Bewilderment + Exposure = Obvious

This is something that I learned from my computer science teacher back in high school (wow, that seems like forever ago especially since I am graduating in about 12 days..feel old). He used this term as a way of changing our learning habits. That it takes practice and “a-ha” moment to completely understand. I believe this goes for anything that we try to learn and master, but this is absolutely crucial when it comes to being sustainable/green/environmentally friendly/whatever you want to call it.

Being in this class has really changed my outlook and sometimes my behavior. I might not have changed my everyday lifestyle or my eating/showering habits, but I am definitely more aware of my impact. For example, having read the “This Guy can Get 59 mpg in plain accord” article, really makes me think about what I do when I drive. How hard am I braking, am I accelerating to quickly, what speed should I be going and still be on time…Previously, I would drive just to get places on time. Now I drive to get places on time and also observe my carbon footprint. I constantly critique myself on how I am driving and now one of those criteria is green driving.

I think this is where sustainability needs look to. Education is essential. It is our generation that will create and research technologies that will define the green playing field. It is also our duty to educate and bewilder and expose learning minds to the need for cleaner technologies, so that when it comes time for them to take ownership of their future, their world, it is obvious that they need to design not only to solve the problems they are targeting but to also do it in a way that is efficient and clean.

DP3 Final Post: Food Waste

Intro: More than 40 percent of all food produced in America is not eaten, according to research by former University of Arizona anthropologist Timothy Jones. That amounts to more than 29 million tons of food waste each year, or enough to fill the Rose Bowl every three days. Nationwide, food scraps make up 17 percent of what we send to landfills. Although a large majority of this comes from expired and unsold food in stores and restaurants as well as unharvested food, I feel like we as consumers play a significant role as well.

Say No to food waste: Why is food waste a problem? Isn’t it biodegradable? And Compostable?? 1) Well first of all, when food rots, it produces methane, which can trap 20 times more heat in the earth’s atmosphere, and therefore is 20 times worse for the environment than carbon dioxide. 2) If just 5 percent of Americans’ food scraps were recovered it would represent one day’s worth of food for 4 million people. About 5 million people starve each year in the world. 3) Finally, if we waste less, we buy less, and less is produced. So in addition to less food waste, this means less packaging waste, lower production energy use, fewer transportation emissions. 4) The best part about it, as I learned, is this means money saved.

Before this project, I was extremely wasteful. When eating at dining halls or row houses, my method of approach to getting food was to put a little bit of whatever looked good onto my plate. Depending on the day, of course, this usually amounted to a significant amount of food, much more than I could ever eat. This often was a similar situation at Safeway, but not as bad because cost was now a big limiting factor. Nonetheless, my three-person room ended up with a lot of trash!

What I did. I decided to see how much I could minimize my food waste. This entailed not only entailed buying less and smarter, but sometimes meant that I ate a little more. Since I normally went to my friends’ houses and dining halls to eat dinner, I decided not to cart around a scale and weigh my food waste. Instead, I wanted to cut all “good food waste” down to absolutely 0. Good food waste is any good food that I wouldn’t eat just because I was full and got to much, as opposed to bad food which I didn’t eat because it was plain disgusting, which was much more out of my control.

I fought this problem on two fronts: eating out, and eating in my room. When eating out, I obviously would try and pick my food wisely so that I would actually like it. But more importantly, if I ever had any “good food waste” left on my plate, I’d take it back to my dorm to eat as leftovers. Granted this guaranteed me some weird looks sometimes, I actually saved A LOT of food.

I also tried to maximize my meals at houses and dining halls because the food was already prepared, and any food I didn’t eat would probably be thrown out in a few days anyways.

On the home front, I became a big fan of leftovers and simple meals. Using the blog wastedfood.com as my food bible, I discovered new techniques to preparing food that would otherwise go bad. Quick side not, its 10 times more delicious to heat leftovers up on a skillet with a little oil than in a microwave. I kept note of what food I had to throw out as well.

How did I do?? I’ll first start with the bad. On 5 occasions, when I was either in a rush or not going straight home afterwards, I didn’t bring home my good waste. On three other occasions, I didn’t eat the food that I brought home because it just didn’t look so appealing as leftovers.

The clearest measure of my success looking at the money saved on food. Looking at my checking account, I was able to tabulate the total food-related spending for this quarter and compared it with that of last quarter. The results were shocking: I spent only $503 this quarter compared to $1035 from last quarter, a factor of two less. I owe this to the fact that I ate 90% of my weekly meals for free houses and dining halls, and bought only necessities like milk, cereal, eggs, and bread for my room, none of which I let spoil before the expiration date because there was so little food in my room.

