What does a sustainable retail space mean?

So in my last post (just a few hours ago) I talked a bit about how we might get more sustainable commercial spaces. What might such spaces look like, and what are some of the benefits? Some aspects might be obvious, while others are more subtle.

Energy Efficiency

This is likely the most obvious to most people, since human-released carbon dioxide is a major contributor to climate change. An energy efficient space in northern climates should be well-insulated - dual pane glass (when glass is necessary), thick, well-insulated walls, and even rotating doors when possible. A standalone, one-story retail building will be less efficient than a multi-story building, because there is more external surface area per square foot of interior space. Various building systems, especially geothermal heat exchangers and energy efficient lighting, can also reduce energy usage. Besides solar panels, other elements include natural lighting and solar heat gain in the winter - south-facing windows are excellent for this.

In tropical climates, many of these rules can be thrown out the window - it's all about protection from the sun and maximum air circulation, while desert and coastal climates will require different approaches. There's no one solution for all situations, which makes these interesting problems to solve!

Material Sourcing

A little less obvious (outside of BGI, that is) is the importance of where everything comes from. The stream is quite complex and involves workers at various stages, the environmental impacts from raw material harvesting, transportation, and many other inputs. Suffice it to say, this is no small part of making a space sustainable

Access

How do people get to the building? Do they drive? Walk? Take transit? Where are they traveling from? Is parking free (encouraging people to drive) or is it a hassle (which could deter customers?) Access has a big impact on a building's indirect environmental impacts.

Other aspects

Water use, waste streams, and direct impacts on the surrounding area all play a part. And the building's impact on its users is often forgotten. Is the building comfortable? Quiet? Does it provide a connection to nature? How about the aesthetics? Is it a pleasant place to be and work? Is the lighting designed for emotional well-being and calm concentration, or is it harsh and artificial? There's no triple bottom line without a focus on People.

What it comes down to is this: sustainable isn't so simple! There are many things to consider, and likely some low-hanging fruit in every situation. With the right rigor and tools, we should be able to easily discover the quick fixes as well as the more substantial changes that can happen to make commercial spaces work better for people and the environment.

What else do you see as important aspects of sustainable commercial spaces?

Foggy Windows

A major opportunity for energy savings, particularly in urban areas, is tenant improvements. In the last couple days I've spent time at businesses with drafty single-pane windows. Despite being attractive spaces, they were physically uncomfortable. My feet were cold, and I had to keep my down jacket on just to keep from shivering. The windows were foggy, and despite the heat running, all of the tables by the windows were freezing. Turning up the heat wouldn't do much except to bleed energy. 

This is similar to the 1900's era house I lived in for 5 years. We'd run the heat, and once the space hit the set temperature, it would only take a few minutes for the heat in the space to leak out. I imagine if the owners lived in the house they would replace or repair the windows and re-insulate the walls to save on heating bills and make the space more comfortable. But in a landlord's market like Seattle where the tenants usually pay their energy bills (and are often motivated to reduce energy use for ethical reasons), they don't have much motivation to make their properties more efficient.

What could be done to change this dynamic? How could landlords or tenants (or both, in conjunction) be motivated to choose better spaces or improve existing ones? 

One would simply be to enact laws mandating energy-saving improvements by landlords when tenants turn over. This isn't likely to be politically tenable in most places, as business owners would feel put upon. Voluntary action is more likely to be the way forward. 

Another idea would be to restructure lease agreements, whether through the legal system or on a case-by-case basis, so that the financial benefits, and costs, of energy-saving tenant improvements are shared between tenants and landlords. A third, which is already done to some extent, would be tax incentives or other government financial tools (residential tax incentives generally favor homeowners rather than renters or landlords).

What I'll be focusing on in the next few months is creating a tool to make the choice to go green for tenants obvious, by clearly showing the financial payoff of improvements, or of picking a space that is already suitable. The latter is important, as well-informed tenants can help push the real estate industry in the right direction. For instance, if a coffee shop owner wants to open a location in a new neighborhood, he can negotiate with landlords based on energy efficiency and other green design features - pushing landlords to at least consider these aspects as important elements of attracting tenants. The more tenants demand sustainable retail spaces, the more landlords will be pushed to improve their spaces.

