GreenSmith Consulting

I don’t know about you, but I hear about a lot of flashy green packaging innovations. But what about when reality hits the curb? Often, there’s a breakdown between the hype and what actually happens, which more often then not is nothing, as these greenovations don’t work in the existing system. Not so with Dell, who as you’ll hear in the 9th installment of GreenSmith Sessions, has gone to extensive lengths to insure that its packaging, no matter how innovative, passes the curbside test. Bamboo, mushrooms, sugarcane bagasse, rice hulls and wheat chaff are all being investigated, with bamboo now having 2 years of successful market use in laptop packaging.  I learned a lot from the personable Oliver Campbell, Director of Packaging at Dell. Dell’s thinking around packaging goes by criteria that was generated as a result of conversations with their customers. 3C as they call it: Cube - How can we make it smaller? Content - What more sustainable materials can we use? Curb - Can it be sustainably disposed of at the curbside? Dell is both going through FTC certification and its own testing to be sure that bamboo packaging can compatibly enter the recycling stream. They’ve actually found that bamboo fiber can improve the quality of recycled paper! Though they’re waiting until FTC approval to be able to officially state this. Mushroom packaging can be mulched, or simply tossed in the green brush collection bin. Dell itself has a composter on site to process the prototype packaging they’re working on. Dell innovates not for novelty’s sake, but for both environmental benefit and financial sense. Basically, how can they do a better job helping their customers be greener, while saving green of the monetary kind? It’s a wise way to conduct business,  for anybody. Listen in below as we talk about Campbell's uniquely appropriate background leading up to his current positon, Dell’s heroic product reclamation goals set in conjunction with the EPA, and fatherhood. You can also grab this podcast for later listening or subscribe to the whole GreenSmith Sessions series via iTunes. If you have any questions for Oliver, or comments about practical green packaging innovation you’re coming across/working on, please share below. ~~~ Paul Smith is a sustainable business innovator, the founder of GreenSmith Consulting, blogs weekly on green start ups of note at Triple Pundit and has an MBA in Sustainable Management from Presidio Graduate School in San Francisco. He creates interest in, conversations about, and business for green (and greening) companies, via social media marketing. Play or save >> GreenSmith Sessions #9 Oliver Campbell Image credit: George Dearing

Sometimes the most forward looking among us come from the most unlikely places.  I’m neck deep in the sustainable business realm, and delight in discovering  and sharing new sources of inspiration and innovation with my audiences. And the most powerful mover of green ideological mountains and catalyst for action I’ve seen in 2011? A rancher from Kansas. Bryan Welch. Oh and he happens to also publish Mother Earth News, Utne Reader, Natural Home, and, um, Gas Engine magazine.  This former newspaper man turned publisher has had an eclectic background that has helped him develop a broad perspective that doesn’t have the blinders on when it comes to thinking about how living and doing business sustainably can happen. He recently wrote a book called Beautiful & Abundant: Building The New World We Want, that eschews the dramatic eco alarm sounding and finger wagging that many books and people take, while at the same time not avoiding thinking about and looking at the challenges we face.  He has a clear framework for how to shape what you do and how you communicate it, that could very well be the glue that sticks all the disparate, supposedly separate groups of people in the world, together, in common cause. For GreenSmith Sessions #8, I had the good fortune to spend just over 30 minutes in frank conversation with Welch about everything from how many environmentalists are stymieing mass scale progress on the important issues at hand, to his desire to see Earth Day and green business become obsolete concepts in the near future. Do stay tuned to the last five minutes, where he deftly explains that how he sees drastic population reduction being achieved, not by government mandates of natural/manmade disasters, but in an organic fair, just, desirable fashion.   This Session was full of gems, here’s two of the best:  “It seems to me illogical that the concept of sustainability would be controversial. Who does not want clean air and clean water? Who does not want, 3 or 4 generations from now, a wonderful place for human beings to live on this planet? Yet somehow we’ve allowed sustainability to be pigeonholed as this wonky, tribal fascination for people who wear Birkenstocks and burn Patchouli. It’s wrong, it’s destructive, and it’s absurd.” “People who are utterly cut off from the prosperity that we enjoy in the developed world don’t have the time, resources or motivation to think about sustainability. We alienate them if we pose solutions or pursue visions that exclude them, and we can’t afford to exclude or alienate them, because we need a very broad consensus across the planet, or the whole notion of human sustainability is unattainable.” Listen in, and let's talk about it, below!  Remember, you can play the podcast here, right click and save it, or get it free from iTunes, where you can also subscribe to get all future GreenSmith Sessions. ~~~ Paul Smith is a sustainable business innovator, the founder of GreenSmith Consulting, blogs weekly on green start ups of note at Triple Pundit and has an MBA in Sustainable Management from Presidio Graduate School in San Francisco. He creates interest in, conversations about, and business for green (and greening) companies, via social media marketing. CLick here to play/save GreenSmith Sessions #8 Bryan Welch

