HAVE FREAKING DOORS!

I was headed over to the King Soopers (a grocery store chain in Colorado) last night with a major case of an Oreo attack.  When I got there, I couldn’t believe my eyes: this grocery store has no doors!  It just pumps AC all day with this gaping hole in the front of the store.  According to my Oreo attack comrade and Colorado native Craig, they do the same thing in the winter and have heat pouring out of the store’s orifice, spewing hot air twenty-four hours a day seven days a week.  They never close, and neither does this wasteful cavity.  It’s kinda like Rush Limbaugh’s mouth.   

Is it too much to ask to have freaking DOORS when the average heating bill is supposed to break $500 dollars this winter?  They’re making it a crime in to do this in NYC:

The crazy thing is, that this is dealing with stores that have doors but opt to keep them open in the hot summer months to draw customers into their AC.  King Soopers, however, didn’t even have doors in their blueprints.  I can see that conversation in my head:

Architect:  You know you really don’t need doors and it’ll save X dollars in door costs.  Doors are getting very expensive, because the magic that makes them open automatically has to come from never never land which is, like, really far away.

King Sooper Person-in-charge:  Wont that be an insulation problem?

Architect:  Dude, I’m an architect.

King Sooper Person-in-charge:  Sorry, you’re the expert.  I’m sorry I ever doubted you.  In that case, do we need walls?

I jest, of course, but I’m sure there was a conversation of the pros and cons to build this behemoth of a grocery store and some dude in some office weighed the lists of door pros and door cons and the pros lost.  Unfreakin’ believable.  

Enjoy your $120 a barrel oil King Soopers and enjoy one less customer.

(I did buy the Oreo’s though, they’re like crack.) 

Is there any reasoning to NOT having doors?  I’m sure this is and I would love to know what it is.  Can anyone inform me?

After traveling over 1800 miles across this country I came to a bit of a realization:  it aint easy being green. This country is designed for waste, especially rest stops.  It’s like convenience has replaced common sense. For example, rather than have a clean and cool filtered water fountain/dispenser where I could fill my water up each rest stop I went to had at least two vending machines whose sole purpose was to vend petroleum covered water.  

As far as green selections for food, you can forget about it.  I didn’t pass one exit or rest stop that had fresh local produce.  Despite the fact that lots of them were right next to giant farms.  

And of course, if you want to drive cross country, you’ve got to use gas.  

To summarize, there were plenty of options to eat crappy, use oil, and consume things that would be thrown out in under an hour.  Basically, tons of options to hurt your body and your environment and none to do the opposite.  As far as being green is concerned, you’re set up to fail!  It just got me to thinking how far we all really need to go to change.

I don’t know if the pictures show it, but these things are huge!

Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design or “LEED” certification sucks for two reasons:

1) It’s expensive.  

The first platinum certified (platinum being the highest followed by gold and silver) carbon neutral building cost $4 million dollars.

First of all I have a problem with any organization that categorizes the quality of things like Master Card. That aside, $4M dollars is crazy. 

LEED can add anywhere from 4-30% to the total cost of new construction.  Many of these extra costs provide NO environmental benefit.  These “soft” costs are basically greedy designers charging a premium for their “green” services and various administration and compliance fees.  

2) All LEED points are created equal regardless of their environmental impact.  

In a recent building, we received one point for spending an extra $1.3 million for a heat-recovery system that will save about $500,000 in energy costs per year. We also got one point for installing a $395 bicycle rack.

Whaaaaa??? Yes, I think that deserves three question marks.  How the hell can a bike rack get the same amount of points as a 1.3 million dollar heat-recovery system.  Answer: Because LEED sucks.  

Although I’m glad there is a standard for what makes a building green, from what I’m reading about LEED it seems like the USGBC has a ways to go.  

More on this later…

Instead of just posting about green things, I figure I’d post about the most ungreen, unsustainable, unnecessary crap in America.  Why just America?  Because the Chinese government scares me.  

If you have an idea for The Biggest Wastes Ever, post it below and take the credit!