I also feel that I successfully made a beneficial lifestyle change. Now, when my roommate makes too much food, I cover it up and put it in the fridge, whereas before I would have just left it. I freeze my bread so it lasts longer, and check expiration dates on milk when I buy it.

Conclusions

Stanford should definitely switch to trayless dining. By eliminating trays in residential dining locations, Stanford can conserve water, reduce the amount of chemical detergents released into the environment and lower energy costs. Tray-less dining also has the added benefit of reducing the volume of food wasted in dining halls.

Video games waste more than time

According to www.environmentalleader.com, “Video games in the U.S. consume 16 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity a year. This is roughly equal to the annual electricity use of all the homes in the city of San Diego, and translates to over $1 billion worth of energy a year.”

This only makes sense, seeing how video game hardware and software manufacturers are seeking to optimize for as much power as they can to achieve a stellar “user experience”. I doubt video game designers even worry about power consumption, because their consoles have to be plugged in the whole time. Their only power limit comes at the cost of size. The console’s largest components are the microprocessor heat sink and fan. If they were to add more performance they would need to consume more power leading to them having to put a freezer on their processor to keep it cool.

Also, there is no marketing motivation for these guys to limit power. Let’s face it, their major consumers (kids) aren’t paying the energy bills and probably don’t see the relationship between video games and the environment. 

So you may ask, how can this problem be solved? I believe there exist many solutions. One is to take advantage of idle time. These systems are burning as much power in idle mode as it is during full operation. Software updates can be added to the system via internet (similar to the iphone) to limit power during idle mode. Another solution is to show the user how much power is being consumed and recommend them to stop playing for a little while as opposed to playing 24 hours non-stop (which I frequently do). Lastly the energy star requirements should be placed on video game consoles just like TV’s. True, this will be expensive, but I believe it would have the same marketing effect as the Prius.

PSP Results: hair drying

GOAL: Reduce hair dryer use from 30 min/week to less than 5 min/week.

RESULTS: Success! On average, I used my hair dryer for 2.5 min/week. If I keep this up for a year, I will have saved 35.75 kWh of energy. Had I not bought a hair dryer in the first place, however, I would have saved even more energy. Too late for that one.

I actually found it fairly easy to reduce my hair dryer use because (lucky me) I have thin hair that is naturally straight. Had I had different hair, it might have been more difficult to accomplish this. However, I did have to make some changes to my daily routine and make a couple other small sacrifices. For example, instead of taking showers in the morning to be fresh for the day (making it much more difficult to wake up), I would take them at night and let my hair dry in my room as I was doing homework. I also had to deal with far-from-ideal hair styling – this ended up being ok with me.

FUTURE: Would I keep this routine up in the future? Definitely…Unless I become a hairstylist (not likely). In addition to reducing hair dryer use, I want to begin decreasing my use of other appliances and also begin unplugging appliances when they are not in use. This might be a seemingly small amount of energy saved, but it is still energy saved.

Is it possible to get others to reduce their hair dryer use? Of course, there are definitely people willing to make this change. But getting them to stop using hair dryers completely is be more difficult. Also, the people who use the most energy on their hair are probably going to be the ones who are least willing to change their habits because they care more about their hair. So, while reducing hair dryer use is a good thing, it would be better to try to get people to reduce their energy in other ways. Fortunately, that plan is already under way.

300 mpg… Are you kidding me?

In the 2007 TEDs conference Carlsbad California based Aptera Motors unveiled it’s mk-0 engine technology that will be used in their Aptera 2 series vehicles. The vehicle is a three wheel 2 seater vehicle that has a very far out futuristic look (http://www.aptera.com). You can tell by looking at it they aimed to optimize energy efficiency by creating a very aerodynamic and light weight body. My only fear is that it won’t fair well in stormy weather.

The magic to this machine isn’t just the design but the engine technology. The full production of the aptera 2 series will come in either hybrid or full electric motor models. The electric motor can go 120 miles on a charge, while the hybrid goes 300 miles per gallon when the battery is fully charged. Without any charge it will just go 130 miles per gallon. This is still amazing.

Another interesting attribute is all of the performance and efficiency Aptera has achieved while planning to offer the car in a price range of $25,000 to $40,000. Considering it’s proposed 0-60 performance and the torque that an electric vehicle provides, I would definitely consider buying one.

What do you think?