The first six GreenSmith Sessions have spanned the globe, from a CSR thought leader in London to the man giving green blogging a southern accent in Nashville, Tennessee. Today's GreenSmith Session went local. Very local, to the desk next door to me at lively coworking space Tenpod, here in Portland, Oregon.  With 3 acres of green roofs under his belt, Jason King of TERRA.fluxus has plied his trade from California to Washington, in a wide range of enviroments. Listen in as we discuss everything from the more common than you'd think practice of using chicken coops for testing grounds for avante garde green architecture, to the fact that NYC gets more rain than supposedly rainy Portland, Oregon. Keep an ear out for some interesting perspectives on sustainability, what it means, could mean, and how we could do better. Hopefully this conversation will, um, plant some seeds in your mind of what you could do in your community, or on your business I noticed on his blog that he had some DIY resources for green roofing, so I asked for you if he had sites to recommend for you to explore. He had three!  TERRA.fluxus Landscape & Urbanism Vegitecture   Click here to play/save GreenSmith Sessions #7 Jason King If you have any questions for him, or examples of landscape architecture (or vegitecture as he likes to call it) we would all benefit from knowing about, please feel free to share below. I'll make sure he knows about your questions, seeing as I can lean over and tell him! Enjoy. PS You can now subscribe to the GreenSmith Sessions podcast series in iTunes, and download specific episodes here. Paul Smith is a sustainable business innovator, the founder of GreenSmith Consulting, blogs weekly on green start ups of note at Triple Pundit and has an MBA in Sustainable Management from Presidio Graduate School in San Francisco. He creates interest in, conversations about, and business for green (and greening) companies, via social media marketing.

The funny factor was definitely in effect for GreenSmith Sessions #6, with Jeffrey Davis, a southern fried green blogger from Nashville, Tennessee. In my work as a digital publicist for green businesses, I interact with a lot of blogs and their editors, and Jeffrey definitely brings a different voice to the web. One influenced by his interest in fitness, the environment, and a lively engagement with the world that is uniquely southern. Both gregarious and considerate, he brings green living ideas to the masses with humor, curiosity, and relevance to people’s every day lives.     The recent piece Vegetarian Because I Hate Vegetables is a prime example. It leads with: “I’m not a vegetarian. I experience abundant pleasure in the awesomeness that is animal protein. My wife, however, IS a vegetarian. Whether you’re a vegetarian, omnivore, or maybe even a cannibal-vore, you must admit that this is one of the most awesome t-shirts in existence. I love to hear how people arrive at their food paradigms, but vegetarians have some of the most interesting answers.” Honesty, humor, and thoughtfulness. A great way to reach people. Jeffrey has written for many other people’s blogs, but now leading Eco Snobbery Sucks, he puts front and center his desire to make living a greener, fitter life, and being (or becoming) a greener business something that is not only possible, but doable. And enjoyable. But overall, that it's not an all or nothing proposition, which discourages many.   Building on this, Davis will be rolling out a consulting aspect, specifically geared to help businesses green more effectively, and better communicate it to and connect with their customers.  I had to ask, having little knowledge of how green and the South (southern US) interact, what life was like for Davis down there. The answers both surprised and amused.  So have a seat, and get ready for a meaty, funny GreenSmith Sessions. You can also save this podcast for later listening. Click here to play or save GreenSmith Sessions #6 Jeffrey Davis Paul Smith is a sustainable business innovator, the founder of GreenSmith Consulting, blogs weekly on green start ups of note at Triple Pundit and has an MBA in Sustainable Management from Presidio Graduate School in San Francisco. He creates interest in, conversations about, and business for green (and greening) companies, via social media marketing.

