sustainable product design

The Sustainable Business Path—From “Do Good” to Competitive Advantage

September 13, 2021 By Elizabeth Arlen

Marketing Sustainability

What’s in a word? Everything. It holds memories, smells, assumptions, beliefs, colors, positions, ideas, right and wrong. A word is loaded; a single word can communicate entire worlds. What does the word ‘Sustainability’ communicate? What kind of world does it hold out as possible? To my mind, even ‘Photosynthesis’ sounds sexier. Who wants to sustain? Stay the same? Who wants to be regulated and or told how to live and what to believe, as if the word Sustainability holds the truth? Who wants a business that does great things for the planet, but fails financially, as is the reputation for good causes (and if they are unsound, it’s true, because that’s business law).

As for colors and smells, I conjure up splashes of mulch, recycling, and, patchouli. When passionate people talk about sustainability I smile with a glazed expression and actually have ‘left the premises’. As an outsider, I do not trust good causes and their ability to actually bring about change. So many come from the clouds and return there because they have no traction in the real world. It’s the old spinach metaphor: if it’s good for you, it tastes bad; if it’s about a good cause, especially saving the planet, it’s a green dream that asks business to shrink down to trade negotiations at the front flap of a yurt.

Yet here I am, actively standing in a hub of ‘Sustainability’ and ‘Sustainable Business’ in the tiny rural mountain town of Durango, Co, by co-creating/editing the ‘Live Creative Studio’ blog each month. Live Creative was founded by Claire Attkisson whose manifesto is “just start”—just start reading and educating yourself about sustainable innovation; just start talking about Sustainability.

Wait, let’s get back to this blog–and words. Sustainability has a word and image problem ; it doesn’t communicate possibility or innovation or creativity or design or infinity. For a world that craves excellence, this is a hard word to get behind. What does innovation in sustainability even look like? The more I “just start”, the more I use words like innovation, creativity, and return on investment to describe what’s possible within the world of Sustainable Business.

Yet, these hopeful words are not usually associated with sustainability for most of us on this blue green plant. To help solve this communication problem, some people have moved on to words like: ‘Green Economy’ (but that leaves out all of us great people) or ‘Living Economy’ (what?) or the ‘New’ or ‘Next Economy’ (maybe?) or the ‘Regenerative Economy’ (that’s more inspiring for sure!)

What is a Sustainable Business?

Simply put, my new understanding of Sustainable Business is this:

An organization of people who view the purpose of business as a driver and creator of prosperity for people, the planet, and the economy.

This definition reflects the “triple bottom” line backbone of sustainable business. A business cannot do good if it is no longer in business. And notice, this definition is not prescriptive; there is no sustainable business manual. However, there are sustainable business frameworks that help us expand our thinking and give us a structure to make decisions, such as: Biomimicry, The Natural Step, Cradle to Cradle, and more.

This is where language comes in again. These sustainability frameworks give us the conceptual tools to imagine new possibilities for business and new ways of thinking about manufacturing and a product’s end of life. Language allows us to communicate these concepts and begin to prototype them in the business world. In other words: We can’t evolve as a species with the same thinking that got us to where we are now (I paraphrase Einstein here). Sustainability points to a vision. It is not THE vision. We have had many visions in our evolution. That is why we have cars, computers, and yes, the sweater vest. We started out nomadic and that urge has funneled to our minds, where our imaginations and intelligence do the traveling.

In just a few months of blog writing about sustainability, I’m struck by these facts: Sustainable Business is not small and cute and just the luxury of people who can afford to spend $200 on a basket of organic food from a beautiful food salon (I love good healthy food, but how can we scale this for the masses?); it isn’t about hemp and bamboo sheets (although those are awesome, please keep making them!).

Sustainability isn’t exclusive and it isn’t about killing big business and taking the fun out of life in order to save it. In fact, what I’m learning is that businesses that don’t tackle sustainability (people, planet, profit) will be left behind by consumers (people) who will find a like business that does!

The more I “just read” or “just talk” about sustainable business the more I realize how powerful global commerce is to scaling change for the better. For example, have you heard of the “Cradle to Cradle” sustainable design framework? (I like this sustainability framework, as it gives us a visual that is key to our survival: the circle.) Cradle to Cradle follows nature’s principles of abundance and circular nutrient flows. If your eyes are glazing over, stop now and watch this short and fun video on Cradle to Cradle.

