Throughout the years Root Concepts has traveled to a number of green events to provide coverage and report on the latest developments, speakers and ideas in the sustainability space. Last year we covered SolFest 2007. We ventured an hour north again, to enjoy the 13th annual SolFest in Hopland, California.

SolFest really is like no other event going. An outgrowth of the Solar Living Institute, SolFest, now in its 13th year, is an opportunity to learn about the benefits, possibilities and innovations of living off the power grid, and to see technologies in action. Like most non-profits, the Solar Living Institutes relies on fund raising to make it go. SolFest has proved an excellent way to spread the word, provide practical solutions, and garner a huge outpouring of volunteerism and passion for solar energy and its potential as an alternative to our dependence on petroleum.

Speaking with executive director, Lindsay Dailey , one gets the sense that the time is now for the ideas that have spawned this event. The solar segment of the market has been growing at a rate of 30 to 50% year over year. The industry actually needs qualified professionals to staff the demand for its products and services. This is where it starts to get interesting with regards to the mandate the 501(c)(3) has set out for itself: to serve the greater community.

Dailey says that as they started to look around to the people The Solar Institute was serving, there was a definite lack of color and economic diversity within its community. In order to truly be sustainable, they had to serve a greater segment. They looked to Richmond, California, where the crime rate, unemployment rate, and need for an infusion of real problem solving is highest.

Solar Richmond is an ambitious idea whose time has come. The mandate is simple and straightforward:

Our mission is to promote and inspire the use of solar power and energy efficiency in order to bring the economic benefits of the green economy to Richmond. We serve the community through solar installation training, educating a new “green-collar” workforce and opening doors to employment.Our mission is to promote and inspire the use of solar power and energy efficiency in order to bring the economic benefits of the green economy to Richmond. We serve the community through solar installation training, educating a new “green-collar” workforce and opening doors to employment. Our goals -

100 new green-collar jobs,

50 solar installations for low-income homeowners by 2010

5 megawatts of solar electric power installed in Richmond by 2010

Solar Richmond  - up on the roof!

The results are promising and inspiring: an urban solution from nature, and the Solar Living Institute. More of these types are programs are needed to bring real diversity to the green economy, jobs to segments currently lacking employment, and a future to the spreading of these concepts and ideas to communities outside the “green bubble”.

Bravo, to Solar Living Institute, Solar Richmond and the SolFest for spreading it around.

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Nau Update:

Nau has been acquired by Horny Toad who will attempt to resurrect the business model in a new and improved fashion. Be on the lookout for a newly updated site in October, along with a new season of clothes. Here’s what they have to say:

In October we’ll launch a new nau.com featuring new fall product. We’ll also initiate a new set of partnerships with a select group of retailers who will carry Nau clothing in their stores. Through the new website and our retail partners, we’re looking forward to making it even easier for you to find and try out the great designs in our Fall line.

Wishing them all the best in their new incarnation, and looking forward to seeing the new model bring the superior ideals of the old Nau to the fore.

Nau, Beverly Center which only opened last month.

Maybe it’s the economy, maybe it’s the true cost of doing business with a triple bottom line. Could it be the fact that we say we want sustainable choices, but when it comes down to it, we don’t want to pay for it…or perhaps it is a little of all of those things? Nonetheless, a great idea just shut its doors. Nau was a clothing company ahead of its time:

• Fair wages - bylaws prohibited any Nau executive from earning more than 12 times what the lowest-paid U.S. worker earned.

• Corporate responsibility - their charitable giving program dedicated 5 percent of each sale to charity.

• Innovative distribution via webfront stores - 10% off any purchase if one elected to have the item shipped for free instead of carrying it out of the store. This policy allowed Nau to stock and ship (and ship back) fewer items, creating more energy-efficient stores.

• Fashion forward design - truly sustainable fabrics and design practices from great designers with premium sportswear pedigrees…

• Shall I go on?

The bottom line is that Nau could not find its next round of venture funding to support a longer run, which says the model was still unproven, and therefore; great try, but not a home run. So it is with a sigh that we say goodbye to Nau, and what we expect may have influence on a longer-term success story. But in the short run, Nau leaves without the opportunity to prove itself sustainable.

