This month San Francisco EcoTuesday was a little different. The night started with an emerald green jar full of business cards in which we randomly selected 10.  Instead of having one main presenter, we opened up the mic for 10 participants to present a 2 minute pitch of their company, organization or initiative to the group. 

It was exciting to hear more in-depth what some of the EcoTuesday members are working on. If you didn't make it out, or if you want a re-cap, you'll find a list of who and what was presented along with websites to each company and organization below... 

Mike Trenary of Reboot Our Schools which is "A non-profit dedicated to providing public schools with refurbished technology donations - and creating sustainable processes for maintaining those resources.  

Jonathan Mooney of Skip To Renew, a bio-based lubricants company. Their first product is a first of its kind, Re:cyclist Bike Chain Lube with other bio-degradable lubricants in development.

Todd Cooper of Waxelene -- Which is a natural & organic petroleum jelly alternative, which I was fortunate to get a sample of and am loving it.

Chris Murphy of  Zoom Forth which is a unique online job search which based on your skills, interest and work preferences, will match you with informational video interviews from a database of thousands to help guide your career decisions. 

Allen Price of Tresendas  which is a social network for people who travel. Tresendas lets you build a network of your closest friends and the close friends of your friends so you have an expanded network of people you can trust for travel recommendations and housing all across the world.

Lindsey Herrema, one of 5 co-founders of The Can Van, presented on behalf of her and 4 other Green MBA Grads from the Presidio Graduate School. The Can Van is a mobile beer canning service which will make getting canned beer more accessible to NorCal craft breweries. 

Josh Atlas of the Eight Fold Group, which is a social commerce agency that facilitates access for conscientious consumers to the sustainable products and services they want and need.

Heidi Smith of Carbon Flow, which "provides an integrated suite of software applications used by organizations worldwide to manage, monitor, and monetize their emission reduction and sustainable energy projects."

Ken Jacobus of Good Start Packaging, which provides environmentally friendly alternatives to disposable plastics "with a mission to reduce the massive amounts of single-use plastic clogging our landfills, waterways, highways, and forests."

Libby Klitsch of Tuvalu Design, which helps businesses and organizations through strategic design to reveal their sustainable practices, products and services to the world.

EcoTuesday continues to attract great people doing great work in the world, and it is always inspiring to hear what everyone is up to. The evening ended with our usual networking portion which is a great place to look for a job or that missing link for your project, whether that be a developer, project manager, an idea or just a boost of inspiration you're needing. 

I look forward to the next event which will be on October 25th (a Tuesday of course to maintain the continuity of the EcoTuesday name) : ) Location and presenter to be announced soon. 

Until then, keep living and greening the dream! 

Danny Kennedy, co-founder of Sungevity (the fastest growing company in the residential segment of the solar industry), joined EcoTuesday in July to 'shed some light' on the industry. Over 60 participants from all areas of sustainability joined us at the beautiful Bently Reserve.

Danny's expressed that the solar industry is looking good. There are plenty of jobs and the number will continue to increase as people begin to realize the potential of solar. "The solar industry already employees more people then the U.S steel production industry."

Although solar is currently less than 2% of the overall electricity use in the U.S economy, the exponential growth that is happening will fill the gap. Solar production has doubled - three times in the past three years. The price for solar will continue to decrease, making it more and more accessible for mainstream consumers to purchase. As the price of solar is decreasing, everything else (coal and other fossil fuels), are increasing in price. Solar power will soon be the low cost source of electricity as a result of this growth rate. Sixty percent of Sungevity's customers are in California, and Sungevity saves their customers 15% a month from day one with their particular solar product. 

Danny pointed out that "the United States uses 47% of its surface water for steam generation for turbines" (turbines which are used to power fossil fuel stations). He continued, "fossil fuels will be a part of our future for some time. The longer we prolong its use, our children will be worse off. The faster we adopt the lower cost technologies, the better off we are, from both a financial and environmental point of view."

(This blog post is a wrap up of the San Francisco event on May 24th featuring Jeff Mendelsohn, CEO and Co-Founder of New Leaf Paper)

"The paper industry is one of the most resource intensive industries in the world, and one of the slowest to change."