Live Creative Studio is working with Durango, Colorado based Zia Taqueria to help them move toward sustainable food to-go packaging. One of the companies being vetted is Be Green Packaging, which used the Cradle to Cradle Design Certification process to create food packaging products that are tree free, 100% compostable, and their manufacturing process recycles water, reuses general waste and scraps, and it’s “end of life” is a nutrient for the earth that generates healthy, fertile soil.

Cradle to Cradle Certified To Go Packaging by Be Green Packaging

Circular or closed loop product design and manufacturing, such as this, has helped to evolve the language of sustainability into a global concept called the “Circular Economy”. Talk about the power of language and businesses role in scaling sustainability.

Marketing and Scaling Sustainability

Scaling sustainability is essential to solving our global crisis of poverty, environmental catastrophe, and a quickly changing climate that won’t be fit for life. It is critical for businesses of all sizes and shapes—from the small to global corporate giants—to embrace a sustainability framework (think: Cradle to Cradle, The Natural Step, or BCorp to name a few) and put their own stamp on the triple bottom line business model and start innovating around plastics, toxic product ingredients, air and water pollution, energy, waste, water, gender equity, and diversity and inclusion, to name a few.

If every business on the planet “just started” on the path of sustainability and inspired their employees through a shared purpose, the world would indeed be reborn in alignment with the operating principles that sustain life.

Marketing for Sustainable or Purpose Brands Requires Transparency and Accountability

Each company’s sustainability program will look different. Some companies start with a goal of zero waste, others the goal of 100% renewable energy, and still more, take a deep dive into sustainable packaging or diversity and inclusion and gender equity. For Example:

Starbucks: “Our aspiration is to become resource positive — storing more carbon than we emit, eliminating waste; and providing more clean, fresh water than we use.” Starbucks tested one of their strategies to get people to use reusable cups in the UK in 2018, and found that charging a 5-pence disposable cup fee — along with a 25-pence reusable cup incentive — pushed the rate of hot drinks served in reusable cups up from 2.2 percent to 5.8 percent. Starbucks has a long way to go to shrink its environmental footprint. The company’s yearly greenhouse gas emissions are roughly equivalent to the pollution from almost 14 coal-fired power plants — nearly on par with other giant corporations like Microsoft. Its annual waste adds up to more than two times the weight of the Empire State Building, and the water it uses could fill 400,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Setting ambitious goal is key to sustainability, but so is accountability.

Amazon: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos says Amazon is committed to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement 10 years early. As part of the plan, Amazon has agreed to purchase 100,000 electric delivery vans from vehicle manufacturer Rivian Bezos expects 80% of Amazon’s energy use to come from renewable sources by 2024, before transitioning to zero emissions by 2030.

Svenskt Stål AB (Swedish Steel or SSAB), the Nordic steel giant’s sustainability goal is to use renewable hydrogen to produce fossil-free steel by 2026. Momentum is growing towards the decarbonization of one of the world’s most energy intensive industries. This is 10 years ahead of schedule. How have they done this? Sustainable thinking and innovation.

H&M has an entire ‘Conscious collection’ made from pineapple skins and orange rinds, plus a garment recycling program, allowing anyone to recycle any brand at their H&M stores.. And, they just hired their female sustainability director to run the entire company. The fashion industry weighs heavy on natural resources, which is one reason H&M Group has set up clear goals going ahead: “our mission is to only use recycled or other sustainably sourced materials by 2030.”

The Promise of the Sustainable or Purpose-Driven Business Path

One of the most exciting elements of sustainability is that it isn’t political (or it shouldn’t be). It’s not just for the “greens” to take up but for all businesses to profit while doing good for people and the planet. What a global foce that would be. When we see business as it is—at the center of scalable global sustainability, we will see a huge shift.

For example, what if we designed commerce for health as well as profit? Or designed toxic chemicals and pollution out of everyday products and manufacturing systems? What if we designed for clean water? What if we designed for equality? When we look at design in this way we begin to see that regulation is a “signal of poor design” (Think: William McDonough). What if we designed global commerce in such a way that it no longer required government regulation (just confirmation of health and wellness)?

Green chemistry is key to the creation of new
non-toxic materials

This sounds lofty and it is, but so was the goal of going to the moon and we did that over 50 years ago (and our lives didn’t even depend on it!). We can do this. We must do this. Both survival and innovation are in our DNA. We are our own heroes, remember? New thinking and imagining is our path to get there.