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It’s been a very busy time at Root. We  moved our offices to Sonoma Mountain Village, an ambitious, sustainable project which is an environmentally-conscious redevelopment of a former Agilent Technologies campus by Codding Enterprises. The project aims to combine New Urbanism with deep sustainability. A 12-year, $1billion + effort, the Village, occupies 200 acres in Rohnert Park in Sonoma County, California, about 45 minutes north of San Francisco. Sonoma Mountain Village is a deeply sustainable,  mixed-use community endorsed by One Planet Communities, a joint initiative of sustainability experts BioRegional UK and WWF International.  Already, Codding has purchased $7.5 million worth of solar panels to produce sustainable electricity for the community’s commercial buildings.

Root Concepts’ offices are part of a business incubator called The Sonoma Mountain Business Cluster, whose goal is to support and nurture start-ups, and new businesses in the county. If you live in the area, please stop by, we would love to introduce you to the project.  And check out this New York Times article on the project for more perspective.

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A recent purchase in the product world has created quite the buzz. Last week The Clorox Company announced that they have bought the beloved Burt’s Bees for $925 million in cash.

Burt’s Bees, which began in 1984 as cofounder Burt Shavitz peddling honey out the back of his pick-up, has an ever-growing following for it natural products over the past years. Now in a situation similar to Colgate’s purchasing of Tom’s of Maine, or Ben & Jerry’s buyout to Unilever, brand-loyal consumers have been sent into a tailspin.

According to Clorox, the natural personal care market already accounts for over $6 billion in sales each year, and sales are climbing at an annual rate of 9%. The purchase of the natural products company is intended to prep Clorox for the release of Green Works, their new environmentally friendly cleaning line.
“The Burt’s Bees brand is well-anchored in sustainability and health and wellness, and we believe it will benefit from natural and ‘green’ tailwinds,” said Clorox Chief Executive Donald R. Knauss. “It’s in an economically attractive category with a margin structure that will be highly accretive to Clorox.”
Plans are in place for Burt’s to conduct a distribution test with Wal-Mart Stores by the end of the year. Clorox, coincidentally, obtains 26% of its sales from Wal-Mart.
The purchased Google search results link to www.burtsbees.com currently opens up to the “Our Values” page, featuring “The Greater Good Business Model,” instead of the usual homepage. Among other hypocritical highlights, the site includes “animals rights” and “fair trade” in it’s web of consciousness; a compelling contrast to Clorox’s animal testing practices and Burt’s branching out to Wal-Mart.
The site also features a response to the recent purchase via “A Letter to Our Loyal Customers,” which states that Burt’s still plans to stick to their ‘green’ guns, and that the purchase is “a great opportunity to help us better deliver against our mission of making truly natural personal products available to everyone, everywhere.” The company may now be able to make the most of their mission, but what about those values?
On the brighter side, the Burt’s business will not be joining The Clorox Company headquarters in Oakland, CA, but remain nestled in North Carolina. Perhaps the cross country distance between the bleach and the beeswax will be enough to convince consumers.

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Pimpin’ the G life

In a year when every major magazine has featured a green issue, and the world’s pop star elite gathered for Live Earth around the globe, those who have made it their life’s mission to acquire the celebrity zeitgeist are bound to take notice.

Just as the flower power days of the 1960’s, when it became fashionable to talk about revolution, the “man”, and fighting the power, we can now fast forward to 2007 to those re-dressed archetypes speaking refrains like: sustainability, organic and carbon footprint. How many of you have had an experience in the past year where you knew the person you were speaking with had no knowledge whatsoever regarding “green” issues, nonetheless, spouted greenthink slogans they think you want to hear?

But hey why be uptight, can’t hedonism and ecological activism mix? The revolution must not be devoid of pleasure.

But if this is an age crying out for authenticity, the only genuine article parlayed by Paris Hilton and Ron Jeremy et. al. is the art of the “put on”.