DP3 Pharma Waste Reduction

My PSP began as an investigation of different organic and environmentally friendly forms of pain relief. It ended as an introspective, philosophical analysis of what it means to be dependent on external sources of relief for simple ailments. What I tried to get across in my presentation on Monday was that we need to be less dependent on THINGS to make us happy, because most solutions based on things are temporary fixes to deeper more severe problems. Seeking happiness and comfort by looking within is not only a better environmental alternative because less waste is produced by not creating things, but we can improve our own personal health as well by improving our eating and lifestyle habits.
This is not where my journey began. I am by nature a technologist: I think we should push technology to the limits to solve the world’s problems, and relying on people to willingly change their behavior is simply a waste of time. I often describe it as if one were trying to push a rope – nothings going to happen no matter how hard you push. So, my initial PSP was designed to find some product-based solution to my personally and environmentally damaging need for anti-inflammatory medicine.
I decided first and foremost to stop taking my daily 800mg of Advil. I had been taking a steady dosage ever since late 2004 when I first injured my knee, and despite two knee surgeries and many dollars of physical therapy, the pain persisted. This was not a sustainable lifestyle choice: taking Advil for the rest of my life would invariably result in irreversible liver and stomach damage.
Taking unnecessary pharmaceuticals is also not an environmentally sustainable lifestyle. A recent report in the EU suggests that there is a significant amount of ibuprofen and other excreted drugs in the sewage water that goes untreated and is dumped into streams and water sources. These drugs have very negative effects on the fish and animal populations, and we’ve yet to study their effects on humans through the drinking water (which should happen, seeing as waste water treatment only removes 60-90% of ibuprofen from sewage). Ibuprofen is the 3rd most consumed drug in the world (aspirin is the 1st), so there are significant volumes being wasted every year. The EU report shows that in a place like Spain with a great sanitation system, there is still 276 tons of ibuprofen being dumped in the water every year. The US is roughly ten times as large as Spain, so you can imagine what our pharma footprint looks like.
As a technologist, my reaction, which follows a report out of the U of Virginia law school, is that we should make better drugs that are completely absorbed into the drug stream so there’s less waste (only 20-30% of ibuprofen is absorbed). This sounds nice, but drug companies don’t want to sell less of their product, so the incentives might not be in place for this to happen. This UV law report claims that the FDA should be responsible for making sure that drugs are designed with the end of life in mind.
Relying on technology to solve the problem, unfortunately, means relying on many people to change policies and business models. So then, I sought to find a solution that was a bit more realistic for me personally and for me to recommend.
Pain, in low doses, is largely psychological. Through positive thought and meditation, one can eliminate most low-level pain. Furthermore, one’s diet affects much of how the body deals with pain. Diets high in antioxidants and omega3s have proven to reduce chronic pain.
Simple steps, like changing diet and personal habits, doing yoga and other healthy exercise, can greatly increase the quality of one’s life without relying on superfluous medication. The developed world is becoming increasingly medicated, and this will not only have an impact in our long-term health but also in the long-term health of our planet. Drug makers need to ensure that their medications are more environmentally designed, especially at the end of use, so that people can get medications they need to live happier, healthier, longer lives. And for those of us who don’t need to rely on medicine to survive, let’s find other ways to be happy that have a net zero or net positive environmental impact.
Do it for yourself and do it for your children’s futures.

PSP Final Results

To refresh your minds, I am turning off my computer to see how much energy I can save. I wanted to do this because I know that phantom energy, power usage while being plugged in, can be rather significant in terms of energy. I found that in my regular usage my computer is on for 11.5 hrs while I am idle and during the PSP project my idle time changed to 5.25 hrs, a savings of more than 50%. From this I calculated that I had 29.3 lbs CO2/Yr, which seems low but this is just for one laptop. If we scale this to Stanford students, more than 380000 lbs Co2/Yr can be saved. If we scale this to more than just laptops think of the impact!!

I learned a lot from this PSP. I learned that simply turning off and unplugging appliances can be a huge impact to saving energy. Beyond that, I learned that education is largely importatnt in maintaining sustainability sustainable. This I think is the first step to keep green alive…If we can show the impact of our everyday activities we can hopefully engage them in minimizing energy costs. Hopefully with the advancement of technology, we can have sustainable soultions that do not change the convenience of consumer behavior.

Green Marketing Myopia – reading reaction

The following are some of my thoughts about this reading:

First, I thought that the opening hook about the CFL bulbs was so interesting. Especially because of my experience with them. For one, I had no idea that such a bulb existed as early as 1994. The marketing of any such bulb didn’t reach me until last year when one of my friends was in charge of distributing these bulbs throughout our dorm. She had an entire box of them that she was distribuing FOR FREE that an incredibly small number of people were interested in trading their normal bulb in for. I also feel like before this class I hadn’t thought much about how marketing of green products was so interconnected with their success. The fact that changing the name from “EnergyLight” to “Marathon” and showcasing the cost savings rather than the environmentally friendly aspect changed sales so dramatically is incredible.