The “truth” that sustainability is really pointing to is the transformation of our global economy. An economy based on reality (not a false illusion)—that our Earth’s resources are finite and that there is no such thing as “away” as in “throw that away” (burning garbage causes air, land, and water pollution and landfills are a terrible time capsule for humanity to leave behind for the future to uncover).

Nature is the model we can turn to now. Nature has survived for billions of years through both competition AND collaboration, resulting in incredible diversity and abundance, even within a finite system.

This discovery —that the world is finite, yet nature still thrives, is akin to discovering that humans are not the center of the universe or that the world is not flat, but round.

So, you see, sustainability is our new evolutionary “tool” or “technology”. It starts with language, talking, sharing, doing, and coming together and imagining a new world. Every great invention or revolution came from creating a conversation, a common language that evolves, just like the notion of Democracy or Equality or Feminism or Humanity.

“Just Start: One step on the sustainability path at a time”

Durango’s Sustainable Business Hub

So that’s what we’re doing. Live Creative Studio is creating a sustainable business hub in a tiny rural mountain town (Durango, Colorado) where businesses of all shapes and sizes can “just start” on the sustainability path by sharing and helping each other and therein becoming more inspired by possibilities and the return on their investment. There are already 20+ businesses in our community on the sustainability path. How many are in your community? Find them and support them. Create one. Join us and prove to the world that business is a powerful force for good. Talk about a force of nature.

Check out our video!

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Live Creative is a sustainable business, marketing, and shopping hub. Our Creative Studio offers authentic marketing, branding, and sustainable business expertise to ethical, sustainable, and purpose brands. And Sustainable Business Team offers sustainability strategy and goals setting as well as sustainable packaging services. And, our Lifestyle Team curates our global Sustainable Marketplace, the Durango Sustainable Biz Guide, and Get Real—our inspiring Innovation for Good weekly newsletter. Follow us on Insta: @livecreativestudios, like us on Facebook: Live Creative Studio and join our FB Group: Sustainable Business Idea Exchange.

Hope in the Climate Crisis Age: Products that Sequester Carbon

September 7, 2021 By Claire Attkisson

Carbon—From Enemy to Resource

What does sustainable business have to do with climate change? Our global economy today was built on cheap fossil fuel energy (carbon stored in the ground), which has fueled a never-ending thirst for more and more energy to keep it going and growing. While many point at business as the evil destroyer of the planet, I do not. I believe growing business is natural—everything in nature is growing; it is our natural order and drive. That said, I do believe that business must reinvent itself as a force for environmental and social good and take the lead on climate. As Ray Anderson, founder of Interface Carpet, asks: “What is the business case for ending life on Earth?”

As product designers, creatives, engineers, and purpose brand marketers we have a unique seat at the business reinvention table. Like, artists, we can inspire a new way of seeing the world, like Picasso, Frida Kalo, and Leonardo DaVinci have done. We are in a new age of enlightenment— a design renaissance that is going to blow our minds. Are you ready? I am.

But, before we get to where we are going with new ways of thinking that are different than our current thinking (a requirement noted by Albert Einstein), we need to understand where we are now. Climate change is not a matter up for question, it’s a matter of how bad. But we can’t freeze up and stress there. We cannot afford to and are bigger than that. There is a lack of communication between the people who are creating a new future and the citizenry who are steeped in guilt and powerlessness. As usual, good news is not news so the masses don’t hear about it. So, we consume and feel guilty, we recycle the cardboard cover of a bouncy house and feel just a bit better. But our goal cannot be to feel “less bad”! (thank you, architect and sustainability thought leader, William McDonough, for that insight).

The conventional doom and gloom feeling and story about climate change is that it is a problem of burning fossil fuels for electricity and transport. While true, that is not the entire story. What it misses is the fact that a 3^rd of global carbon emissions come from the chemistry of stuff. The biggest carbon contributors in the world of stuff are: Cement (think: buildings), steal (again think: building/auto’s), and plastic (think: every other product made on this planet). The things we love every-day are designed and manufactured to off-gas CO2.

Einstein Thinking Quote Top 60 Albert Einstein Quotes That Will Change Your Life – The Best – QUOTES BY PEOPLE

What if I told you that the new way of thinking (thank you, Einstein) that will save us are already here. It starts with changing how we think about carbon.

Carbon molecules, while vilified today, are the building blocks of all living things, including humans. Us. Big carbon-based molecules are how life stores the energy of the sun. How can we make the carbon molecule good again, life producing?