From NewLeafpaper.com

"The paper industry is one of the most polluting and resource intensive industries in the world. It is responsible for over a third of worldwide timber harvest and over 40% of all landfill waste in the U.S. When New Leaf Paper was founded in 1998, the paper industry had demonstrated a high resistance to change. With low margins, a commoditized international market, and huge capital investment in the status quo, paper companies resisted efforts to integrate sustainable principles into their business practices," said Jeff Mendelsohn, founder of New Leaf Paper.

It was inspiring to hear Jeff Mendelsohn talk about the process of changing the 'stuck-in-its-ways' paper industry into a more sustainable system.  How did New Leaf accomplish this? How did New Leaf survive in a challenging industry and succeed in making positive change.

Prior to New Leaf, Jeff started New York Recycled Paper Company in 1991 and is a pioneer of this industry. Around the same time various other recycled paper companies popped up around the US but all of them disappeared - except for New Leaf. 

What did New Leaf do differently to be successful as a mission driven company within a challenging industry and actually drive change with in it? 

How do you change an industry? 

Jeff says, "There's a lot of barriers and it's challenging. The paper industry is very resistant to change. Paper mills were designed to make paper a certain way for a quarter of a century, non-stop, to make money. To overcome these challenges, New Leaf created a strategic brand strategy. To change an industry, Jeff mentions you have to first present a positive vision for it. Despite the unsustainable ways of the paper industry, New Leaf never pointed fingers at anyone or pointed out how bad they are.  Instead they approached the industry with a "Think and Smile" approach. 

"Think and Smile" came to New Leaf due to the understanding that they would never win on a "commodity tunnel vision scenario." "We need people to think about what they're buying and we need them to smile, due to good design, and good products. A lot of environmental messaging before was 'think and frown', which doesn't get you very far."

Four principles New Leaf used to change the industry

• Positive vision
• Partnership up and down the supply chain
• Transparency
• Quantifying benefits 

Jeff says that a company has to start with a Vision and ask questions, such as "What would a sustainable paper industry look like?" 

It all boils down to a sustainable design. Designing an industry, designing a process.

What is sustainable design?

Wiki: Sustainable design (also called environmental design, environmentally sustainable design, environmentally conscious design, etc.) is the philosophy of designing physical objects, the built environment, and services to comply with the principles of economic, social, and ecological sustainability.

New Leaf created a vision for a perfect sustainable mill and identified existing mills that met this vision. At this time, there where only about 3 or 4 in North America; New Leaf wanted to increase this number. 

New Leaf's goal became to make the mills even greener. "In changing the paper industry, no one is just going to invest in a green mill without researching the markets. Our role was to "seed" markets and create new products in all these different product categories where nothing existed beyond 20 or 30% recycled paper." To do this, New Leaf bumped up the recycled content to 100% and gave it a clean bleaching process. The goal: "Attract demand, attract competitors and then eventually shift mill design."

Jeff discussed, "attracting competitors," which sounded counter-intuitive to me at first. However, it makes sense when your goal is not just for your own personal gain, but for the betterment of humanity and the planet at large. It would be quite difficult for one company to change an entire industry alone. In this instance, attracting "competitors" is also attracts a more sustainable future. New Leaf was then able to sell their vision to their customers and leverage the demand of these huge companies to drive change up through the supply line. 

Bank of America approached New Leaf

B of A wanted to change their letter head to 100% recycled post-consumer paper. New Leaf created their first 100% post consumer letterhead for Bank of America, inspiring most mills in this arena to create competing grades of paper, creating a permanent shift in the market for high-end corporate collateral. 

Book publishing - Harry Potter

In 2001, New Leaf created book paper. In 2003, the company provided the paper for the viral book, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," catching the attention of the entire book publishing industry. New Leaf decided not to pursue using book paper in its product line, but is proud of the impact it had on getting larger publishing companies to start using 100% post-consumer paper.

The event last month went well, and we were very lucky to hear about such an inspiring, dynamic company that truly cares about creating change in their industry.

- - -

Prior to meeting Jeff I already owned a New Leaf notebook which I keep on me as an alternative to taking notes on my tiny-keyboard smart phone. When I open the 'made from old milk carton' notebook, on the first page of the notebook are cool facts on the amount of post-consumer waste New Leaf has saved (greenhouse gases, fully grown trees, gallons of water, etc.) A live updated version of these stats are found at the top of their website.