Nau Clothing

I just found a great source for green clothing for women and men looking for "cleaner" and more casual day to day ware. Call it metro-sexual garb for bikers and mountain climbers. Nau, based out of Portland, OR, is a twenty-person company and clearly passionate about design. Their goods are carried in retail stores across the U.S. and you can buy them on their website as well.

Their principles of sustainable design?

• 2% of every sale to our humanitarian and environmental Partners for Change; cut-and-sew factories that adhere to their Code of Conduct.


• Natural, renewable fibers produced in a sustainable manner; synthetic fabrics that contain high recycled content; managed toxics in all product finishes and dyes; salvaged and recycled materials for retail fixtures.


• Styles and product details that are considered, timeless, and able to move seamlessly through the day and all its unpredictabilities.

I found the section about global sourcing on their website particularly revealing. It just goes to show how difficult it is to draw lines in the sand when it comes to making sustainable choices in the fashion industry these days.

We manufacture our clothing in four countries—Canada, China, Thailand and Turkey—using fabrics from China, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Thailand and the U.S.A. One reason we manufacture many of our products in Asia is because many of our cutting-edge textiles originate only in Asia, and one of our goals is to have our production facilities as close as possible to where our fabric, hardware and fixtures originate, in order to reduce the environmental impact of shipping.

For many of the products we are producing (some of the most highly tailored and technical on the market) the required skill sets and technologies no longer exist in the U.S. While there are U.S.-made garments available to consumers, they are almost always less technical than what Nau designs, and are produced in far greater volume. The demise of the U.S. textile and garment-manufacturing segment of the economy is a well-known macro-economic trend, in place for many years. While disappointing, this is not something that we, as a small newcomer brand, can truly counteract.

Thankfully, along with the years of industry experience that many of our staff members bring to our team comes lasting, established relationships with foreign manufacturers whose practices and integrity we know and trust. Of course overseas production is not without controversy, but if approached with honesty and transparency, and monitored by a system of checks and balances, we believe it can actually benefit the people and countries where the work is done.

HOK Wins APA Award

HOK, the General Services Administration and the University of Maryland recently partnered to write a comprehensive guide for sustainable development in the federal government. The work is being honored by the Federal Planning Division of the American Planning Association.

The guide won the award because it was a part of the GSA Sustainable Development Education Initiative, which was selected as the “Winner” in the Outstanding Sustainable Planning, Design and Development Initiative Category.

Titled “The New Sustainable Frontier – Principles of Sustainable Development,” the guide was published last summer by the Government Services Administration’s Office of Governmentwide Policy.

Here is a link to the executive summary of the guide. http://www.gsa.gov/graphics/ogp/2009_New_Sustainable_Frontier_Complete_Guide.pdf

The making of the guide was a fantastic learning experience for all… experts in Ecological Economics at the University of Maryland helped give a business context to the guide. Also, HOK facilitated a work session with several dozen key sustainability leaders across federal agencies and green companies from the corporate sector to understand unique organizational concerns. Jonathan Herz’s with the GSA led the team and his focus on making the guide “practical and usable” as well as “scientifically sound” produced excellent results.

Special kudos go to Anica Landreneau, Alesia Call and Todd Pedersen (all bloggers for The Green Workplace) who wrote the executive summary and extensive appendices. Seriously, if you’re looking for good case studies, bibliographies, definitions of sustainable vocabulary… go to the appendix here: http://www.gsa.gov/graphics/ogp/The_New_Sustainable_Frontier_Appendix.pdf

My favorite part of the guide? The end of the executive summary where the team structured a series of questions related to building buildings, buying products and procuring services. The questions are tools that federal employees should ask to green their daily operations. Here are a few of them.

1. LOOK FOR AN ALTERNATIVE to consuming additional natural resources and generating greenhousegases, by asking:

• How can we support operations efficiently, and with just distribution of resources, while reducingthe Government’s ecological footprint?
• Are we using existing stocks?
• Can we use a service instead of owning this product?d. Can we reuse and an existing facility rather than building a new one?

2. KNOW WHAT YOU ARE BUYING, when there is no alternative to consumption. Make sure that theacquisition is consistent with the Government’s environmental and social goals by asking:

• WHO MADE IT? Does its production and use allow all to live with respect?
• WHAT’S IN IT? Is there a third party assessment of contents available to help us makeinformed decisions, such as an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD)60 or ASTM International“Sustainability Assessment of Building Products”?
• HOW DOES ITS PRODUCTION AND USE AFFECT THE EARTH’S CRITICAL ECOSYSTEMS?
• WHERE DOES IT GO WHEN IT IS NO LONGER NEEDED?

3. SHARE THE GOVERNMENT’S VISION FOR SUSTAINABILITY WITH SUPPLIERS, AND FAVOR THOSE THAT SUPPORT THAT VISION.

The Solar Bottle

One-sixth of the world’s population has no access to safe drinking water, increasing the risk of waterborne diseases such as diarrhea, cholera, typhoid fever, Hepatitis A, and dysentery.

When attending an exhibition with the theme “H2O” at Milan’s International Furniture Fair, Alberto Meda, a furniture and lighting designer, and Francisco Gomez Paz, an industrial designer, learned about the solar water disinfection system (SODIS), a simple, low-cost solution for treating drinking water at a household level. Transparent plastic bottles are filled with contaminated water. When exposed to full sunlight for six hours, the pathogens in the water are destroyed.