Burning Man

Now you may be asking yourself “How can a bunch of hippies in the middle of the dessert doing drugs and running around naked be wasteful?”  Well, I’ll be more than happy to tell you. Despite last year’s Burning Man being green themed, it was the most wasteful of all other Burning Man’s in the history of Burning Man.  Why? Because it was also the biggest Burning Man ever and, Burning man being inherently wasteful, means the bigger it gets the more waste gets produced.  Here’s the basic rundown:

• Move 48,000 people from all across the world.
• Bring all the crap they need to survive in the desert for 5-7 days (food, water, fuel, drugs).
• Bring or ship all their art and structures.
• Drive about 20,000 vehicles into the dessert most of which are trucks, RV’s, and tractor trailers (distanced traveled can range anywhere from 3,000 to 30 miles).
• Run generators 24 hrs a day to light up everything and cool the RV’s. 
• Consume, burn, or dump EVERYTHING you brought.  

To be fair, you don’t dump all your trash in the desert in a giant pile.  Instead, you pile it into your car or trailer and then unload it at the nearest dump (about 50 miles away).  My camp (just 10 people) resulted in about fifteen 13-gallon bags of trash.  That’s 195 gallons of trash for only ten people!  Now imagine 48,000 people consuming, burning, and driving:

And all of these resources are consumed for what?  ”Self-expression, self-reliance, and art as the center of community?”  What a freaking joke.  This is the most egocentric, hedonistic, flashy waste ever imaginable.  Want to express yourself?  Start a journal.  Want self-reliance?  Move out of your parents house.  Want art to be the center of your community?  Then make art that you don’t burn five days later.

Don’t get me wrong, I had an AMAZING time at Burning Man but towards the final days there I realized what Burning Man really was and still is: a self-involved waste.  After seeing what a huge waste it all was, I did a little thought experiment that went a little something like this:  

Including the cost of the ticket, travel, camp fees and supplies going to Burning Man can conservatively cost anywhere from $800-1500.  Instead of using that money to throw a huge party what if 48,000 people got together each year and contributed their talents and $1,000.00 to help end world hunger or revolutionize energy consumption?  The real rub is that if you ask 100 people at Burning Man if they care about the environment 99 of them would probably answer yes or give you a light show.  

And on the Other End of the Spectrum…NASCAR!!!

Yes, the most popular sport in America is also the biggest waste ever.  I know this will piss off about half of America, but I could really care less.  NASCAR sucks and that half of America sucks.  Thirty-five to forty-three cars that get two to three mpg  line up and race in a circle, WHOPEE!  I’m sure there are some dudes out there that will say “Man, you have clearly never been to a race, you’ve never felt the speeeeeeed.”  

Guess what?  I’ve been to a race before and I’ve felt the “speed.”  But after lap 12314198019 the speed got boring and all I wanted to see was a fiery wreck of steel and rubber.  Let’s be honest here, that’s what most of the people who watch NASCAR want to see.  They don’t want to see cars drive in circles for hours, that’s boring.  They want to witness a gut-wrenching pileup of flesh and metal.  In that case why don’t we just cut to the chase and sponsor a real life MECHWARRIOR battle, the franchise could use a rejuvenating bump anyways.

Please don’t read sarcasm into the title of this post, it’s not.  I’m being totally serious.  I LOVE high gas prices.  Every time I pass by a gas station with a number I haven’t ever seen in the “ones” decimal place I smile with a glee not unfamiliar to a child that’s been gifted a new puppy.  Why, you ask?  It’s not just that Americans drove 11 BILLION fewer miles this past March.  Or that demand for gas has fallen for the first time in seventeen years. The real reason I’m so happy is because high prices are the only way to get people to pay attention and give a damn.  With that attention comes a change in perspective.  The smart car driver isn’t the crazy granola eating neighbor, he’s the foreteller who’s not spending $200.00 a month on gas.  

Oh, it gets better!  The higher gas prices get, the less competitive oil becomes against wind, solar, and geothermal technologies. And these aren’t the musings some random blogger.  Global investment in renewable energy has risen %333 since 2004 (30 billion to 100 billion).  And shows no sign of slowing down:

“The finance community has been investing at levels that imply disruptive change is now inevitable in the energy sector,” says Eric Usher, Head of the Energy Finance Unit at the UN. Usher said the UN’s “report puts full stop to the idea of renewable energy being a fringe interest of environmentalists. It is now a mainstream commercial interest to investors and bankers alike.”