Let’s take the lead from Interface Carpet and “design with carbon in mind.” In doing so, we ask the question: What if we could take carbon out of the atmosphere when producing every-day things? What if we could build our homes and make the clothing we wear so that they sequester or store carbon? Think about that a minute.

Product design to sequester carbon isn’t science fiction. It’s happening right now all over the world.

Here are a few examples:

Take Interface Carpet, they are the company that created the carpet squares we all love. Their company-wide sustainability philosophy is a “commitment to running our business in a way that reverses global warming and creates a climate fit for life.” Wow, what a goal, what a sense of purpose! Interface is so far ahead of most companies, thanks to founder Ray Anderson, that they have already achieved 100% carbon neutrality across their manufacturing and operations world wold. Now, they are on to the next big sustainability program called “Climate Take Back”, which so far has resulted in carpet that sequesters carbon. This Climate Take Back program pushes their designers to change their way of thinking—from how can we create products that are less polluting (less bad)—to thinking about how carpet can be designed to be net positive; to restore the planet.

2. Take Charlotte McCurdy, a Yale and RISDE graduate. She designed a raincoat made from marine algae and sequestered carbon.

Carbon Sequestered Rain Coat made from Algae Plastic | Designed by Charlotte McCurdy

3. And, what if I told you that art could clear the air and sequester carbon? Scientist-inventors Anastasia Neddersen and Alina Adams do just that. They design art that sequesters carbon. They started the company Artveoli to design and manufacture wall art that converts carbon dioxide into oxygen, like plants do (sounds like biomimicry, doesn’t it?).

Carbon to Oxygen Filtration Art | Designed by Artveoli

Designing things to sequester carbon is a market-driven solution to climate change.

Carbon neutral product design is a revolutionary act. This market-driven solution (not to mention creative solution!) by-passes policy and politics. It gives us hope. Breakthroughs like this are happening all over the world inside companies and universities in research institutions, in biology and chemistry departments, right now.

In closing, the time is now to take bold, positive action. America was built with a pioneer spirit, let’s continue that legacy and show the world what is possible through a sustainability/climate plan that includes climate sustainable business innovation and incubation.

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5 Biomimicry Inspired Product Designs that are Changing the World.

October 25, 2019 By Claire Attkisson

What can a leaf, a gecko, a whale, a spider web, and a muscle tell us about life-sustaining design? What can we learn from nature? Raise your chins, and get radical with the optimism within you. Negativity and gloom are so last year. Believe, because nature is our solution. (And you don’t have to be in the purpose marketing, green marketing, eco-marketing, or eco-branding space to understand this.) What can all marketers, brand managers, and designers learn from nature? What can entrepreneurs and well-oiled corporations learn from nature?

This blog explores these questions and points to some answers using 5 examples of Biomimicry in action—nature inspired designs that will change the world as we know it.

Changing the world is all I need for inspiration at work. My team and I at Live Creative Studio —a strategic creative and marketing agency in Durango, Colorado—work with purpose and sustainable brands and are inspired every day. Turns out, we’re not alone—thank you universe! In fact, 90% of Gen Zers think that saving the world is the entire point of life, and that business should take the lead. Oh, that’s beautiful.

How is business taking the lead? There are signs of hope: B Corporations, conscious businesses, and green or sustainable businesses are growing in numbers and influence around the world. I call these types of businesses, purpose brands. Plus, more and more large corporations are moving away from green washing and leading the charge on renewable energy, like, Apple, Iron Mountain, and Walmart. Companies like Coca Cola and Unilever are taking the lead on plastic reduction. All of these examples points to a new sustainable business paradigm in the making.

Some purpose brands differentiate based on the development of a unique eco-product made from all natural ingredients with minimal to no packaging. Still further, some purpose brands turn waste into new products. Think t-shirts made of recycled bottles, or hair combs made of recycled ocean plastic, or paper made out of recycled post consumer waste and seeds so that when discarded the seeds grow into beautiful flowers or veggies to eat.

Biomimicry takes sustainable innovation a step further and asks: what if we looked at how nature designs life and see if there are operating instructions that can help us create every days things without creating waste or pollution as a bi-product in the first place?

Biomimicry, developed by scientist and scholar, Janine Benyus, points to the fact that Nature has sustained life for nearly 4 million years. How does nature do it? How has nature produced so much diversity of life and sustained life for so long?

