From speakers to sponsors to attendees, this year’s Opportunity Green Conference had many visionaries that spanned the green economy. One particular booth that I loved was peopleforbikes.org. People for Bikes, a non-profit focused on promoting biking across the nation. Many of our cities in the US need to incorporate bike lanes into their city planning.

Why do we ride? A few interesting facts from the People for Bikes’ website: 

47% of Americans would like to see more bike lanes, trails, and bridges in their communities.

• I personally would love to see the Bay Bridge not only create a bike lane from the East Bay to Treasure Island but also from Treasure Island to San Francisco. How many people travel across by foot or by pedal on the Golden Gate Bridge a day? How wonderful would it be if the Bay Bridge would be accessible by foot or by pedal? 

1 pound of CO2 pollution cut for every mile pedaled. 

50% of trips Americans make are less than 3 miles.

• How wonderful if you could get your exercise while commuting! 

$8,000 spent on average each year owing and operating a car.

3 hours of riding per week reduces the risk of hear disease & stroke by 50%.

$10 saved each day by commuting 10 miles round trip by bicycle instead of car.

This year’s conference theme of Accelerate fits perfectly with this non-profit.  “We chose the theme ‘Accelerate’ for this year’s conference because the successes that have gotten sustainably-minded people and companies to where we are today accelerates and offers the momentum to drive to an even better future.”

The goals of People for Bikes align well with the goals of green acceleration.

People for Bikes:

One for all: Build a national movement to improve bicycling in our country.

Opportunity Green:

We facilitate the movement to transform business for good, through advancing change and market transformation by providing open-minded professional unprecedented approaches to sustainability.

People for Bikes:

Let our voices be heard: Every six years, the federal government allocates billions of dollars to expand and improve our country’s transportation infrastructure.  We must improve our bike infrastructure to have the healthy planet everyone dreams of.

Opportunity Green:

Because we have the unique opportunity to do good for our world and our business simultaneously. Now is the time when our leadership is most needed, and will have the most impact on the future of our organization and communities.           

We must Accelerate the use of biking in order to have the future we all wish for.

Power to the Pedal People.

What's the value of a green education in getting a green job? Here's your chance to find out!

The San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of the Project Management Institute has been holding a series of 3-hour interactive Green Project Management seminars on topics like sustainability at major corporations, case studies on green projects, and even fusion energy. For more, see the PMI SF Bay Area green blog.

Our November seminar, on Saturday the 19th, will cover the importance of green education in getting a green job. It’s crucial for project managers to be familiar with current legislation and how it affects the overall supply chain. As we move toward stricter standards and globalization of products and services, we must be informed about how products are harvested, manufactured, and distributed throughout the globe. Kelle McMahon, CEO of the Green Science Academy, will show us how the landscape of the job market has changed, making project management skills even more valuable -- in fact, vital -- in today’s job market. She will explain how the skills she developed as a project manager helped her build a company that supports the triple bottom line: people, planet, and sustainable profits. Moreover, she will explore how you can transfer your skills to a job in a green industry, as well as showing how green education will differentiate you from other professionals in the marketplace. If you’re thinking of moving into a green job, this workshop will be perfect for you.

To register, go to the PMI registration page. 

Seminar Series - Details

The Green Project Management Seminar Series is co-sponsored by Keller Graduate School and the Project Management Institute San Francisco Bay Area Chapter. The seminars are held on the third Saturday of each month from 9:00 am to 12:00 noon PDT, at Keller Graduate School’s Daly City location. For details and registration information, click here.

Your customers, investors, employees, investors, community, suppliers, and family.

This is just a short list of the many types of stakeholders that support your company. All stakeholders are important for the progress and prosperity of a business.

Strategic employee engagement is the most effective way to foster successful economic, environmental and social initiatives in a company. Employees are learning more about best practices around sustainability, which in turn helps to save the company money. Companies can support these new ideas to spur innovation that will have a ripple effect with the other stakeholders. When a company focuses attention on the employee stakeholder group, it thrives. 

On Wednesday, September 21, I will be participating in a roundtable discussion entitled, "Community and Stakeholder Engagement: A Sustainable Approach" and will be joined by representatives from B Corporation, The Green Chamber of Commerce, and the Centre for Sustainability and Excellence. We will discuss communities, renewable energy, stakeholder groups, and more. 

The event takes place at the Hotel Palomar from 6:30-8:30. The cost is $30 and food/drink is provided. The first ten people to sign up for the roundtable will gain free entry to EcoTuesday in SF, so register today!

During the roundtable, I will focus on the following: 

Employee Engagement Through Building A Green Team: Your Key To Sustainability

• Your employees as important stakeholders
• Tips you can use to get employees enrolled in your company's sustainability intitiatives
• How strategic initiatives increases motivation and productivity

Please join us this month in cities across the country to meet new business contacts and friends. Our event this month will take place on Tuesday, September 27. We encourage you to register beforehand so that we know you'll be joining us. In San Francisco ten people will have the opportunity to quickly share their "elevator pitch" about their company in supportive environment! We hope to see you at an EcoTuesday this month.

By the way, our November event will be held a week earlier, on November 15. We will not be hosting a December event.

(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.

This April, San Francisco EcoTuesday will feature Dan Geiger, Executive Director at the U.S. Green Building Council - Northern CA Chapter Tuesday, April 26th. Please join us to learn more from Dan on his very interesting talk around "How Green Building Can Save Our World"

Coming off the cusp of California’s new building codes took effect January 1, 2011, referred to as CalGreen, the codes have raised the floor on minimum building standards for new construction, incorporated green elements into base code, and as such are another manifestation of California’s leadership in the green economy.

