Green living: Know your inputs and outputs

This Tuesday at the Boston Women’s Network monthly dinner, I had the privilege of hearing Robin Chase, co-founder of ZipCar and currently with Meadow Networks, tell the story of ZipCar’s success and offer suggestions on how to start and run a business based on a commitment to social responsibility.

For those who don’t know ZipCar, it’s car rental service, available in five major metropolitan areas throughout the US, that allows members to rent cars parked in a number of easily-accessed spots throughout the city for only as long as they need them. Rates are billed either hourly or daily depending on usage, and you can rent a car easily through the website and walk to a spot within 5-10 minutes from wherever you happen to be. You hold your membership card up to the windshield, the car unlocks and the ignition engages (wirelessly and keylessly), and you’re on your way. You just park the car back in the same spot you picked it up in, and the car will send the trip data back to ZipCar with the number of hours you used it for billing. Since its founding in about 2000, ZipCar has grown to about 2,000 cars in 5 major cities, and about 20 members on average end up using each car—which means 19 fewer parking spaces needed, 19 fewer cars on the road, and huge cost savings for the members, not to mention the environmental savings.

Among other inspirational tips Robin shared with the group, the tip that resonated with me the most was this: be aware of your inputs and outputs. When you make a business decision, what are you consuming? What are you putting back out there? One of the examples that Robin mentioned was that she refused to buy disposable cups/plates/silverware/etc. for the ZipCar office—if people wanted to have coffee or tea, they would have to bring their own mugs, and the same with dishes. She also had two printers in the office—one with used paper and one with new. Anything that was printed for in-house use was printed on the used paper—information for customers would be printed on the new paper.
Hearing Robin speak about the ways that she made the ZipCar office greener got me thinking about my own inputs and outputs, how I’m trying to lessen the environmental impact of the zen kitchen’s daily operation, and how I can improve on what I’m doing and make the office even greener. Here are a few of the things on my list of outputs:

• I always keep recycled paper in the office printer, and put one-sided waste paper in the tray when I’m finished with the document.


• I’ve instituted a primarily PDF-based workflow in the office, sending customers digital proofs instead of printing them, which saves significant amounts of paper.


• Since it’s primarily a home office, I don’t use disposable anything, and I use cotton towels and sponges for cleaning instead of paper towels.


• I don’t leave water running when I’m washing my hands, brushing my teeth, or doing dishes.


• I also try to be very conscientious about recycling, and I use shopping bags to throw away trash instead of buying new plastic bags.


• Since I moved to Somerville and opened the zen kitchen, I’ve rarely had to drive—most of my work has been in the office, and even when I have to go onsite for a client or meeting, I can often take the T instead of driving.


• I do almost all marketing for the studio on the Web, which means that there's much less paper to be thrown away.

While I definitely think these are good outputs, there are definitely a few places where I can improve:

• On the days when I do have to leave the office for work, I have a tendency to eat out. A LOT. This means disposable dishes and silverware. It also means I’m not eating as healthy as I should be.


• I have a tendency to keep too much, and convince myself that I need things I don’t. That means I end up buying things I don’t really need more often than not, and those things, once I’ve realized I don’t need them anymore, usually end up getting thrown away or donated.


• While I don’t drive my car that often, I’m not always as mindful about maintenance as I should be. I could improve my mileage vastly if I got a tuneup.

So it looks like, while so far I’ve been doing pretty good, there’s still room to make the zen kitchen even greener—remembering to bring a travel mug with me, for example, when I feel like grabbing an iced tea, or remembering to bring reusable bags when I go shopping. After all, even using them as trash bags, with the amount I cook I still have them piled up in the bag holder!

What do you put out there? What do you take in?

Change is in the air

Things have been insanely busy lately here at the zen kitchen. Since I last updated this blog, me, Persephone & Benjamin, and the studio have moved into a new space just outside of Davis Square in Somerville. The old studio, while spacious, proved inefficient for running a growing design studio, so it was time to move on to a new place with enough room to expand in the future.

