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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Happy Earth Day, 2008, the year that talk of sustainability spreads to new heights. Everywhere we look, we see the effects - CitiBank is offering a contest to win a brand new hybrid or green kitchen makeover. Green blogs are proliferating at an unprecedented rate: Technorati has 37,869 blogs about green, 6933 blogs about environment.

Even Disney is getting into the mix with their version of green messaging.

Mickey’s new word is “Environmentality”!

All of this is positive, right? At the same time, concerns arise over the ability of the green, cultural zeitgeist to hold the momentum. Can the “First World” truly become global in our ability to spread the green? The odds are working in our favor, as even the largest players are converting their awareness to what consumers expect, and transparency is big on the list. Greenwashing is now a word to add to the vernacular. So where do we take it from here? We’ve been a little quiet here on the Root Concepts blog…we are working on some ideas around these issues, and look forward to sharing with our readers very soon. In the meantime, let us know your thoughts. How are you taking it to the next level? Whom do you admire in the landscape of the new sustainables, and whom should we encourage to examine their motives and methods?

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As a warm up to this year’s ExpoWest, Root Concepts presents as yet, unreleased interviews with some eco personalities.
Seventh Generation’s Jeffrey Hollander, actor and now eco-entrepreneur
Ed Begley, Jr. with Joshua Onysko of Pangea Organics, Livity Outernational’s
Isaac Nichelson and David Karr, co-founder of Guayaki Yerba Mate.

To hear the episode, click on the play button below. You can also check us in iTunes at the RootCast, and remember to subscribe to our feed for the latest RootNews.

Click to hear the podcast

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The nation’s largest natural, organic and healthy products trade show expects more than 45,000 people to attend the industry event in Anaheim, California this week from March 14 - 16. In its 28th year, this year’s Expo will publicly display its commitment to Green. For the first time, Expo West will implement widespread programs to reduce waste, limit carbon footprint, and encourage its attendees to do the same.

Image courtesy: Natural Products Expo West/Supply Expo

The Green Team’s list will include:

• Powering the 930,000 square foot Anaheim Convention Center with wind and solar energy through offsets.
• Providing attendees and exhibitors a green-powered travel option, through the purchase of renewable energy certificates via registration.
• Encouraging “car” pooling through a regional bus service or participating in the shuttle service provided by Natural Products Expo West to the official host hotels.
• Using sustainable building materials for show structures and exhibits that will be reused over a 3-year period, including, but not limited to plyboo, Woodstock, muslin drape, 100% recyclable aluminum extrusion and low-VOC paints provided by Freeman.
• Using biodegradable flatware at Natural Products Expo West events and feature areas.
• Outfitting Expo staff with organic t-shirts with vegetable dye ink
• Offering attendees green educational seminars.
• Collecting and donating unused samples and products to local Anaheim charities and food banks.
• Providing local, free-range, natural and organic products at concessions and events in partnership with Aramark.
• Printing show promotional materials on 30-100% post consumer recycled paper.
• Purchasing show premiums and gifts made of recycled materials.
• Biodegradable table liners in all exhibit booths.
• Providing the exhibitor service kit online only, eliminating paper and CD production.
• Offering environmentally friendly exhibit packages through Freeman, including recycled carpet, 100% recyclable aluminum extrusion, plyboo panels and low-VOC paints.

The green policy reflects the show’s producer, New Hope Media’s own greening efforts, and we applaud the move.

Root Concepts will be there to hear New York Times Magazine best-selling author, Michael Pollan, winner of the James Beard Award for best food writing, for The Omnivore’s Dilemma, deliver the keynote address on March 15. We’ll be checking out eco fashions when thinkproducts bring together eco-fashion icons at the thinkVitality Fashion Show to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Susan G. Komen For The Cure. Komen For The Cure is the largest grassroots network of breast cancer survivors, and the largest nonprofit fund dedicated to fighting breast cancer in the world.

Be on the lookout for a RootCast derived from our travels.

Image: Courtesy of Indigenous Designs

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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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Amidst a thousand spam messages was this comment by a new reader of the Root blog. We found it compelling enough to reply to in a post. Whether you agree or not, please let us hear from you…and now, Tod in a response to our post on Burt’s Bees being bought by Clorox for close to 1 billion dollars.

“A sad day, I suppose. However, this reminds me of the fundamental question that must be asked of all ‘green’ products:
Are they necessary? That is, do we NEED lip balm or is it something we simply enjoy? If the latter, then there’s nothing truly sustainable about creating superfluous products.

Yes, this is the hard line, and I’m not advocating a relinquishment of all luxury products. Instead, I’m pointing out that the purchase of Burt’s, while troubling in that a ‘local hero’ has been removed from the scene, is really more smoke and mirrors than actual loss. Whether’s it’s Clorox or Bob and Nancy Granola, products are products and it’s our insatiable lust for them (no, my lips really do get dry - I hear the protests!) that has pushed us past the point of no return.

Ben and Jerry’s. Burt’s. Prius. –> all absolute non-essentials. What difference does it make that all three are owned by major polluters?

Oh, this is NOT a rhetorical question. What, exactly, is the difference?”

Root: What is the difference? I do use lip balm on a daily basis, many times a day…do I want a healthier choice? Yes. Will it be Burt’s now that Clorox owns them, not likely. Was it before? Yes, amoung other healthy choices. So for me, Clorox’s purchase does make a difference. But what about the deeper questions Tod is bringing up? The complicit nature of being first world human beings says to me, yes, this is not a rhetorical question. What is the difference? I believe it is more and more each individual’s responsibility to ask these questions as we belly up to the check out desk. And the first question to ask, is: Do I really need this?  The second:  Where is this coming from?

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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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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 we become more aware of the opportunities to make greener choices, it is important to remember that the first step towards sustainability is not just consuming green products, but reducing our consumption altogether.

The 3 Rs - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - only go so far in creating sustainable thinking. Anticipating what this catch phrase actually means is a preliminary step in working daily towards sustainability. What we might consider is thinking about our usage in general, while creating strategies to accomplish the 3 Rs. Waste management experts refer to this as Re-Think.

An article at Inhabitat called our attention to the Dutch studio Volksware Meterware Shop that breathes new life into rejected goods, emphasizing the degree to which consumption of brands and products by consumers creates opportunities to recreate. Two of their many projects illustrate the point in a fascinating way.

Discarded tables are assembled to form a seemingly infinitely long table. When a customer requests a “new” table, a piece is cut to individual specs, and each section takes on a new image as an original table.

In another example of Volksware’s re-thinking, the effects of the oversupply and mass production of fashion and clothing products is brought into question, at the same time offering a new use for existing goods in a by-the-meter carpet (see image above).

Artists working with this thinking, show us that creating something new does not always mean creating a bigger footprint. By reusing source material, they actually reduce the need for new production, and recycle ideas to create new materials and products.

In essence, re-thinking green.

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