It’s a tough thing to admit sometimes as a guy, but women really are smarter with money sometimes. Warren Buffets of the world, hang with me here and look to your not so rock-star-status successful brethren to see that in most families, the women usually handle the bills and day to day budgets… In the developing world at least.
In other countries around the world, women aren’t as well trusted to handle such responsibilities and this is exactly the point according to GirlEffect.org. With a powerful, all typographic video (which is beautiful by the way) and a surprisingly beautiful website full of great information and facts like “A women or girl will reinvest 90% of her income into her family. A man or boy will reinvest 30-40%.”
Those are powerful statistics and a powerful, if not painfully obvious in a right-under-your-nose way, solution to some of our biggest world problems.
As if we needed another reason to drink our favorite draught beers from our favorite pubs or bars, the March issue of the International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment investigated the statistics on the LCA of an unnamed Italian Lager as an example to see which of the two were more evironmentally friendly.
In studying the environmental impacts of one litre each of both draught and bottled beer, the production of the beer didn’t seem to differ that much and there was no clear winner.
The real difference between the two methods of drinking were in the “use” phase, as the Journal refers to it. This means how the beer is served, how it is chilled, and it’s journey to it’s final destination. The Journal found that the biggest impact of all comes from the drive to get the beer. Obviously, the further you drive, the more of an impact you’ll have so the Journal recommends promoting draught beer and reducing your driving by biking, walking or stumbling to the nearest bar.
Green roofs are gaining in popularity as we can see more and more of them popping up on old and new buildings alike. We’ve also noticed our posts on Swye about green roofs are some of the most looked at posts so to feed your desire for more green roof goodness, we’ve put together a collection of information and interesting videos about the topic. Enjoy.
Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas
Green roof at the Nature Center at Pioneers Park in Lincoln Nebraska
In a blatantly arrogant display of “richer than though” persona, a wealthy Sheikh shipped his Lamborghini from Qatar to London all just for an oil change. At 3,250 miles each way, that makes the carbon footprint of this already high emitting car even more massive that it otherwise would be. All in all, it cost $46,644 USD to ship and change the oil.
Summer is in full swing here in my little island town in Maine. The ’summer folk’ are arriving and boy are things getting busy. We have had a swell of berries coming in from local farmers and neighborhood kids alike and are getting so many MORE of our veggies from the island and the rest of Maine. It feels SO GOOD to know not only how fresh the food is but to get to know the people growing it and to see the community have the living pulse that is ‘eating your view’. There are a number of things we do at the store that also make us a sort of living ‘organism’ and sustainable. Since I am in charge of produce, if any fruit or veggies bruise or start to wilt, I bring them back to our little kitchen. The crew then bakes pies, muffins and coffee cakes with the fruits and soups, salsas, and dips with the veggies. It blows my mind thinking about what big grocers must throw away!!!
Now I do have to share a little bad news…there was a rather large fire here this morning (well of historic proportions here) and 7 of the buildings on Main Street were either destroyed or badly burnt. This little town really pulled together to put the fires out-when fresh water ran out, they began pumping in salt water from the nearby harbor. Clothes were immediately donated to the 18+ seasonal workers who lost their residences. This, in my mind, is a foreshadowing to how life will be when we go back to small communities. We can use our knowledge and experience handling a global community without abusing it as we are now…just my opinion…and hope. Life is love!!!
PS-The sky just opened up with some of the hardest rain I have ever heard…I am sure that fire will be out…the universe always seeks balance.
As a designer, I love infographs and infographic videos. As an environmental nut, I love videos on the topic. This video created by GOOD magazine is definitely no exception. The information is great and the video is entertaining. Check it out.
Apparently my Green Mountain Coffee post ruffled a few more feathers than I had realized. Just after I posted about the response from Heather, Michael Dupee commented on the original post with some words of his own. He is the VP of Corporate Social Responsibility and instead of paraphrasing what he said I’ll let him speak for himself.
We read through your post about environmental impact of the K-Cup portion pack and want to respond to your concerns.
