May 25, 2010

Quaking Aspen: The End of an Era

Posted by asheen under Life Cycle Assessment, Quaking Aspen | Tags: , , , , , |
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Dear friends and colleagues in Sustainability,
 
I’m writing with some exciting news — I recently started a new job as the first Sustainability Product Manager and corporate sustainability leader for SolidWorks Corporation!
 
I’ll be managing SolidWorks’ new Sustainability tool, which is a life cycle assessment (LCA) dashboard integrated into our CAD software that tracks the carbon footprint, total embodied energy, and air and water effects in real time as designers and engineers model and simulate products. SolidWorks CAD is used by over a million commercial and academic users worldwide, so I’m really excited for this tool’s potential to create some pretty incredible sustainable product designs. In addition to launching and managing the SolidWorks Sustainability module, I’ll be leading the company’s corporate sustainability efforts.
 
I hope you don’t mind that I’ll be reaching out to many of you in my new role, both for advice on sustainable-product management and corporate greening, as well as for potential sustainability successes using our product. Please let me know if you use SolidWorks in your company and would be interested in having a conversation about sustainable product design!
 
I started at SolidWorks last week, and it’s already been intense. With my hands full here, I’ll be shuttering Quaking Aspen, my sustainable innovation consultancy. I’m happy with what Quaking Aspen was able to accomplish through from 2008-2010. Along with our partners, we:

  • helped the Conservation Law Foundation develop a green-marketing plan for a new service offering around stakeholder engagement towards corporate social and environmental responsibility;
  • provided content for eQuilibrium’s enterprise carbon accounting (ECA) software, which was acquired by EnerNOC in 2009;
  • guided Avery Dennison in product stewardship decisions using LCA tools (one for a product that sold 40 million units in 2007!); and
  • reported on best practices in employee engagement around energy efficiency for the Environmental Defense Fund.

I’ll retain this email address as a general professional networking address, so you can reach me here or at SolidWorks — my new contact details are pasted below. And of course, you can still find me on Twitter, at Babson (where I’ll continue teaching sustainable business as an adjuct professor), in Net Impact, at conferences, and generally around Boston.
 
Look me up at SustainableBrands ’10 if you’ll be there in Monterey in June — otherwise I hope to connect or reconnect with each of you soon!
 
Cheers,
Asheen

Asheen Phansey
Product Manager, Sustainability
Office: +1 978 318 5623
Cell: +1 781 530 7262
Asheen.Phansey@3ds.com
Dassault Systèmes | www.3ds.com Visit us at: www.solidworks.com
Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp.- 300 Baker Avenue – CONCORD, MA 01742, USA

 

September 28, 2009

Oct 15, 2009: Sustainable Innovation Workshop

Posted by asheen under Biomimicry and Natural principles, Corporate Sustainability, Green chemistry, Green marketing, Industrial Ecology, Life Cycle Assessment, Quaking Aspen, Sustainability philosophy, Sustainable entrepreneurship, Sustainable operations | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Quaking Aspen, in partnership with Collaborative Innovation Services, is thrilled to announce our first Sustainable Innovation Workshop open to the public!


Workshop details:

Date:
Thursday, October 15, 2009
9:00AM – 5:00PM

Place:
Forefront Conference Center
404 Wyman Street Waltham, MA
http://www.forefrontcenter.com/

Cost:
$395 per person, light breakfast and buffet luncheon included
Student rate available

Register at:
http://sustainableinnovation.eventbrite.com/
Registration deadline is Friday, October 9 at 12:00 Noon

Contact:
Asheen@QuakingAspenLLC.com

Bringing a product from concept to customer is an interdisciplinary process that involves a wide diversity of skills: designers’ creativity, engineers’ pragmatism, operations leaders’ effectiveness, marketers’ insight. So why would you use one-size-fits-all sustainability practices?

We’ve developed a Sustainable Innovation Workshop that provides clarity to where each sustainable innovation tool fits into your job and your company.

We will train you in the tools most useful at each stage of the innovation process. You’ve probably heard of some of these sustainable innovation tools, like carbon footprinting, life cycle assessment, and green marketing.

So if you’re a professional working in a design, technical, operations, strategy, or marketing role, and are interested in—or have been tasked with—infusing more sustainability into your job and career, attend our workshop to gain exposure to these tools of sustainable innovation. Keep reading to find out what you’ll learn.

Sustainable Innovation graphic

More about the Sustainable Innovation Toolkit

Here is more detail about the Sustainable Innovation Toolkit you’ll be exposed to through our workshop:

Biomimicry

Biomimicry, or nature-inspired design, provides a practical, systematic framework used for the design of products and processes using inspiration from Nature. Its principles will also help you develop a sustainable product “gold standard” against which you can compare all future design ideas.