The article also highlights what we have discussed often in class – that we as designers have to successfully design a product that will be more desirable to customers in addition to green. Almost as though it is an added constraint in the design process because people are not going to purchase something with an increased price simply for it’s “green-ness.” I liked the list of five non-green consumer values associated with green products: “efficiency and cost-effectiveness; health and safety; performance; symbolism and status; and convenience.” I can see how so many green products are strong in at least one of these categories.

This entire concept of marketing the other strenghts of the product rather than its environmentally friendly nature really hit me early on in the class when Karin was talking about working at Nike and how even though they had designed a new shoe that was much greener they weren’t allowed to market it that way. Instead it had to sell because of its improved performance in order to not belittle the rest of the Nike products that were not so environmentally friendly. I feel like for me personally I’d like to know that that shoe is better for the environment, but I see how the company wouldn’t want to show their other products aren’t.

Lastly, during a brainstorming session earlier this year some friends and I were discussing how so many products, especially in this era of high technology, were changing from physcial things to services – online, on the iPhone etc. And I found it really interesting that this idea was included in the article, and that the iPod was considered such a service. I had never thought of it that way, but I see how it does in fact greatly reduce the waste and production costs associated with CDs and other older forms of music.

PSP Final Blog & Reflection:

As I will explain in class shortly, my PSP has led me to a simple conclusion: switching from disposable to re-usable water bottles is undoubtedly helpful to the environment, but it all comes down to scale.

If one person, who uses as many water bottles as I did were to completely shift from using disposable to re-usable water bottles, he or she would save the planet an equivalent of 5o miles of driving per year (in manufacturing emissions and environmental impacts) and the equivalent of a 1/12th of a cubic meter of lanfill a year. On a larger scale however, this could have a significant impact, especially with a behavioral trickle down effect.

What I realized during my course of these few weeks, is that every time I drank from a re-usable water bottle and was inconvenienced by it, I was reminded of my initial goal. In doing so, I automatically looked around the room to check if there were any unnecessary lights turned on, or whether my computer was on instead of on standby. In other words, it made me amore conscious of my surroundings and my everyday practices. In that sense, not only did I save a certain amount of water bottles, but I managed to unintentionally change my behavior to the better!

In conclusion, it all comes down to making a personal sacrifice. In my case, it was more rewarding than I thought, in the sense that it extended beyong the realm of my initial purpose – saving water bottles – and fanned out into the rest of my everyday practices: using paper towels, making sure the water doesn’t run too long, etc..

Thanks for a wonderful quarter. It’s been intellectually engaging, interesting and most importantly eye opening.

Post-its and Paper Use

I saw that someone else had posted about greenerdesign.com so I decided to check it out. This is one of the first articles I found, and it immediately made me think about a lot of things regarding paper use, design work, and our generation: “Post it notes: Available in any color as long as it’s green” (http://greenerdesign.com/news/2009/05/15/post-it-notes-green)

First off I had never heard of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) and just thought that all paper products were wasteful. I had no idea that ever forests had varying degrees of good/bad and certifications. I explored the SFI website a bit and found this: “Its philosophy is that healthy, productive forests yield immense environmental, social and economic benefits, and mitigate the impacts of climate change by absorbing and storing carbon in trees, soil and biomass.” And that there are standards that address everything “from water quality and biodiversity to harvesting and regeneration.” I’ll be interested to look into this further.

I find the conflicting interests of our generation so funny. We hate that kids no longer read books and rarely write handwritten letters and are so distracted by the computer and other gaming devices. But with the benefit of being so technologically savvy we will be able to adjust to things like Yahoo!’s proposed note-taking system, which allows you to take notes directly on webpages, eliminating your need to open up Word or even a paper notebook to take notes and copy URLs on. (This is a product that I saw at the Cool Products Expo.) Our generation will also be able to adjust to reading books on things like the Kindle and waste less paper and other resources in the process. And we’ve grown up with devices – and services – like the iPod which eliminate such waste in relation to CDs. (As discussed in the Green Marketing Myopia article). And, our generation will be more receptive and accepting of these “services” that are going to start popping up in all areas of our life due to their much more green nature. In so many ways I am thankful for the tremendous technology of our generation, though I do enjoy my paperback books and handwritten letters. I wonder when our generation will completely phase these out or when conserving the environment will necessitate that we do so.

In design we use all sorts of interactive tools to communicate our ideas. But will anyting every take the place of Post-its and drawings during brainstorming sessions? Theres so much value in the quick rendering abilities and what they communicate. I feel like there are similar areas where paper will always be used – and for these places I am happy we have such certifications as the SFI. But I certainly hope that the government can stop wasting “$440 million on unnecessary print-outs” as the article cites.