This weekend I completed the www.coursera.org MOOC course Greening the Economy. The course was organized by the Lund University, Lund, Sweden and uses Scandinavian (Sweden, Norway, Denmark) examples to learn about how to move towards a green economy. Part of the course was an assignment where you needed to describe examples of a greener product, business and city. You were particularly asked to describe if the examples were a GREENING OF or GREENING BY solution:
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“GREENING OF is when we improve an existing solution (product, operation/process, city design)”
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“GREENING BY are solutions (product, operation/process/business model, city design but also services) that can facilitate a greener way of living, doing business and using services.”
Here below are my three greening examples:
Greener Product: Mushroom Packaging
Mushroom Packaging by Ecovative Design is packaging grown from fungal mycelium – the thread-like part of fungi. Ecovative Design is an American company based in Green Island, NY and was founded in 2007 by Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre while studying at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
The patented process involves the use of agricultural waste to grow mycelium – binding it to the waste – for around 5 days. The process takes place in a mold to allow the forming of various shapes. The fungi is made inert through heating.
Mushroom Packaging is a sustainable alternative to petrochemical packaging products made from petroleum (like Styrofoam), a non renewable energy source. Petrochemical packaging products are very slow to biodegrade, causing litter and polluting the environment. The process to create Mushroom Packaging, on the other hand, uses and produces biodegradable waste, mimicking the cyclical material flows of nature. Overall the process has a much lower footprint compared to petrochemical derived packaging. The product is a GREENING BY solution, a radical improvement of an existing technology. It’s not a GREENING OF solution as it doesn’t involve a change of the existing petrochemical packaging industry. Companies which use packaging could adopt this new technology and according to Ecovative Design the material is cost competitive. The material, so far, has been used, among others, by Dell and Puma, although only for specific products. Hopefully more and more companies will start using this material to meet their sustainability goals. The long-term goal of the company is to replace all foam packaging.
Ecovative Design is further developing specific Mushroom Materials for cars, surfboards, furniture and an alternative to petrochemical derived insulation. While currently only producing in the US, the company plans to expand to different continents, with each facility using the regionally available waste.
References:
www.ecovativedesign.com
www.wikipedia.org
www.asknature.org
Greener Business: Fairphone
Fairphone is a social enterprise from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, with the goal to produce a fairer smartphone: the Fairphone. It started in 2010 as a project led by designer Bas van Abel, aiming to raise awareness on how smartphones are being made. In 2013 they started a crowdfunding campaign and within 2 weeks 5000 people pre-payed a Fairphone. In December that year 25000 Fairphones were produced, followed by a 35000 in 2014.
Fairphone works together with Solutions Network to use certified conflict-free tin and tantalum from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Fairphone was designed following an open design approach: “If you can’t open it, you don’t own it”. They further provide a cost breakdown showing where the money goes to for each Fairphone sold. To produce the Fairphone the manufacturer Guohong in China was selected as it was willing to improve its worker conditions (Fairphone founded a Worker Welfare Fund) and environmental impact. Fairphone further supports an e-waste collection program in Ghana and it started a Fairphone recycling program. Although the first Fairphone wasn’t 100% fair they see it as a first attempt and step by step the supply chain will be altered trying to positively change the complete life cycle of the Fairphone in a transparent way.
They admit that more smartphones are not the answer, but in the process of producing a fairer smartphone they hope to influence and increase the standard of the smartphone industry. Fairphone therefore is a GREENING OF solution, as increasing transparency of the supply chain is a first step towards greener smartphones. Unfortunately the Fairphone still needs mining and production and is therefore not a GREENING BY solution.
In 2015 they are planning to make a new Fairphone and in the process work towards further supply chain transparency.
References:
www.fairphone.nl
www.wikipedia.org
solutionsnetwork.org
Greener City: The island Texel
Texel is an island located in the North of the Netherlands with an area of approximately 170 square km. The island has 7 villages and more than 13.000 inhabitants (and 900.000 tourist visits annually). The nearest distance to the shore is 5 km and connection is by ferry.
I chose Texel instead of a city as various examples can be found showing that the island is on its way to become a sustainability test case. Moreover, in my view, an island with its natural boundary is a good analogue of how a city should function in a green and circular economy.
First of all, Texel is an ‘icon project’ of Urgenda, a Dutch organization promoting sustainability and innovation. Together with Texel inhabitants they worked on a vision of the future of Texel where the island ‘provides energy’. The Texel municipality and inhabitants for example want to achieve 100% renewable energy production and use on the island in 2020. This includes switching to electric transportation.
The inhabitants further successfully organized themselves into various non-for-profit companies, strengthening the local economy of the island. The oldest one is the ferry company TESO. Newer, since 2007, is Texel Energie, a sustainable energy cooperative. As the tourism sector veto’ed the use of wind mills, solar energy on rooftops is used instead. Texel also has its own sewage plant, but only between 1973 and early 90’s it produced local drinking water. The desalination was too costly at the time and currently the drinking water comes through a pipeline from the shore.
The greening of Texel itself is a GREENING OF solution, but hopefully the various solutions and innovations which will be developed along the way can be exported to cities and other regions therefore possibly providing a GREENING BY solution.
References:
www.wikipedia.org
Engineering for Sustainable Development: Case Texel
Youtube: Texel geeft Energie
Urgenda: ‘Texel geeft energie’ visie