Published on November 18th, 2009
Laura Kurgan, Chris Jordan, Lorrie Vogel and Assaf Biderman - Pop!Tech 2009 - Camden, ME
In Part One, Lorrie Vogel explained some of the work Nike is doing to increase recycled and organic content in their products. Our conversation continues with discussing how Nike designers are encouraged to use sustainable principles in their work.
SS: You mentioned something about rewarding designers for innovating around sustainability, how does that work?
LV: As with any company centered on innovation, the process begins with Nike’s designers. To influence the designers to make responsible choices, Nike designers are scored against the Considered Index. In order to get new Considered innovations adopted faster, Nike gives innovation points to designers who come up with a brand new idea, as well as to teams who adopt considered innovations in the first year.
SS: And how are employees outside of the design department scored against the Considered Index?
LV: At Nike, there are so many different groups in different matrices, a lot of them are expected to calculate their CO2 footprint. But the Considered Index is primarily for designers.
SS: Sustainability 101 and Step by Natural Step (mentioned in this press release)- are they teaching personal sustainability practices, or teaching employees how to spot opportunities to be more responsible in the choices they make in their jobs?
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Tags:
Closed Loop,
Creative Commons,
Green Xchange,
Lorrie Vogel,
Natural Step,
Nike,
Nike Considered,
Opportunity Green,
Organic Cotton,
PopTech,
Recycled Polyester,
recycling
Published on November 16th, 2009
This impressive footprint is Nike’s Considered Air Jordan XX3, their first basketball shoe designed using the Considered Ethos.
Lorrie Vogel is the general manager of Nike Considered, Nike’s in-house sustainability think tank. She holds a degree in Industrial Design from Syracuse, and numerous patents. Her work in innovating around sustainability has helped put Nike on Fast Company’s Fast 50 list multiple times. Considering how aggressive Nike’s sustainability goals have been, it’s even more impressive that they are on track to meet their targets.
Sustainability is second only to performance when ranking the critical factors of a product. Nike is committed to making their entire collection as environmentally responsible as possible. Lorrie Vogel spoke at the Opportunity Green conference in Los Angeles, explaining some of the ways Nike is meeting these targets. In this phone interview, Lorrie expands on some of the points she touched on in her presentation. The conversation is split into two articles, in order to go deeper into the many changes that need to happen to increase use of recycled and organic materials in apparel and footwear. We begin with a discussion about materials, and conclude with the human element needed to ensure these changes occur in a timely manner.
From Nike: The long-term vision for Considered is to design products that are fully closed loop: produced using the fewest possible materials, designed for easy disassembly while allowing them to be recycled into new product or safely returned to nature at the end of their life. By 2011, 100 percent of footwear will meet baseline Considered standards, apparel by 2015 and equipment by 2020 – creating better performing products while minimizing environmental impact by reducing waste, using environmentally preferred materials and eliminate toxins.
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Published on November 11th, 2009
In a move that fairly reeks with symbolism, The U.K. companies Versus Energy and Knowaste have teamed up to build the first diaper recycling plant in England, and it will be located in a region that was once the heart of the Industrial Revolution. The new recycling plant will power itself with sustainable energy generated from the organic materials recovered from disposable diapers.
Organic waste accounts for only 2% of the materials in “pre-owned” disposable diapers. What happens to the other 98%? It will be dried, sterilized, and separated into reusable paper pulp and plastic. The end use of those materials has not yet been announced but based on Knowaste’s past experience, roof tiles, shoe insoles, wallpaper, plastic “wood,” and industrial thickeners are likely candidates.
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Published on November 10th, 2009
Researcher Susan Sun of Kansas State University has an answer for all those hungry cows out there: let them eat barrels. Sun’s work on sustainable biomass adhesives has already lead to an edible barrel for cattle feed made with straw and soy adhesive. More products are on the horizon, including a new formula that improves the flowability and strength of raw bioplastic, making it easier to pour and mold.
The edible barrels replace oil drums, which cost approximately $6 per barrel to clean for re-use as feed containers in addition to the cost of the barrel. Sun’s elegant waste reduction solution relieves farmers of this expense while practically eliminating the risk of oil-contaminated feed from poorly cleaned barrels. It also eliminates waste or water pollution associated with the cleaning process, and it eliminates the cost (and carbon footprint) of returning used barrels for re-use.
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Published on November 4th, 2009
Bokashi is a centuries-old Japanese method of recycling household food waste into all-natural compost. By employing a special culture of yeast and other microorganisms, bokashi is a compact, odorless process that takes only days instead of weeks or months. Now the Bokashicycle company is breaking the process out of the kitchen and into a commercial-scale food waste recycling operation, in partnership with New Earth Farm in Hillsboro, Oregon.
New Earth Farm takes in food scraps from Bon Appetit cafeterias on the nearby Intel Hawthorn Farm campus, which provides a significant waste disposal savings compared to disposing the scraps in landfills. Waste reduction is one goal, and in an even more sustainable twist the composted soil is used to grow crops for Abundant Harvest, a local consumer-supported agriculture (CSA) store.
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Published on October 17th, 2009
Some of the landfill gas at McCarty Road Landfill in Texas was captured for sale to a local utility, but the rest was just getting flared. Now, though, Ameresco Services captures that excess and sends it four miles through an underground pipeline to Anheuser-Busch brewery to meet their goal of getting 15 percent of their needs by 2010 promised a few years ago.
How much business is there to be made in capturing and using waste energy? Well, the company that developed the energy recycling waste-to-power system that helps fuel the biopower plant at the brewery has got to be one of the few companies in this economy to enjoy 47% growth over the last 5 years!
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Published on September 28th, 2009
A team of researchers at MIT are engineering a strain of bacteria, which is similar to the type that causes tuberculosis, to produce biofuel.
The researchers say that the bacteria are useful because they are hungry for a number of sugars and toxic compounds and produce lipids that can be converted to biodiesel.
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Tags:
alternative fuels,
biodiesel,
biofuel,
biology,
clean technology,
fuel,
microbiology,
research,
science,
TB,
technology,
tuberculosis
Published on September 18th, 2009
Waste uranium can apparently be recovered very cheaply from the polluted runoff from uranium mining using E. Coli and a phosphate storage molecule found in seeds, British researchers have found. They used the common bacteria with a chemical parallel of what is already found in agricultural waste: inositol phosphate.
Inositol phosphate is insoluble, so it forms a precipitate on the bacteria. The E. Coli then broke down the precipitate; releasing the phosphate molecules which then attached to uranium molecules to form uranium phosphate, which can then be harvested to recover the uranium.
What they have developed is a way for one contaminant to clean up another.
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Published on September 1st, 2009
Magnum D’Or Resources Inc., a rubber recycling company, now owns one of the world’s largest tire landfills in Hudson, Colorado. But they’re not going to just leave it there. Old tires are bad because they breed mosquitoes, and a tire fire will burn for months. Read the rest of this entry »
Published on August 28th, 2009
2k Manufacturing based in Luton, England has come up with a process that can take any type of plastic - clean, dirty, or defected - and remake it into what they’re calling ‘EcoSheets’. These EcoSheets are a composite material made to have the same mechanical properties as plywood. They are the end result of a process called powder impression molding, which takes all forms of plastic and makes it into a fine powder. The powder is then sandwiched in between two polymer films and is heat treated to form a viable substitute for plywood, a ubiquitous building material.
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