Likewise, a tenant may decide to work with their existing landlord to improve their existing space based off the various benefits - monetary and otherwise - of doing so. 

So what tools already exist? The National Resource Defense Council already has a pilot project in the works. The key in the next two quarters will to be to build on this to develop a more robust tool to drive tenant and landlord decisions.

More to come!

The drawbacks of billable hours

During my time in the Organizational Leadership track I will be working with Integral Group, a mid-sized consulting firm specializing in deep green building design and engineering. Like most consulting firms (and law offices, where it's even more extreme), "billable hours" strongly influence the way Integral operates, making it a challenge to justify getting paid for the work I will be doing. In this post I'm going to examine some of the implications of this firmly entrenched method of accounting, and set the stage to perhaps find a new way forward.

During my year at a large architecture and engineering firm, I developed a distaste for billable hours. I found billable hours to be a strange practice that didn't seem to best serve the clients. While I was never at the negotiating table for a project proposal (and never put together a proposal) and therefore don't necessarily understand all of the inner workings, I can provide my impressions. Basically, we would build our proposals based on how much time we thought we would be able to bill to the client, and the client would pay us based on those hours and the going rate for the various people working on the project.

We'd have to record our time card with each hour classified by the project or task we were working on. Travel time was billable to clients. We needed to be billable a certain percent of our time - 80% on average if I remember correctly - the partners included. This left little time for innovation, mentorship, etc. It meant that when we were short on billable projects, our office wouldn't look so good to the Since partners could bill more than associates, who could bill more than staff professionals, they would often take the work that might otherwise be best delegated to others, and not include us in the big picture. We'd get the work that our superiors didn't have time to do. This legal affairs article even talks about lawyers billing one client for travel time and another for work performed en route, and it's quite common in the consulting world as well.

And looking at the big picture, it seemed to make the work more about money more than about doing the best possible work, and it took some of the joy out of doing good work. Since we were billing the clients based on the amount of time spent on the project, rather than the quality of work we were doing, it made for a strange double standard. There's that old saying: "Organizations are perfectly designed and operated to produce the results they get." And I believe the same applies to the way work is incentivized. A salaried salesperson is going to act differently than one working solely on commission - the former will likely have the customers' needs in mind while the latter will often work to sell them anything he can. A cab driver who meters by the minute would drive differently than one metering by the mile. The same must apply with consulting firms. If you make pay about how much time you spend working, well results might fall by the wayside.

So why have billable hours become the "gold" standard, and what might some alternatives be that could lead us to different outcomes? I'll start examining that in future blog posts!

Ecotourism

Note: I wrote this earlier in the term and forgot to post it. 

One of the fastest growing travel industries is ecotourism.

What is Ecotourism?

Is it simply an effort to make traditional tourism less damaging? Maybe just another case of greenwashing? Or is it something else all together?

Let's face it, traveling can have a huge impact. Air travel contributes to ummm... a shit ton of global warming, and many mega-resorts do a poor job of being sensitive to the local culture and ecology.
What's more, many of these resorts look like they could be in any number of tropical locations. They provide a highly generic experience designed to make tourists feel comfortable and safe in a new place, and many tourists don't even venture out of the confines of the resort.


Here's a typical resort in Cancun Mexico:

How are eco-resorts different?

First of all, these properties are usually designed with local culture, architecture, and ecology in mind, often with input from the people living nearby. Efforts are taken to use environmentally-friendly construction materials and to design buildings for maximum energy and water efficiency. Employees are paid living wages and some are even included as part-owners. Customers are treated to a highly customized experience, with regionally inspired food, interaction with locals, and low-impact outdoor adventures. Rather than being buffered from reality, ecotourists are encouraged to engage and learn about the prevalent environmental, social, and political issues in the places they are visiting.

One of my favorite experiences was an eight-day trek with Mountain Lodges of Peru. The trip began in the Incan capital of Cusco, and we were transported to an active trail in the Andes. We hiked a few miles to the first of four lodges where we were treated to local food and beverages and introduced to our guides, both of Quechua descent. Guides were careful to educate us on local etiquette and religious customs so that we could have the smallest negative impact possible. We continued to walk several miles a day for the next 6 days, through cloud forests, high alpine tundra, and deep jungle, making sure to pay our respects to Pachamama along the way.