Speaking of growth, the zen kitchen has its very own intern—Madelyn Madeiros, who hails from Jamaica Plain, has delightfully agreed to spend a few hours a week in the studio learning the ins and outs of green design and running a studio. I couldn’t be more pleased—not only do I get some extra help around the office, I get to help another young designer learn the ropes of doing this thing we do—and hopefully, I get to show her a more mindful way of doing it.

In other tzk-related news, my articles seem to be popping up all over the place: the “Image is Everything?” series about making sustainable design choices, which includes “The Problem of Paper” and “The Issue of Ink” has now been featured in both Creative Latitude and the Holistic Business Journal. In addition, I’m in the process of writing a new article about making green decisions in your marketing plan for the Boston Herald’s Women’s Business magazine, which should come out sometime in November. The Somerville Journal also ran a story about the studio during the week of August 30th. It looks like all the hard work I’ve put in this year has started to pay off—in addition to all this writing, I now have a number of great projects in the works. I’ll make sure to keep you posted.

Stuck for inspiration? Just look around you.

My good friend Mike Mackenzie, who does motion graphics for video and TV (and he's completely BRILLIANT at it), told me a great story about inspiration the other day when I was feeling uninspired.

He was in art school, and they gave the class an assignment to do a "get out the vote" poster. Everyone else was doing the standard cliche thing of red white and blue, stars, etc. He was railing against it in class, when the teacher told him to put his money where his mouth was. Trouble was, he had nothing.

He went out for a walk to clear his head, and remembered something he had heard from Neville Brody (he had the opportunity to study under him in the 80s-90s, which is when he went to school and when Brody was HUGE) - when you're stuck, let inspiration come from whatever's around you. He closed his eyes, cleared his head, and said that the next thing he saw was going to be inspiration for his piece. Then he opened his eyes and found it - a crumpled-up newspaper on the sidewalk.

He started taking headlines and bits of text that were relevant to the issues of the time, cut them out and formed them into the single word VOTE on his paper. His assignment was deemed the best in the class, and he ended up graduating second in his class (underneath, oddly enough, a designer I knew from Providence, even though they both went to a school in Boston).

That story was probably the most inspirational thing I had ever heard. Now, whenever I'm out, I look for inspiration in the things around me - especially trees, grass, and the seasons.

Conversations on Green Design: Getting Started

Well, it seems that I've happily reached that point in my career where other designers are coming to me asking for advice. Although I get my fair share of the "do you have advice for a new designer looking to get work in this field" questions, the larger portion of questions/fan mail (yes, one person actually called it fan mail) I've received concern how to get into green design, and how they can work with their clients and printers to make their jobs more sustainable.

Recently, I got a comment on one of my blogs from Kerri McHale, a designer in California whose site just makes me think of running through a field picking dandelions when I was six. It makes me smile. Her work is quite lovely as well. Kerri and I have chatted briefly on a couple of design communities I frequent through this particular blog, and she popped over to ask me a few questions:

I've followed you over from the graphic design community, as you've always been so helpful with very well thought out answers, then I noticed on your website that you focus on sustainable and green design practices. You also seem to have developed a very successful business for yourself. I have a question about all that... if you don't mind taking the time to answer.

My whole career I've been working as a full time employee for businesses, and I will be for a while to come (read: Bay Area, CA mortgage squeeze-- no room for the beginning draught of a full time freelance business)... but I plan to begin developing a client base to start up a freelance business, eventually going full time once I move away from California. I'd like to not only implement sustainable design practices, but also, if I have a large enough client base to choose, focus on design and marketing from businesses in sustainable industries.

So my questions for you mostly pertain to when you were starting out:
Did you, from the very start, employ green practices?
Did you (and do you) only employ green practices, or do you also use standard practices depending on the client?
Did you focus only on a certain niche of clients when you first starting developing a client base?

This is my biggest conundrum when I think about a business model, because, starting out, I imagine that I'd lose a lot of valuable clients who don't want to pay more money for sustainability's sake. Then again, if I practice these standards on a case-by-case basis, there's no credibility there, is there?

