators, from kindergarten through college. Parents, or more likely children. More to come on this in the next couple of weeks—including, when I take off on vacation next week, one guest blogpost from an eco-rabbi and another from a woman who hasn’t thrown anything into a landfill since 2006.

• -Never made a profit.
• -Piled up  losses of $44 million since going public in 2007.
• -Replaced its CEO because he was paid both as an employee and independent contractor.
• -Seen its stock tumble from $6 to 70 cents a share since going public in 2007

Actually, you’ve already invested. The company is called ZBB Energy, and it’s seeking to commercial zinc-bromide technology developed in Australia back in the 1980s. This week,  President Obama visited its U.S. headquarters in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. According to the White House:

ZBB Energy Corporation is using $1.3 million in Recovery Act State Energy Program loans to fund a $4.5 million factory renovation to triple their capacity to manufacture flow batteries and power systems.  As a result, the company has already retained a dozen workers and will hire about 80 new workers over time.

“Companies like this,” the president said, “are showing us how manufacturing can come back right here in the United States of America, right back here to Wisconsin.”

Well, maybe–but the company will have to find some customers and generate some profits for its  comeback to be meaningful. The $1.3 million may sound like pocket change, and it is, but ZBB also has secured a $14.68 million Recovery Act 48c Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit to build a new factory. It’s one of 183 projects in 43 states to get $2.3 billion in Recovery Act tax credits for clean energy manufacturing projects. The Wall Street Journal editorialized about ZBB today under the headline Uncle Sam, Venture Capitalist.

Meanwhile, another energy-related business in Wisconsin is enjoying an Obama administration subsidy–and this time, the controversy is being generated by the left. Bucyrus, which is based in South Milwaukee, manufactures mining equipment. Unlike ZBB, it doesn’t need government help to survive; the company’s equipment helped excavate the Panama Canal and it generated $2.6 billion in revenue and $312 million in net income last year.

The controversery has arisen because the Export-Import Bank of the United States is moving forward with a $600-million loan guarantee to support the sale and export of Bucyrus mining equipment to a company called Sasan Power Ltd., for a 3,960 megawatt (meaning very big) coal-fired power plant in Madhya Pradesh, India. You read that right–while it’s becoming increasing difficult, thank goodness, to build new, polluting coal plants in the U.S., your government is supporting the construction of a coal plant in India. It agreed to go forward when the project’s backer, Reliance Power, agreed to develop a 250 megawatt renewable energy facility as well.  The Ex-Im Bank, as it’s known, is also considering backing a 4,800 megawatt coal-fired plant in South Africa.

The rationale for the government loan guarantee is, of course, jobs. In a news release, Bucyrus CEO Tim Sullivan praised Wisconsin’s governor, senators and congresspeople for helping to persuade the Ex-Im bank–which initially turned down the loan for environmental reasons–to reverse itself. “The nearly 1,000 U.S. jobs supported by the project include over 300 family-supporting jobs in the Milwaukee region and approximately 650 additional U.S. jobs in Bucyrus’ supply chain,” the company said.

But jobs at what price? Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club and a group called Pacific Environment all oppose the loan because of the new plant will be one of the largest sources of global warming pollutants on earth. Doug Norlen of Pacific Environment said:

The Ex-Im Bank’s ongoing fossil fuel binge indicates a clear unwillingness of the agency to adhere to Congressional climate change directives and systemic bias towards financing fossil fuel projects.

Writing at Huffington Post, Michelle Chan of Friends of the Earth says:

What’s particularly worrying is the precedent that this investment will create. The Sasan deal was the first major test of Exim’s new carbon policy (which resulted from a 2002 lawsuit that Friends of the Earth filed in response to the agency’s failure to consider the greenhouse gas implications of its financing activities). Although the policy is not nearly as robust as Friends of the Earth would have hoped, it does empower the Exim Board to reject applications at an early stage because of their carbon emissions. The fact that congressional and White House pressure caused Exim to reverse course on a decision made under this new policy does not bode well for the other four big coal deals in the Exim pipeline, including the 4,800 megawatt Kusile coal power project in South Africa, which would emit 30.5 million tons of carbon dioxide annually.

Needless to say, ZBB Energy will have to make a whole lot of clean energy storage devices to offset the emissions of big coal plants in India and South Africa, which, to be fair, will probably deliver electricity to lots of people who need it.

What’s most worrisome here is the big picture: The Obama administration, which already owns big chunks of GM, Chrysler and Wall Street, is during a time of record budget deficits intervening in ever-more specific ways in the economy. This is industrial policy at its worst, picking winners and losers, usually in the name of jobs, whether green or in the case of Bucyrus, coal-black. Funny thing, but these loans and grants also have a way of flowing towards politically-connected projects in swing states.

This isn’t to say that the government should keep its hands off the energy business. That’s a pipe dream, pun intended. But if the administration invested lots more in basic energy research and higher education, enacted a stiff  revenue-neutral carbon tax and used the proceeds to reduce payroll taxes, its chances of creating sustainable jobs would be a lot greater. There’d be fewer ribbon-cuttings, for sure, but more prosperity and less waste.