The money brought in to many resorts is used for a wide variety of positive impacts, from education to species conservation, in addition to economic growth and voluntary wealth redistribution (yeah, i said it). Travelers often become invested in the places they visit and become voices for the oppressed and disadvantaged, with many even choosing to return and contribute in impactful ways. 

Not everything is perfect in eco-tourism. Many resorts are more talk than action when it comes to sustainable practices, and air travel still has a major impact. Some even exploit the locals in the name of ecotourism. But it's a start, and much less damaging than giant cruise ships and megaresorts, and many eco resorts are doing amazing work.

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Money

In previous posts I briefly wrote about money as a tool and happiness as an end goal. I spoke briefly with Alex and Rachel of Community Sourced Capital today about our relationship with money, and how a zero-interest loan to a familiar business helps establish the idea that a monetary investment need not be about generating a monetary return, as long as there is a tangible benefit.

Unfortunately our economic system has become one which is focused on producing the most monetary wealth possible, regardless of the impacts. We use measurements like GDP, GNP, the Dow index, and the national debt to tell us how healthy our economy is, but the problem is that these measure none of the things that really matter to happiness or wellbeing. Just as disturbingly, by focusing on these numbers we start to conflate a means with an end.

If we look at money at a basic level, it is simply a tool for satisfying human needs. On Wall street, CNBC, and in much of pop culture, however, money is seen as an end in and of itself, or as a tool to make more money. The idea is that money will somehow solve all of our problems (personal and national) if we can just get enough of it, and that government's job is to help create as much monetary wealth as possible, and to keep it safe.

The right wing would have us believe that the government is overstepping its bounds insofar as it prevents the rapid accumulation and protection of wealth, and the left argues that we should tax the rich because economics is a zero-sum game. What if we could develop a new (old) attitude that both sides could buy into, in which money is put in its rightful place as not good or evil, but a tool among tools?

Check out this video for a wonderful take on money:

A new way forward?

I would argue that we should begin to measure our country's success in other ways:

-Number of people with meaningful employment
-Crime rates
-Environmental health (air, water, ecology)
-Mental and physical health of the population
-Education levels
-Lack of household debt
-Equality

What if these were our national priorities? I would argue that some of the money that has been tied up for so long in wars, wall street, and company coffers might begin to flow toward meaningful purposes. I even think that many (but not all) of the wealthy might choose to start using their wealth for social good and even allow themselves to be taxed at a higher rate, if it were to satisfy important national priorities.

Is this possible, and what would it take? Are people so tied up in their own self-interest that we cannot get there, or could a concerted effort of propaganda, social networking, and relationship building take us in a new national direction, in which the common good is placed above abstract measures of wealth, without sabotaging individual freedom?

I'd love to hear your take!

To Kill Fast Fashion

The recent garment disaster in Bangladesh has brought to light the plight of garment workers in the way recent school shootings brought gun control to the forefront. Hundreds of people died in the collapse of a clothing factory that provided miserable wages and horrible conditions to workers producing cheap clothing for Walmart, Mango, Joe Fresh, and other major brands.

Something I was thinking about quite a bit before this disaster was the proliferation of "fast fashion" retailers. H&M, Zara, Uniqlo, Old Navy, Target and others design and sell low-cost clothing that is meant to be worn for a season and thrown away (or recycled) shortly thereafter (kind of like Ikea does for furniture). Vast amounts of clothing end up in landfills, having used huge amounts of water to produce. Styles change rapidly to respond to the latest runway trends and keep ahead of consumer tastes, so the quality doesn't really need to be high, since it will be out of fashion within a year. It seems ironic to me that a company like H&M which is devoted to high volume, low-cost fashion would claim to be sustainable.