You will learn how to apply this framework during the design process. To really get your design team’s creative juices flowing, we also offer a half-day intensive biomimicry workshop.

Life Cycle Assessment

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is the practice of quantifying a product design’s ecological impact.

You will learn how to make simple tradeoffs to improve the ecological efficiency of your products, such as: do we manufacture with sustainable materials in China, or local nonrenewables? What is the impact of changing from materials? To learn more, we also offer an LCA workshop that will let you really dig into LCA methodology.

Green Chemistry

Is there a science to choosing—and inventing anew—materials along environmental considerations? You bet! Green chemistry “unleashes the creativity and innovation of our scientists and engineers in designing and discovering the next generation of chemicals and materials… [for] increased performance and increased value while meeting all goals to protect and enhance human health and the environment” (ACS Green Chem. Inst.).

You will learn how to develop a Material Preference List for existing materials, and will learn the Twelve Principles of Green Chemistry to evaluate new materials. If you need to delve more deeply into the green beaker, leverage our relationship with Dr. John Warner of the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry.

Sustainable Operations

It takes a sustainable company to make a truly sustainable product. Do you know where the major impacts of your company’s operations lie? Performing a greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory—the formal name for a carbon footprint—reveals the most impactful areas of your operations.

You will learn how to conduct a GHG inventory, and how to use the information gained from this inventory to improve your operations. We can also work with you further to reduce your company’s total GHG footprint.

Industrial Ecology

Industrial ecology refers to a high-level understanding of a business ecosystem, and what makes that ecosystem sustainable. This covers greening upstream in your supply chain and downstream in your products’ value chains.

You will learn about the finer distinctions of the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle hierarchy (like recycling vs. downcycling), and the positive and negative financial impacts of closed-loop (cradle-to-cradle) production.

Green Marketing

Green Marketing is the ability to tell the sustainability story of a product or service believably, to one or more market segments that will be incentivized to buy your offering based on its environmental effectiveness.

You will learn about market segmentation, targeting, and positioning for a green marketing campaign; laws and ethical practices in green advertising; and future trends to watch for, such as product-level carbon footprinting. Interested in learning more? We also offer—you guessed it—an in-depth, hands-on seminar in green marketing.

Your Workshop Facilitators

Read more about Asheen Phansey and Rudy Ruggles.

 

June 16, 2009

On Sustainable Food at TiECON East

Posted by asheen under Babson College, Quaking Aspen, Sustainable entrepreneurship | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Perennial wheat at The Land InstituteRecently I had the privilege of moderating a panel in the Social Enterprise track at TiECON East called “Feeding 9 Billion People: Challenges and Opportunities in Sustainable Solutions”, sponsored by Babson College. The audience consisted of technologists and entrepreneurs, and the panel featured four great sustainable food experts:

We began with brief introductions from each panelist, during which some very interesting ideas and statistics were already emerging. For example, did you know that agriculture accounts for 25% of the carbon dioxide emissions and fully 75% of methane emissions (a greenhouse gas 20 times worse than CO2)? Or that 92% of farms in the US are classified as small farms, and these hold 73% of all agricultural assets?

Despite the entrenched nature of some areas of agribusiness, the panelists considered this a great business area to enter. To my first question of What are the big entrepreneurial opportunities in sustainable agriculture?, they proposed these 10 opportunities:

  1. tracking and traceability of “field to fork”, particularly in the EU, which is beginning to require adherance to traceability standards (JB);
  2. purchasing at-risk (especially urban) farmland, and dedicating it as a public trust, like forestland (DM);
  3. a Kiva.org microfinance model for American farmers (DM);
  4. new CSA (Community-Supported Agriculuture) associations, since most CSAs are oversubscribed and have waiting lists (DM);
  5. providing services to increase the efficiencies of existing CSAs (DM);
  6. novel farming solutions as we bump into the limits of yield, culture, and space for agriculture (CR);
  7. using recent advances in microbiology to promote new sustainable agricultural solutions (CR);
  8. ways to train the next generation (the average age of farmers in the US is 54-56 years old) (DS);
  9. sourcing local food in supermarkets (2-3% of food is sold directly to people) (DS);
  10. urban food production via greenhouses and/or rooftops (DS).

Want to grab one of these ideas and run with it? You might then be interested in my next question: How can an entrepreneur obtain financing for an idea in the sustainable food space? All agreed that funding was a challenge in this space. Farm credit bureaus are designed to support existing farms, not new opportunities. Often, agricultural plays don’t qualify for VC funding or foundation grants. Many suggested the funding itself as an area of great opportunity!