I love it.  ”Fringe interest of environmentalists.”  Ha!  If by “fringe interest” you mean being ahead of the curve, then yes, you’re spot on.  Freaking gNoobs.  Was it really that big of surprise to Wall Street that gas would eventually run out and that even before it ran out prices would get a bit crazy?  I mean, part of the reason the picture at the top of this post doesn’t have numbers to represent high gas prices is because when I typed “high gas prices” into google images all of the pictures were still in the $3.00 p/g range, a good dollar or so below the average price now.  So, with an effort to keep this post relevant, I chose a picture that would stand the test of time and seven dollar a gallon gas prices.    

So, with that, I call out all the major oil producing nations: Keep raise those prices and I’ll be happy to watch with glee as you dig your own financial graves.

I was at Home Depot yesterday getting some ant traps, a screw, and a toilet duck (don’t ask) and got this receipt (pictured above).  Home Depot, may I ask you a question?  Why is your receipt fourteen inches long?  Do you have receipt envy?  Did Lowes used to have a bigger receipt than you and you needed show them who’s boss?  

I kid, of course but there must be some reasoning behind making such obscenely large transaction records for your customers.  Let us go through this receipt section by section and see what is really necessary and what’s just a waste.

The Top

This portion of the receipt displays the:

• Store’s Name
• Store’s Number
• Store’s Address
• Store Manager’s Name
• Store Phone Number
• Date and Time of Transaction
• And two lines of numbers that I don’t understand

All of this seems like pretty useful information and is fit into a space of about and inch and a half.  Well done!

The Logo

In case we forgot that we purchased these items at Home Depot, and are unable to read the top line of the receipt that says “The Home Depot,” this lovely home improvement chain has decided to remind us yet again that we bought these goods at “The Home Depot.”  

WASTE!  

Items Purchased and Barcode

This section is really the whole point of getting a receipt in the first place.  It shows us what we purchased, at what price, and even gives us a nifty barcode for quickly scanning the receipt for swift exchanges or returns.  Totally needed and understandable.  

Legalese, Return Info, and Ad

This section just tells us that Home Depot doesn’t have to sell to you if you’re being an ass.  I guess there are that many people acting up inside The Home Depot that it’s necessary for them to let all their customers know that they can give us the boot if we start acting crazy.  It also includes when their return policy expires, and that if you want something installed you should call them.  Thank you Home Depot for letting me know when your return policy expires and no thank you I don’t need anything installed by your overpriced contractors.  

Biggest Waste Ever

Here’s where things get a little frustrating.  It’s cool and all that Home Depot wants to give away a $5,000 gift certificate every couple of months, but does their primary promotion have take up almost HALF of the receipt and come in two languages?  

Let’s break down just how much waste this really is.  According to Home Depot’s own Quarterly Earnings Release there were 318,000,000 transactions completed across all of their stores in first quarter ‘08. That’s approximately 1.2 billion transactions a year.  The $5000 dollar gift card promotion portion of the receipt is approximately 8″X3″ or roughly 24 square inches of paper totaling in ~28.8 BILLION square inches of promotional waste.

That’s about 450,000 square miles which would cover about 300 Rhode Islands, 10 Ohios, or 3 Californias.

That’s a lot of paper.

It’s also needless.  Considering the survey promotion is about half the receipt length, all Home Depot would have to do is put the promotion on the BACK of the receipt and presto %50 less receipt waste.

The words “green” and “sustainability” have been thrown around a lot recently The major television networks hosted a series of green weeks in which they changed their logos to a green hue and gave various energy saving tips; Chevrolet and Ford each have their own green ad campaigns touting their latest hybrids and energy saving concept cars; and even BP, the worlds third largest private oil company changed their acronym from British Petroleum to Beyond Petroleum along with a slew of television, radio, and print advertisements touting their funding of alternative energy and more efficient oil extraction.