I don’t know about you, but I thought I knew a fair amount about lighting. CFLs, check. LED, check. Odd designer bulbs, check. LEDs are more efficient than everything else, right? Not so, as I learned in the latest GreenSmith Session with Andre Lucero of Lucero Design, a lighting design & consulting firm out of San Francisco.  I also learned how those glaring mercury vapor based monsters in streetlights called metal halides have now made the transformation to ceramic metal halides, in tiny sizes, useable even in store displays. And that they’re quite efficient and long lasting.  Lucero made a surprising, brilliantly simple economic case for businesses using better lighting: Longer life equals less staff time and materials used replacing them. In a store with hundreds or thousands of lights, this makes absolute sense, whether or not you’re convinced of the ecological case for a change in lighting. Listen in as Lucero gives useful, easily implemented suggestions for both home and business lighting. If you’re looking for a good green lighting company, Lucero suggests B-K Lighting, whose factory is completely off the grid, and its lighting fixtures are made from recyclable materials. Best quote? When asked about the future of sustainable lighting, Lucero said, “…they might have one that substitutes mayonnaise rather than mercury…” And do keep an ear out for the Blue Angels! Listen in and I’d love your comments, additional resources, and questions.  image via Plumen Click here to play or save GreenSmith Sessions #4 Andre Lucero Paul Smith is a sustainable business innovator, the founder of GreenSmith Consulting, blogs weekly on green start ups of note at Triple Pundit and has an MBA in Sustainable Management from Presidio Graduate School in San Francisco. He creates interest in, conversations about, and business for green (and greening) companies, via social media marketing.

Do you want to know what the core of all the (human) problems in the world are? Empathy. Empathy, you mean that word tossed around by new age enthusiasts? Not quite.  Think about how recently you got angry over another person’s actions or words. Or presumed someone or some group couldn’t possibly understand where you’re coming from, so why try? Or better yet, clung forcefully to being right, trying to diminish their point of view in favor of yours? More often then we’re comfortable admitting, I suspect.  I had an interesting, inspiring, deep, funny time in GreenSmith Sessions #5 (after post, below) with John Marshall Roberts, a man who describes himself as, “…a renegade social scientist who refused to fit in in the academic world that I came from.” Roberts is an amalgamation of many things: a one time musician, now deeply versed in psychology, behavioral studies, and how they interest with business. Luckily for us, he’s able to distill it in an engaging, understandable manner, whether presenting at crux points like the Sustainable Brands conference or most recently at TEDx New Zealand (See video at the end of this post) The problem it seems is pervasive cynicism of that which isn’t like us, no matter our level of development. And it’s not insurmountable. Recognizing cynicism for what it is - undigested pain - is the start to dissolving it and effectively, collectively moving forward. As Roberts said in our interview, when we realize the source of the cynicism, we don’t feel as personally offended, and we have more strategies and choices available for how to deal with them constructively. However, having good, constructive ideas is one thing, executing them in the real world is another. Listen in as Roberts shares how he and his team have been creating ways to repurpose and give further structure to the concepts of his keystone book, Igniting Inspiration, in a modern, quick bite, media enmeshed society. The results are impressive. (NOTE: As Roberts mentioned in our interview, he's given us a very generous 30% off code for his Igniting Inpiration 101 course, good through December 15th, 2010. It is GSCART) He and his company World View Learning have also taken what they learned about online learning outside their own projects, working with other organizations to better bring to life the crucial knowledge that businesses, governments and individuals need to know, and make beneficial, durable change more likely. This was a fascinating GreenSmith Session, I encourage you to listen to the whole thing, you’ll want to keep a notepad nearby. It’s positively full of thoughts to get your mind moving, laughs to loosen you up and leave you hopeful, and many things that will have you wanting to take action, right now.  Best quote: “If we take that blame away, and throw in the word empathy, which leads to insight, then insight can lead to common vision, which can lead to collaboration, which can lead to actual problem solving.” For more on what John Marshall Roberts and World View Learning are up to, visit www.johnmarshallroberts.com. Click here to play GreenSmith Sessions #5 John Marshall Roberts (To save, right or control+click) Readers/Listeners: What did you learn from this podcast? Have any questions for John? I’ll make sure he sees them.   Paul Smith is a sustainable business innovator, the founder of GreenSmith Consulting, blogs weekly on green start ups of note at Triple Pundit and has an MBA in Sustainable Management from Presidio Graduate School in San Francisco. He creates interest in, conversations about, and business for green (and greening) companies, via social media marketing.