If they really wanted to work for change, shouldn’t they work within their realms of influence - develop an ecocondom, make a home permaculture video, or at least follow the example of this young, idealistic and very sex positive couple in giving to the green porn cause?

Instead they pose like a Jeff Koons tableaux of Hollywood glitterati struggling for tenancy in the garden of Eden, sculpted in green plaster of Paris that ages in real time.

It is precisely the aging part that gives one pause. If our celebrity-obsessed culture cannot accept the maturing of human flesh, how can it live in harmony with nature’s cyclical acceptance of decay and rebirth?

The Diesel clothing company’s campaign, “global warming ready” exemplifies this irony.

What is the message behind these images of the thin, mostly white and homogeneously beautiful in nonchalant repose amidst a flooded, world in crisis? What were the memos that must have been flying around ad-strategy boardrooms and marcom sticky pads? “Buyer persona - young, aspirationally affluent, environmentally “aware”, but loves the thought of rockin’ in an 07 Hummer limo. So why don’t we create an “aspirational” tableaux of a post-apocalypse that can be, well…. glamorous?”

cool…?

Are we flashing the ultimate cynical sign, a kind of “bling uber alles”?

We say nah. Make friends with reality. It is coming, and without a stylist in tow.

The signs do seem to read that a “tipping point” has been reached. The “Green” label will become something else, all the eco terms will fall away to be more about being a conscious and awake human being, whose green/eco status will be based simply on their actions.

The issues will still be there, in spades.

Keep it real.

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“Lake Michigan is like a giant bathtub with a really, really slow drain and a dripping faucet, so the toxics build up over time,” said Emily Green, director of the Great Lakes program for the Sierra Club.

Despite this knowledge, an Indiana refinery of the global petroleum giant, BP, has been given a permit to continue to dump mercury into Lake Michigan. The permit overrides an existing limit of 1.3 ounces per year on mercury discharges into the Great Lakes. BP will be allowed to continue their practice of dumping 3 pounds of mercury through surface water discharges as it has been since 2002, according to the Toxics Release Inventory, an EPA datebase on pollution emissions. The permit, which accompanies the plant’s $3.8 billion expansion, gives BP until at least 2012 to meet the federal standard.

“With one permit, this company and this state are undoing years of work to keep pollution out of our Great Lakes,” said Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., co-sponsor of a resolution overwhelmingly approved by the House last week that condemned BP’s plans.

This lack of corporate responsibility brings to mind the mercury poisoning of the Japanese fishing village of Minamata in the 1950’s. The outcome was tragic as the town was poisoned by mercury from industrial pollution created by the town’s main employer, the Chisso Corporation. The plight became known as Minamata Disease for its devastating effects on the entire population., and was famously documented by Life photographer Eugene Smith who, with his wife, Aileen, lived in Minamata for many years.

It seems neither pervasive environmental awareness, nor the regulations designed to “protect” our resources are strong enough to deter the circumnavigation of this knowledge. It is disturbing to recall the images of a time only a few decades previous, but perhaps in the end, a picture is worth a thousand words.

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The film opens with an abstract shadow moving across the surface of an ocean. We quickly realize that it belongs to a cargo plane soaring like a steel raptor towards the country of Tanzania, its empty belly to soon be filled by it’s bounty

The narrative begins with focus on a giant fish, the Nile Perch that has taken over the central African great lakes, a result of a single deposit made by a lone individual some 25 years earlier. This phenomenon has created an international fishing industry, while also decimating the native fish population. One is initially led to believe that the Darwinian nightmare the filmmaker Hubert Sauper is alluding to, is regarding evolutionary biology. The genesis of this incident is never fully explained. Instead we are taken deeply into the social Darwinism embodied by the relationship between a struggling 3rd world African economy beholden to the world bank and the IMF.