Incidentally, have you found that practicing green/sustainable design is that much more expensive for the client?

Sheesh, I might as well be conducting an interview!
This is a lot to answer, so I'll understand if you take a pass! But thanks in advance nonetheless! ;-)

After some thought, I offered this:

hey there,

I'm glad you appreciate the work I've been doing—it's a great inspiration to keep going when I hear props coming from others in my line of work.

In response to your questions, I had always thought about green practices and done my best to employ them to my limited knowledge on every freelance project I did—with my "day jobs," it wasn't always an option. But I have long been a fan and avid supporter of recycled paper, and from the very first project I was fighting to use it in every job I had some control over the printing on. After I started my studio and started searching around for a focus, my thoughts turned to green design, and it just clicked. I got in touch with a woman I knew in Providence who had a design firm that employed green practices, and asked her for advice. She happily gave me a bunch of resources to check out, and I started doing the research.

To the best of my ability, I employ exclusively green practices. Occasionally you get the odd job—a business card here or there where the client already has a printer lined up and it's just a quick one-off job from someone you're helping out for a moment or two—and you end up not being able to have the control you need to be green; but it's been my experience that most clients will listen if you explain to them why, and that you can still have beautiful design that's sustainable and reasonably priced.

As for a niche, I don't know that I focus on one particular niche, although some would say I do. I talk about green design wherever I have the chance, online and off, and I've noticed that the clients who come to me lately genuinely care about green design and want to apply sustainable principles to their jobs. What it comes down to is that, as the designer, you have the control. If you make it clear that this is how you work, the client either respects that or doesn't. If they don't, you probably shouldn't be working with them.

As far as pricing goes, I've found the majority of pricing to be competitive on going green vs. not going green. The trick is doing the research and figuring out what's entailed. The basics (veggie ink and 100% postconsumer paper) isn't going to up your cost that much (although some would claim that it's expensive compared to places like Vistaprint, but frankly, that site doesn't even factor into the equation on the vast majority of my work), but ink-saving techniques like die-cutting and embossing can. It's really up to the specifics of the job, and where you want to go with a specific piece.

What I'd suggest is to do some research—start with Partners in Design's Eco Strategies and Celery Design's Eco Guide to Paper, and spend some time on Re-Nourish. Then start talking to your clients about it. Get price quotes on recycled vs. non-recycled. Most high-end papers have at least one recycled option, and it's usually similar in price to the other sheets in the line. Make them see that it will make barely a blip on their bottom line, and the good karma they get from going green on their materials will pay for it in spades and accolades. Then make the switch and start pitching yourself as green.

Getting Rid of the Clutter? Don’t Throw it Out – Throw it to Throwplace.

While poking around re-nourish the other day, I noticed a write-up on Throwplace, a site designed to keep folks’ clutter from going into the landfill by allowing registered users to offer up their pre-loved (read: discarded) belongings to other folks willing to take it off their hands. A description from the Re-Nourish site gives an idea of how it works:

Throwplace.com encourages donors to list functional items in good condition in the Charity section. Goods with reuse or recycling potential can be listed in the Business section, along with items needing refurbishing or parts for recycling. Items of low value but with creative use potential like bottlecaps, corks, or even egg crates can be listed in the Up-For-Grabs section.

Items not claimed by Charities within 90 days will roll into the Business section, and from Business to Up-For-Grabs. After a Throw has rolled into the Up-For-Grabs section it will automatically be deleted if it has not been given away in 120 days.

What makes me happy about this concept is two things: one, of course, it keeps otherwise perfectly serviceable stuff out of landfills and offers it up to good causes; and two, it gives small business owners and non-profits the ability to furnish their offices cheaply (all items are free to throw, although the site charges a small subscription fee if you want to take things) without the inevitable waste that comes along with buying new furniture.

A quick browse of the site’s offerings doesn’t show a ton of listings; however, the site is still new, and the concept is brilliant. I’ll definitely be throwing some of my stuff there (and potentially looking to take) as I set up my new digs in September.