Meda and Paz designed a container that brings out the best of the SODIS system, and the result is Solar Bottle, which has one transparent face for ultra-violet A and infrared ray collection and an aluminum color to increase the reflections. The high ratio surface and thickness of the low-cost container improves the performance of solar disinfection, and its flat shape makes it stackable and facilitates storage. A handle makes it possible to regulate the angle for best solar exposition and ensures easy transportation.

Hope this "Green Team" doesn't come to your office!

Green Team from Will Ferrell

DC Bag Tax in Effect

Today I stopped by my neighborhood drug store on the way home from work. I noticed the store has recently been reconfigured to accept self check out. This new technology has had two benefits that I can see: 1) the lines move much faster and 2) it overtly asked you "how many bags you are taking" and then charges you 5 cents per bag. By the check out counter there are only plastic bags to choose from, so it's the plastic bag or nothing. DC has recently passed a "bag tax" of 5 cents per paper or plastic bag starting the first of the year.

What was really interesting about this experience for me was the fact that I was buying a bunch of bulky items today and I really was considering picking up a bag to carry them a few blocks home. But in a split second... literally the moment after I realized that picking up a bag would cost me something... I decided to make due with stuffing the items in the bag I had with me. It's like I was watching myself in a social behavior experiment... will she take the bag if it costs her something? Or will the small cost of 5 cents not even enter her conscience? Honestly, I changed my mind to go sans bag, and probably would have again, even if the bag cost just a penny.

This little experience today has reinforced my belief in the importance of incentives and disincentives to drive behavior to be more environmentally friendly. Let's take this same analogy to the workplace. What if companies had to pay more hefty fines for garbage pickup? What if individuals had to pay for Styrofoam cups at the coffee bar? Would we make the same decisions if we always had to pay for the negative externalities of our choices?

In Doug McKenzie-Mohr's book, Fostering Sustainable Behavior: Community Based Social Marketing, he uses countless examples of leveraging positive and negative incentives to help the environment. Here are a couple of good ones:

When San Jose, California introduced a user pay program in which residents were charged based upon the size of the container they placed at the curb, the impact was a 46% decrease in waste sent to the landfill, a 158% increase in recyclables captured, and a 38% increase in yard waste collected. There was no charge for curbside recycling and yard waste was collected at the curbside.

Worchester, Massachusets introduced a program in which residents purchased bags for their garbage. This program resulted in a 45% reduction in the waste stream, with recycling responsible for 37% of the waste stream diversion. Residents were not charged for recycling nor for dropping off yard waste at a collection center.

Ride Shark... Green Commuting is Fun

I live the in the Washington, D.C. area and one of the more interesting habits of commuters here is a practice called "slugging." At specific points throughout the city, drivers line up (as do passengers) and random strangers ride together to take advantage of HOV lanes. Drop off points in town are also centralized, so the system is surprisingly predictable. After having lived here a while, I've heard mostly good stories about this practice but a few bad stories too. Not everyone has a similar view on how to handle speed limits, for example. A number of riders have gotten to work a little more ruffled than when they left the house.

So how do you find a good carpool without depending on a strangers to drive you to work? That's where products like Ride Shark come into play.



Ride Shark basically connects people with a similar commute pattern together in a carpool. They have different systems for creating carpools within companies, within campuses and within metro areas. They facilitate carpools, vanpools as well as biking, walking and bus-riding buddies. They also can help you find an emergency ride home if you need it. And the best part? They track your "carbon emissions saved" by using their system.

Think of it as a transportation demand management and social networking tool all wrapped into one.

A number of my clients are using it and love it. They claim to especially enjoy the feature that allows companies or groups to compete against each other to reduce carbon emissions. Nothing like a little competition to make that morning commute more fun!

My Vote for The Fun Theory

Voting for "The Fun Theory" Award or BMW's competition for changing people's behavior for the better ended January 15. My vote goes for the two entries below. My two favorites are called "Fighting Germs with Fun" by Steven Blumenfeld and "Make Your Boyfriend Clean the Apartment" by Meirav Adler. For more information, see our post Save the Earth with Fun (Theory).

Book Event at AIA Center of Architecture in NY

Thanks to the AIA and HOK NY marketing team (Kim Dowdell, Chris Laul, Sharon Paculor, Liz Royzman, Alex Robb) for pulling together a fantastic book signing event for The Green Workplace at the Center of Architecture last Thursday night. Food provided by a local and organic caterer Natural Chef.

Interview with Stacy Straczynski from Contract Magazine here.

Remembering Seasonal Foods

It's January and a time of New Year's Resolutions. Mine happen to be doing pushups every day and getting rid of the clutter in my life! A friend, however, has decided to eat more healthfully, and shared a great blog post about seasonal food.

This post not only addresses why to eat seasonally, but shares seasonal foods for the first 6 calendar months (and some recipe ideas, too)!

Check out some other seasonal food resources:

• BBC Good Food (UK)
• The Foody (UK & Ireland - includes fish & game)
  
• Organic Passion (AU)
  
• Sustainable Table (US - search by state)
• Epicurious (US - search by state)
  
• Seasonal Ontario (CA)

Mmmmm...I'm getting hungry already!

Retractable Flagpole

One of my colleagues and co-bloggers (Anica Landreneau) sent around an email recently about a cool new piece of exterior furniture... a retractable flagpole by Baartol. It automatically opens up with the sun in the morning and retracts when light disappears at night using little light sensors. You can manually set it to go to half mast or retract it with inclement weather.

The "green" part about this product is that you don't have to light it up at night (which is protocol).