Here we have a film that is part poetic essay, part cinema verite documentary on the brutal inequities of modern capitalism. The intimacy with which Saupert presents us his human subjects is the key to the film’s success in delivering this message. In fact Saupert is rarely heard from at all, there are no 3rd person voiceovers calling us to action amidst the sensational imagery of war and famine. But there are numerous heartrending portrayals of individuals, both European and African, caught in its web. The luminous, and at times, terrifiying eyes of Raphael, the night watchmen/fisherman/guide, the abandoned children of the Mwanza streets, the dreams of a prostitute who we later learn was killed by one of her pilot johns. We experience up close the humanity of a people, which begs us to question why members of our own species are condemned to live under conditions we would find intolerable through the economic systems we support.

The DVD edition features an in-depth interview with the director, and Sauper speaks eloquently about his view on the social Darwinism portrayed in his film. Darwin was absolutely correct in his observation of natural systems of selection. i.e. the survival of the fittest, but when this observation becomes a paradigm wielded by humans toward humans, the result is fascism.

If you want to be challenged, emotionally affected, educated on a personal level about the ongoing tragedy(ies) in Africa, or are a fan of the films of Chris Marker or the Maysles Brothers, then you must see Darwin’s Nightmare.

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As consumers looking for green solutions, we expect the products we purchase to represent the intention of the business.

Toxic Waste Hazardously Sour Candy isn’t organic, fair traded, or gmo free, however this company targets the mainstream, tween population to raise awareness, and educates children to act responsibly towards the environment.

Found inside a barrel of toxic waste, the message will reach a broad audience because it’s candy. So as they go on tour with a tween, all-girl band to summer camps educating 8-12 year old kids about their environmental impact they will also contribute to their tooth decay, insulin levels and ingestion of bt pesticides through gmo corn syrup. So here at ROOT we will inaugurate our greenwash category with this product. What will be next? Apocalypse Gum, you can’t blow up the world but you can blow up the world in you?

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Summer time inspires road trips. Whether you are inspired to visit national parks, friends and family, music festivals, or swimming holes, the interstates are crowded with campers and cars cruising down the highway.

In the spirit, Lucky Brand Jeans is cruising the States, from California to New York and back. The goal is to market their products at specific consumer targeted sites, events, and festivals. Lucky Brand Jeans has created a Denim Highway Bus, psychedelic tour, with the goal to see the country, visit the Boston Harbor 4th of July Festival and its own major stores. A website, soundtrack, and blog follow the tour.

This marketing strategy is interesting, and Root looks at a company that takes it further.

Guayaki Yerba Mate, a sustainable global brand, is heading to music festivals, bike races looking for like-minded businesses and consumers, and they are driving a bio-diesel bus. Educating through action, Guayaki’s desire is to represent conscious, sustainable business practices, and show how to do it. Their products are shade-grown, fair-traded and organic.

Responsible businesses inspire consumers to be aware of where a product comes and how it gets to them. Which road we decide to follow as consumers is important for the future of sustainable business practices around the world. And Guayaki is paving the road.

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People around the world are purchasing bottles of water, marketed as pure and natural. The bottled water industry has created the idea that for up to 4 dollars a bottle everyone can drink from the most pristine landscapes in the world. Sounds a lot better than municipal water that falls from the tap. However, many questions surround regulation as well as the social and environmental impact of bottled water:

According to the World Watch Institute,

“Excessive withdrawal of natural mineral or spring water to produce bottled water has threatened local streams and groundwater, and the product consumes significant amounts of energy in production and shipping. Millions of tons of oil-derived plastics, mostly polyethylene terephthalate (PET), are used to make the water bottles, most of which are not recycled. Each year, about 2 million tons of PET bottles end up in landfills in the United States; in 2005, the national recycling rate for PET was only 23.1 percent, far below the 39.7 percent rate achieved a decade earlier.”

In order to talk about this problem in the context of a solution, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order this week banning the use of city funds to purchase single-serving plastic water bottles. The order also prohibits the sale of such water containers on city-owned property. In this interview, Newsom talks about fighting such a huge industry, joining other mayors across the country, as well as looking at the changes individuals can make, such as owning portable, reusable bottles.

As consumers, our dollars are our vote, so instead of buying bottled water begin carrying glass or stainless steel portable containers and regaining confidence in tap water.

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