Nature’s ingredients for life are: sun, water, and air. What if we (here’s where purpose brands come in) could power the world and create every day products with the air we breathe, sunshine, and water? Biomimicry shows us it is possible.

5 Examples of Biomimicry Inspired Designs that are Changing the Way We Make Every day Things.

1. Fireflies: LED Light Bulbs

Problem solved: Clean our air + end fossil fuel addiction through efficiency
Nature’s Solution: Microstructures that enhance light
Market Readiness: Lab/development

Fireflies help make LED light bulbs more efficient. The bugs’ lanterns have microstructures, or asymmetrical microscopic projections, that release light.

Researchers from Penn State found that adding microstructures to the surface of LEDs, which typically have symmetrical projections, allows more light to escape, making them more efficient and improving light extraction by 90 percent.

2. SpiderWeb: Bird Detected Glass

Innovation: UV Protective Coating on glass
Problem solved: Loss of bird life
Nature’s Solution: Ultraviolet (UV) spider silk
Market Readiness: Being Manufactured

Spider webs are practically everywhere in nature where birds exist. But scientists noticed webs go unharmed from birds in flight, while many windows (unfortunately) do not. So scientists from the Biomimicry 3.8 Institute looked to Orb weaver spiders’ webs, which build their webs with ultraviolet (UV) silk.

They found that it has reflective properties that protect the web. This led to the invention of the ORNILUX® Bird Protection Glass, which has a UV-reflective coating that mimics the ultraviolet thread patterns found in Orb spider webs.

Spider_web_biomimicry_blog — Spider Getty Image

3. Humpback Whale Fins: Wind Power

Innovation: Bumps on wind turbines increases efficiency
Problem solved: Clean our air + end fossil fuel addiction
Nature’s Solution: Tubercles (bumps) on whale fins

Humpback whales are one of the largest animals on Earth, and yet they move with speed thanks to momentum from their well-designed flippers. Humpback fins have been studied and modeled for wind turbines because of their tubercles (bumps found on their fins), which help with aerodynamic improvements.

A company called WhalePower found that the tubercles leave an 8 percent improvement in lift, a 32 percent reduction in drag, and allow for a 40 percent increase in angle of attack over smooth flippers. They’re using this to design wind turbines with increased efficiency, which also has the potential to improve the safety and efficiency of airplanes, fans, and more.

4. Common Leaf: Hydrogen Energy

Innovation: Artificial Photosynthesis: A bionic leaf that creates hydrogen fuel from sunlight
Problem solved: Clean our air + end fossil fuel addiction
Nature’s Solution: Leaves + Photosynthesis
Market Readiness: Lab/development

By emulating its process of photosynthesis (a leaf’s way of converting sunshine, carbon dioxide, and water → oxygen and energy) we can generate our own clean, hydrogen fuel, just by splitting water using electricity from the sun. This renewable energy technology has zero emissions and clean water as a byproduct.

5. Mussels: Adhesives

Innovation: Non-toxic glue
Problem solved: Clean our air + non-toxic to people and animals
Nature’s Solution: Nature’s chemistry that adheres to things when wet
Market Readiness: Lab/development

These underwater mollusks have inspired scientists to make one of the strongest adhesives on the market. Researchers have cracked how mussels attach to wet surfaces, and have replicated it into an adhesive for commercial use. They designed a biomimetic polymer model that contains proteins with the amino acid DOPA, which provides the glue’s adhesion.

In a study published in the journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, scientists found that this natural, non-toxic glue performed 10 times better than other commercial adhesives when used to bond polished aluminum.

There are many more examples of nature inspired sustainable designs that are changing how we make everyday things. Every single one gives me hope. We are optimists, remember? Life is always in search of life. No matter how big our egos grow, the planet will evolve either with us or without us.

Join me in infiltrating our local town halls, rural economic summits, and business and design schools across the country with the news about sustainable innovation tools like Biomimicry. Let’s inspire locally the “100th Monkey” of sustainable design thinking and move our world quickly (time is running out!) toward Malcolm Gladwell’s “tipping point” such that design and business are created from natures operating principles and life can flourish for 4 more million years.

May it be so.

By Claire Attkisson (sustainability/marketing geek).

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Live Creative Studio is a sustainable business, marketing, and shopping hub. Live Creative offers strategic creative for purpose brands; strategic sustainability for any business; and a curated sustainable marketplace for everyone to shop their values every day.