Zero is the New Black … Seth Godin says no impact is the new black. Can’t keep track of the new blacks, myself, but I like where he’s coming from!
Technorati Tags: noimpactman, greenmeme, sustainability, sustainablemarketing, zeroimpact
Archive for March, 2007
Twitter demoted to RSS. I love it, but it’s too much, already. And now their website is super slow. I just fed it into Google Reader - this means I will check it a couple of times a day, along with all the other feeds I read. If there’s a social event or news I am following I will turn on SMS on my phone (luckily I have like 1000 messages a month) but also Google Readers has a great WAP version so I can still be mobile and get twitters. Dodgeball is also now relegated to email. Since I bought the Blackjack, email/rss is good enough for me, because I get push email (when in the US) and WAP google reader for RSS.
Technorati Tags: twitter
From Private Eye mag (UK) - “HSBC, the greenest bank in the world – unless you count their partner’s plans to chop down the rainforests in Borneo” More info on the ecologist…
Could we use the principles of peer to peer (or person to person - P2P ) file / data sharing to create a P2P grid for electricity? I’m not exactly sure how that would work, but I got the idea after reading about how plug-in hybrids could be used to stabilize the electricity grid. Searching the net, it appears as if this idea was written about in September 2005 by the BBC, reporting on the conclusions of a Southampton University project. They’re called microgrids, which are “a collection of small generators for a collection of users in close proximity,” explains Dr Markvart, whose research appears in the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Ingenia magazine. Microgrids’ premise is that electricity demand is split up and shared around the network of users, much like BitTorrent file sharing. “This microgrid appears to the larger grid as if it’s any other customer. And it can quickly switch between operating on and off the grid: when the grid offers cheap electricity, the microgrid can purchase it, but if prices rise or there’s a power failure, the microgrid can isolate itself. ” - a lot of people say they want to live in a cabin off the grid - meaning far away from civilization. While I might think that’s fine for a summer home, I like the idea of a neighborhood microgrid much better. It seems like there are still some legal issues to work out, and isn’t always true with P2P technology? WorldChanging.com also has a couple of articles about Microgrids.
Technorati Tags: windpower, cleantech, microgrids, homepower, energy, p2p
The coworking idea is getting some national press. Our office at Citizenspace was featured in the slideshow in a recent BusinessWeek article on coworking.
Chris Messina has really lit a fire under my butt to get our shared “coworking” office CitizenSpace operating and certified as green. While Sustainable Marketing is already approved as a green business via the Co-Op America Green Business Network, it’s only recently that we’ve had a real office outside of my home. Now we can begin to participate in the Bay Area Green Business Program.
Some steps we’ve already taken:
- Ordered a full set of trash, recycling, and compost bins from our trash provider.
- Continuing our Renewable Energy Certificate program to offset our carbon emissions. See Sustainable Wesbsites Wind Power page for more details. We are going to extend this to the whole office in addition to Sustainable Websites.
- Our partner Ethotec has prototyped a green business basics class.
- Created a page on the Coworking Wiki to encourage other coworking spaces to be green. Feel free to add to it!
- When we moved into CitizenSpace Tara and Chris chose sustainable bamboo flooring and low-energy compact fluorescent light-bulbs (CFLs)
- Checked with our landlord on whether we had a low-flow toilet (we did!)
- Applied to the San Francisco Green Business Program.
And what’s next:
- Figuring out a strategy to deal with phantom power - all the various chargers (”do you have wall warts?!”) for our gadgets sucking up power even when they’re not charging.
- Encouraging other technology businesses to go green and devising innovative programs to accomplish this.
Let me know in the comments what you’ve done in your office to make it greener, I would love to find out!
Technorati Tags: coworking, officegreening, green business, greenoffice, citizenspace
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