I believe it is time for a return to high-quality, long-lasting clothing. Not to pat myself on the back too much, but right now I'm wearing a Banana Republic shirt I've owned for 6 years, a 3-year old pair of Sperry Topsiders, a ten year old leather jacket, and a pair of shrink-to-fit Levi's that I only need to wash every couple months, and I think I look pretty sharp! Admittedly, I'm not sure about the conditions in which these were produced, but at least I know I'm not contributing to poor working conditions and water-intensive production methods more often than I need to. I've certainly given into the temptation to binge at Zara, H&M and Target once or twice, only to be disappointed with the quality when the crotch blows out or my tie unravels, whereas when I've chosen to buy a high-end item or two it has generally lasted long enough to get a bit of money at a thrift store a few years later. What's somewhat ironic is that I probably end up spending less money in the long if I choose a few high-quality items that I really like.

Of course, I'm a dude, and I can get away with a small wardrobe (how many girls do you know who wear the same pair of jeans every day for months at a time?) But my point is that we need to apply the "reduce, reuse, recycle" ethos to our clothing, and that might mean paying a bit more for something that was ethically produced and of high quality, and wearing it for longer than a single season.

The big question is, what will it take to take this mainstream? Must we have international regulations on apparel production to kill the fast fashion lifestyle, or can it be consumer-led? I'm not sure, but I'm going to do my best to be conscious about my consumption habits, and the more of us doing this, the bigger impact we can make.

What you can do:
-Buy American when you can afford it (beware of Saipan-produced clothing though)
-Pay more for high quality, well made materials
-Wash clothes less often and hang dry when possible so they last longer
-Limit your purchases to items you'll actually wear, and that might stand a chance of staying in style for more than a month
-Get your clothes tailored or repaired before you give up on them
-Dress up quality staples with unique accessories from a thrift store
-Buy a pair of raw denim jeans and beat them to shit. This is the ultimate in slow fashion. They'll look better than anything off the shelf. Before and after pic of such a pair:

Triumphant return to the blog world

Hi everyone! 

After 8 or so weeks without a post I suppose it's time to catch up! I just spent the weekend at an amazing property in Astoria, Oregon, called Alderbrook Station. The owner, Daren, has been steadily fixing up an old fishermen's boathouse and netshed - where fishing nets were made, repaired, and stored for the vast fishing fleet based at the mouth of the Columbia in the 1800s and early 1900s. It's now a vacation home, event space, and all around great spot to refresh before the last couple weeks of school.

Should money be our priority in business?

Blogging has been hard this quarter because I haven't felt like I had much to say. Or nothing original to say at least, even though I've had plenty on my mind. However, Jill Bamburg's TEDxBGI talk touched on something I've been pondering lately: it's so easy to talk about the triple bottom line (people, planet, profits) and have the best of intentions, only to let profit rule by default. Because it's easy to measure money and, when push comes to shove, money is what so many of us want. In our society it is very easy to be ruled by money, rather than seeing money as a tool for a greater purpose.

Even as a BGI student, I often find myself slipping into that mindset: I need to make money and protect my money for money's sake! Too much time spent in finance and accounting spreadsheets can begin to skew our perception of money and build it up as something more important than it really is. How do we begin to adopt a new way of thinking?

Being honest with ourselves is a good start. Reminding ourselves that money is only a means to an end, not the end in and of itself, can keep us from getting greedy.

One destructive way of thinking is to focus on how our lives and businesses can increase our monetary resources. Instead, we ought to develop goals for the impact we want our businesses and lives to have, and then go about using our resources to accomplish them. Because really, this is what gives life meaning, not the endless pursuit of wealth, property, and leisure.

So what are some practical ways to keep money where it belongs on our list of priorities?

In Jill's talk, she spoke about using linear programming in building a business model. I won't get into the details, but it's basically using an excel function to determine various business decisions based on various goals and constraints. For instance, if we want to maximize profits while limiting our fuel use to a specific value, excel could easily tell us how many of which product to produce. However, this is the conventional approach and prioritizes money over all else. What if profit were simply a constraint in the service of a higher goal - that is, benefit to society?

For instance, what if the goal of our music business was to maximize the number of musical instruments in local schools, while still maintaining a profit margin of 8%? Instead of cutting costs or producing the most expensive instruments to meet the soul-killing goal of maximizing profits for their own sake, we could be having a great impact on the lives of children while still operating a healthy business, all the while increasing our own happiness because we are pursuing, and fulfilling, a worthwhile goal.

And really, many of the most successful businesses are those whose unique purpose is prioritized above simply making money.