As Dan states "There has been quite a bit of discussion about the relationship between the codes and rating systems like LEED".

Dan goes on to say, "Industry and policy analysts widely agree that LEED is significantly more rigorous than the new building codes1 2, and is the most powerful tool available for market transformation. In addition, LEED has systems for existing buildings, commercial interiors, core and shell, schools, neighborhoods and more. One way to think of all this is that codes define the floor (and are the law), whereas LEED sets the ceiling".

So with CalGreen codes and LEED Systems in place, "How Green Building Save Our World" will certainly make for a lively discussion.

The U.S. Green Building Council - Northern California Chapter is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit, voluntary organization that educates, motivates, provides resources and advocates for industry transformation to build and maintain sustainable communities.

USGBC’s VISION: Buildings and communities will regenerate and sustain the health and vitality of all life within a generation.

USGBC's MISSION: To transform the way buildings and communities are designed, built and operated, enabling an environmentally and socially responsible, healthy, and prosperous environment that improves the quality of life.

In addition to having Dan lined up as our great speaker this month, we've got a great venue for networking. We are being generously hosted by Temple at their San Francisco office located at 540 Howard.

Known also as Green Temple, Green Temple aims to have the greatest positive impact and limit their negative impact.  They achieve this through internally implementing resource conservation measures, perusing innovative and inspirational solutions and engaging in the community.  As important as scientific advances and building materials are important, we also need to change the way we live and think.  With over 2,000 people a week coming through our doors resource management is exponentially important. By reducing their resource consumption we not only help the planet, but save money.

We get started at 6:30, come join us for some great networking, introduce yourself to a room of professionals, and to learn something new!

RSVP here, $5 online or $10 at the door.

Last Friday night I felt proud to live in California, my adopted home for the past 25 years. As I sat in the California Academy of Sciences listening to George Shultz, former Secretary of State, emphasize how important it is for California to remain a leader in clean energy, I was excited to be surrounded by so many people who are trying to make that a reality. The occasion was the Green Building Super Heroes Awards Gala, sponsored by the U.S. Green Building Council.

I wouldn't have expected a conservative like Shultz to be part of this, but like many others, he's been a staunch opponent of Proposition 23, about to be decided on by California voters. For Shultz, clean energy is #1 a national security issue. President Eisenhower said it was a bad idea to import more than 20% of our oil, and ignoring his advice has led to all kinds of problems with countries and groups for whom our dependence on foreign oil is a weapon to use against us. But national security is only one of the reasons we need clean energy -- #2, Shultz said, is that inexpensive, secure energy is essential for our economy. A large amount of venture capital has poured in to California and helped to expand the green energy economy here, and we need to keep that from grinding to a halt. Coming in at #3 is the climate; Shultz, unlike some conservatives, acknowledges that temperatures are rising and that we can do something about that. Out-of-staters, he suggested, alluding to funding from the Lone Star State, are putting money into Prop 23 because they don't want what we're doing in California to spread. But he believes we can be a leader for the rest of the country, and that's why we must not only defeat Prop 23 but defeat it in a big way. The 90-year-old Shultz ended his talk by leading the audience in an energetic, rousing round of "No on 23!"

Though I might put the reasons that clean energy is essential in a different order, I agree with Shultz that promoting it will help us deal with several serious issues at once. That's one of the things that draws me to this area -- it's what cognitive linguist George Lakoff calls a strategic initiative, one that allows you to solve many problems by focusing on one issue.

Given the current situation with the Giants, in addition to Prop 23 funding, it was only fitting that the next person up to speak, Assemblymember Nancy Skinner, began with the equally rousing "Beat Texas!" Then it was on to the business at hand, describing the finalists and presenting the award for Outstanding Community Organization. I know there had been many nominations, so even getting to the finalists was quite an achievement -- and I have to admit that all three looked like wonderfully deserving organizations. But I had my own favorite, GRID Alternatives. I participated in their Solarthon this year and was impressed with their model of providing solar power to low-income families, a seemingly simple action that helps solve many problems at once. Yes, another strategic initiative. So I was thrilled that GRID won the award!

Next up was an award for Outstanding Existing Building Project Green Team, an important area since we have so many existing buildings that need to become more sustainable. This time even the judges couldn't decide on one winner and instead picked two: The Energy Foundation offices and the Transamerica Pyramid building. I had no idea that the famous Pyramid now generates up to 70% of its power, among other remarkable achievements. And the Energy Foundation offices, with their wonderful use of natural light, looked dreamy -- I wonder if they have any job openings ...

There were other speeches and awards, including a Green Groundbreaker Award to Martha Johnson, Administrator of the U.S. General Services Administration, which was accepted by the keynote speaker, Stephen Leeds, that agency's Senior Sustainability Officer. If you don't think of a government agency as a bastion of sustainability, you'd think differently after hearing about the GSA's achievements and involvement in that area. The David Gottfried Special Achievement Award went to Cameron Sinclair and Kate Stohr of Architecture for Humanity, who are helping promote sustainability in parts of the world where it's an immediate necessity, not the luxury some might think it is in California (though of course, we know better!).

All of these organizations -- private, nonprofit, and governmental -- are doing crucial work to make our world more sustainable through improving our built environments. And the people attending the awards ceremony all work hard at these endeavors. A comment I heard more than once throughout the evening was how great it was to take some time away from that hard work to celebrate these achievements and find renewed purpose and inspiration. How fitting for this all to take place at the California Academy of Sciences, an organization devoted to preserving nature and educating people about it. And yet another reason to feel proud of California. No on 23!! Beat Texas!!