So given the above solutions, Is there a “killer app” technology that could be applied to the problem of sustainable food? I suggested the use of perennial crops, such as The Land Institute‘s wheatgrass, the result of a cross between a perennial prairie grass and annual crop wheat (if you’re ever near Salina, Kansas, you must visit the Land as I was lucky enough to a couple months ago!). Others tossed out ideas as diverse as mobile phone technology in the developing world (JB), a greater understanding of soil chemistries (DM) (“we know more about the stars than we do about soil”), and a very strong emphasis on supply chain logistics (JB, DS).

My curiousity satisfied, I turned to the wisdom of the audience. They asked great questions like:

  • How do we deal with the consumption side of the problem of feeding 9 billion people? (logistics, and information)
  • How do we recover from low productivity when pesticides aren’t used? (a novel idea: provide insurance to farmers during the three years it takes during the changeover to organic, as the soil rebuilds and before yields come back up)
  • How do we combat the growing competing uses for existing farmland? (connect the current generation of farmers with a new generation to facilitate the huge impeding land transfer)

Clearly I’m collapsing much fascinating and productive dialogue, but you’ll get the idea: there’s an amazing amount of good business and business for good that can be accomplished by creative entrepreneurs in the sustainable food space. I think Janice summed it up best: “Entrepreneurs are the way to [sustainable] development!”

Thanks to all four panelists for a great conversation, and to Vithal Deshpande of TiE Boston for introducing me and the panel. So, what do you think? Do you have a comment or an idea for one of my panelists? Leave a comment, and I will pass your note along.

Asheen Phansey is the Founder and President of Quaking Aspen, LLC and an Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at Babson College.

 

February 13, 2009

Why Globalization Is Dangerous for Sustainability

Posted by asheen under Biomimicry and Natural principles, Sustainability philosophy | Tags: , , , , |
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Modern economics says that global trading can often create additional value for all involved. A country’s economy will function more efficiently if it produces an excess of goods that are easier for it to make and trades these for other goods; that’s a basic extension of the concept of division of labor. The obvious negative impacts of global trading are transportation costs, both financial and ecological; but if we can develop cleaner modes of transportation, surely the positive economic effects outweigh the ecological costs?

I had thought as much, until Professor Ben Linder of Olin College of Engineering made me rethink my assumptions. In a sustainability workshop that I’ll be chewing on for a while, Ben said that global trade’s real threat to sustainability has to do not with transportation costs, but with carrying capacities.

First, a brief ecology lesson. Picture a world of three tribes: the Sumerians, Babylonians and Phoenicians. For simplicity, these ancient people need only three things to survive: stones (for building houses), barley, and fruit, say one unit per person. Each tribe practices an internal division of labor and produces some of each resource.

Each tribe’s skills and geography are differently suited for producing each resource, but all three resources are equally necessary for survival, so for each tribe only one resource is the limiting factor to growth. Let’s say in our case, Sumer is always scrounging for stones; the Babylonians are often bereft of barley; and fruits are few and far between in Phoenicia. If each tribe can make 1000 units of its scarce resource, but can make 2500 of the other two, each can still only support 1000 people; so the world population is 3000.

Now the tribes discover trade. Each tribe barters some of its two excess resources to the one deficient in each, so now the resources are distributed evenly at 2000 each of stones, barley, and fruit. Now, each tribe can support 2000 people. Without producing any new resources, the population of the world has doubled! And with further specialization, production will likely increase as well. Clearly, the more tribes you can trade with, the fewer your resource limitations to growth.

So why is in-tribe division of labor a good thing, but cross-country trading detrimental to the planet? Because ecosystems can’t trade natural resources. A tribe’s ecosystem is resilient as long as its resources don’t flow out, but the earth can’t ship fertile soil to Phoenicia in exchange for some cleaner water elsewhere if Phoenicia depletes all of its crop nutrients. Yet that’s surely what will happen if the whole world demands Phoenician fruits from land that wasn’t evolved to support the needs of the trade-burgeoned domestic population, let alone the entire world.

This was happening long before the world “flattened”. Ben is fond of telling the story of the collapse of the Atlantic cod population, a resource that put Boston on the world map. Over the last few centuries, “tribes” from around the world traded their resources for Atlantic cod and literally fished it out of George’s Bank. There are cod species elsewhere, but since George’s Bank can’t exactly trade for this top-tier predator, its entire food web is now going through an unstable flux known as a trophic cascade in the cod’s absence. (Read the fascinating history of George’s Bank.)

There are other ways that global operations can stymie sustainability, such as introducing lags into the feedback loops for optimal production, but this argument of carrying capacities seems to be the main challenge. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it, though.