Packaging is an area of major environmental concern for all consumer product companies and we understand that the impact of the K-Cup waste stream is one of Green Mountain Coffee’s most significant environmental challenges. Today’s K-Cup portion pack is not recyclable or compostable and finding a better approach is a big priority for us. We are working on a few different fronts to improve the environmental characteristics of the K-Cup system, as well as to mitigate its impact.
Here’s what we’re doing:
First, we are actively researching alternatives to the petroleum-based materials that make up the K-Cup. We are continually looking for ways to improve all of our coffee packaging, while still maintaining the freshness and quality that consumers have come to expect from us. We have made some strides in this area. Our hot and cold beverage cups are made from fully renewable materials. And our new 10 and 12 ounce bags of coffee are made with 19% PLA – a bio-plastic sourced from sugar.
Second, we are conducting a Life-Cycle Analysis to help us quantitatively understand the environmental impact of the K-Cup. Waste at the end of a process is an important factor in understanding the environmental impact of a product, but impact occurs throughout a product’s life. By studying the full impact of K-Cup packaging, we can more clearly understand how and where we can take concrete steps to reduce its impact.
Third, we are introducing more Fair Trade Certified coffees into our K-Cup line. We aren’t doing this to distract our consumers from the environmental issues – we believe there is a legitimate upside for Fair Trade. Because the single cup market is growing quickly, having Fair Trade Certified coffees in K-Cups exposes more people to Fair Trade Certified coffees and helps grow the Fair Trade system. K-Cup portion packs also help increase awareness of the missions of our valued partners like Heifer International and Newman’s Own Organics.
Finally, as mentioned in the responses above, we offer “My K-Cup,” a reusable filter assembly that can be filled by the consumer, is easily cleaned, and is compatible with all Keurig home brewers sold today.
We do address this issue on our Corporate Social Responsibility website at:
http://tinyurl.com/5p3fqw
We’ll keep this site updated as we make progress on this issue.
Mike Dupee
VP, Corporate Social Responsibility
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc.
What do you Swye readers think? Let me and them know in the comments.
Yesterday I posted a short rant on Green Mountain Coffee’s seeming lack of respect for the environment with their K-Cup systems. In a response in the comments, a reader assured me that Green Mountain was making an effort to change. In a exercise in speed and good PR, Heather Davis added a company wide memo from Green Mountain regarding their waste stream, how they’re looking at it, and what they are doing to reduce it.
From the memo, after the single-serve versus bulk packaging comparison, it seems they are aware of the problem and looking at ways to reduce it, beyond just providing a refillable and reusable K-Cup. One solution they have suggested is to make the plastic cup itself out of sustainable materials, like bio-polymers made from corn, which while not recyclable, would reduce the use of petroleum and would hopefully be biodegradable, though the memo makes no mention of that.
We’re big fans of Free Range Studios, and this video is no exception. With a clever animation, they take through the process of bringing you that meat that sits upon your burger and shows you facts about that process. It was made to promote the movie Fast Food Nation, which you should all see. You should also check out the book the movie is based on.
I just saw an ad for Green Mountain Coffee on a fellow green blog (I won’t name names, this has nothing to do with them). The ad says “Brewing A Better World” (pictured above) and talks about their fair trade certified coffee. Fine, great, good for you. But, what about brewing single cups of coffee in small disposable and non-recyclable plastic cups with foil tops makes a better world? Sure, your coffee might help farmers in other countries, but your single use “k-cups” are destroying the planet and filling our landfills needlessly. Whatever happened to brewing several cups at a time with a coffee filter and ground beans? I understand everyone has different tastes and we all like variety, but this is so wasteful.
I have despised these Keurig machines since I first saw one and hoped at least the coffee would be a small justification for this thing, but no, the coffee is simply horrible. If there was a stale pot of yesterday’s coffee right next to it, I would microwave that over using this machine.
My distaste for Keurig aside, my first reaction to the ad was “Oh, cool, they’re using organic coffee,” or “great, they’re making the company more green,” but no, they’re pointing our eyes in the other direction so we can ignore their hugely unsustainable practices and product. Now we can all feel a little bit less guilty about filing out landfills. This might seem a little nit-picky, but as a advertising professional, I really value companies who make a substantial effort to reduce their impact, and this company seems not to care.