But what exactly does this all mean and more importantly what does all of this really do? Most people and organizations really have no clue what being green or sustainable means; these two words have been manipulated into nothing more than public relation buzzwords that feign caring, awareness, and concern but in reality do little more than sell compact fluorescent light bulbs and single ply toilet paper. Making your logo green does not mean that your company is actually living up to that idea. Bragging about cars that get 30 miles to the gallon does not alleviate the strain that petroleum-based engines put on the environment and the economy.

The problem rests with one fundamental assumption about sustainability and green living: Americans want to have their cheeseburgers, and they want them to be green too. I am not saying you cannot have a great grass-fed organic all beef patty topped with organic cheese in-between a lightly toasted organic seven-grain bun—you can, and should, they are delicious. What I am saying is that this delectable organic burger is most likely not sustainable. Did the beef, cheese, and bun come from a massive organic meat and produce factory 300 miles away or a local farmers market or butcher? How did you get to the store to purchase these, drive, walk, or bike? What did you use to carry these ingredients home, in what containers are they stored? Even in the best of circumstances I know that I personally fail in at least one of those categories with almost every meal I consume and for many Americans, its not even possible for them to consume a sustainable meal because they either do not know how, or care, or don’t have any other options but to purchase food from a grocery store that’s fifteen miles away.

I recently was speaking with a gentleman who had come back from building homes in rural Egypt for half a decade. He was baffled by the fact that one could become a “sustainability expert.” He quipped that he worked with sustainable experts for the past five years who couldn’t read or write; each of these experts used locally abundant building materials, left little to no waste after construction, and the houses they built required no fossil fuels to heat, cool or light them. He was, of course, referring to the mud brick homes surrounding the outskirts of Cairo and Alexandria.

What he said made me take pause and helped me come to this realization: Sustainability by itself is not particularly difficult to achieve, mankind has hundreds of thousands of years experience doing it. The challenge is making modern comforts and systems sustainable. It is taking a seemingly endless amount of linear systems of production, services, and industry and making them cyclical. Instead of creating waste, they feed the system. Americans want to keep the trappings of our society within the context of something that is attainable and easily done.  They want their green cheeseburger but they want it cheap and they want it now.  These Americans should keep something in mind:  It’s not the planet they should be trying to save with their green cheeseburger it’s themselves.  The planet doesn’t need our help it will be spinning for the next billion years.  Humanity however, will be lucky to last for the next hundred if it doesn’t start implementing sustainable systems now.  I can see no greater challenge for our species and I wish to dedicate my life to it.  

 

 

So what the heck is sustainability anyway?  It’s been thrown around a lot lately.  Sustainable business, agriculture, finance, design, living, and energy are all part of one giant concept called sustainability.   For most marketers, I think they generally think sustainability is just another way of saying more efficient. 

Ultimately, the problem with most products isn’t that they aren’t efficient enough.  It’s that they exist on a linear system of extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal that kind of looks like this:

TYPICAL LINEAR SYSTEM OF PRODUCTION

(click on it to see all the fun stuff thats too small to see in this big thumbnail)

 

In this model, we take things out of the earth, sell them, consume them, and then dump them somewhere where it sits, in many cases, for millions of years.  The problem is that the earth is finite and if you don’t put things back into the earth, you’ve got a finite existence.  A really great site to visit to get the full picture of exactly where our stuff comes from is www.storyofstuff.com.   

            So what’s the alternative to a linear-we-all-gonna-die-if-we-don’t-change-system?  It’s a cyclical system that doesn’t end at the dump, but starts all over again.  I suppose some of you are saying to yourself “Okay what magic universe does stuff you consume go back into the ground and help create more stuff?  I mean, there aint no iPod tree!”  Although it may be true that there is no iPod tree we still have a lot to learn from nature (the greatest cyclical system ever) and apply its lessons to how we do business, build homes, create energy, and have fun. 

I sure as hell don’t have all the answers on how to do all this but I see this as mankind’s greatest challenge and is why I built this site.  This is a place for people to share thoughts, voice opinions, and help change the world one post at a time.  So, please help.  Send me your ideas, comment below, and maybe just maybe we’ll live to see the iPod tree.