Tag Archives: Events
Livebloggers, Tweeters, Collaboration at Opportunity Green
Posted on 24. Sep, 2010 by Michael Liskin.
This is my traditional meta-post of real-time events during the Opportunity Green Conference
Check back periodically for additional info, and…
Follow @oppgreen on Twitter for official OG updates and live tweets.
The Official OG Live-Bloggers are from AHA! – Great work Laura, Melina, and Kristi!
For the FULL Opportunity Green Tweeting archive for OG2010: click this Twapperkeeper
And for the real-time Twitter Live Feed of the hashtag #og10: http://bit.ly/OG10twitter1
Twitter search for OppGreen: http://bit.ly/OG10Twitter2
Twitter search for “Opportunity Green” : http://bit.ly/OG10Twitter3
Please let me know when you blog or post about OppGreen 2010 (find me: @rhetor ) and I may add you to this or future lists!
Who were some Live-Bloggers at OG 2010?
Day 1:
“The idea, organizers said, is to show green companies that profit doesn’t have to be a pipe dream. While accepting her Eco-Maverick award, Rodriguez told attendees to “embrace the new era of capitalism.” Then, she showed off her deejaying skills at the after-party.”
http://mobilegive.us/2010/09/23/opportunity-green-conference-turns-to-mobilegive/
http://www.neenahpaperblog.com/2010/09/opportunity-green/
http://www.vcstar.com/news/2010/sep/23/green-businesses-hope-practices-go-mainstream/
“The conference, in its fourth year, brings together about 1,000 green business leaders to hear from speakers, talk with exhibitors and discuss their businesses. It’s the first time it has been held at Los Angeles Center Studios, with the main stage set up where the “Mad Men” TV show is filmed and the media room is created from Judge Judy’s courtroom.”
Day 2:
Alissa Walker:
http://www.good.is/post/get-to-know-50-sustainable-startups/
Mother Nature Network:
http://www.mnn.com/eco-biz/sustainable-business-practices/blogs/weekend-reads-green-business
Art Center College of Design:
http://blogs.artcenter.edu/dottedline/2010/09/24/summit-2/
Rickshaw Bags:
http://blog.rickshawbags.com/2010/09/24/green-product-innovation/
Upon Conference Completion:
(to be continued…)
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Live Blogging OG09: When Sustainable Design and Business Converge
Posted on 07. Nov, 2009 by Susanna Schick.
These are styles from Lauren Pierce. One of the most inspirational stories I heard today was about Lauren Pierce, one of the lines carried at Barney’s. Lauren Pierce designs gorgeous, high-fashion clothing that would impress the most jaded fashionista. What sets it apart is that the textiles are hand-printed by a women’s cooperative in the Congo, thus creating income through traditional arts. In the ecofabulous lounge I discovered three other amazing eco designers not yet known to the world at large, currently represented by Vie Bungalow PR.
Zem Joaquin, founder of ecofabulous.com, reminds us that the most sustainable thing is to re-use. She’s partnering with E-Bay to promote awareness of the gems that can be found in vintage clothing. She then passes the mic to Julie Gilhart, Fashion Director for Barney’s, because what good is press without sales? Sustainable fashion isn’t exactly sustainable if it’s not being sold somewhere. Julie Gilhart has been dragging the world of high fashion into sustainability through her commitment as the buyer for the leading US retailer in designer fashion.
Julie’s sea change moment began when she discovered it costs $1million to produce a 20-minute fashion show. She thought about how many people could be fed for $1million. Then two more things happened- Al Gore’s film became a call to action, and Julie heard the Dali Lama speak. He said you should forgive, have compassion, create beauty, and preserve culture. She thought “I could do that in my job.” She went on to talk her CEO into doing a “green holiday” theme that year and has since continued to expand Barney’s commitment to what she calls simply “consciousness”- an awareness of what you’re buying, where it cam from, the history of it. Julie has worked with some of Barney’s top-selling designers to inspire them to develop sustainable pieces. Barney’s customers expect a high level of design, and within that constraint, Barney’s uses 3-tier pricing: In the casual price point she mentioned Loomstate (who also have a line at Target), for mid-level- Phillip Lim , and at the high-end- Stella McCartney. But these aren’t the only designers doing sustainability at Barney’s. Julie also found she needed to create energy around it. So she initiated denim and t-shirt recycling programs, among many other collaborations with the designers they carry.
“Our most important goal, widest reach, is to change perception, the way people think.” –Julie Gilhart, SVP & Fashion Director, Barney’s NY
Next, Yves Behar, founder offuseproject, shows a video of Mission One breaking the electric motorcycle land speed record- and describes the sound of it reaching top speed as the new sound of sexy. I wholeheartedly agree with that, although I do love the sound of my ICE Japanese Supersport. However, this may very well be the only panel ever to feature two of my greatest passions- fast motorcycles and high fashion. The Mission One is also featured in the Neiman Marcus catalog, so it’s not that much of a stretch.
Yves then shifts to an awesome video for PACT underwear, where a cute eco-conscious boy and girl in a drab office find their clothing fall away as they do small things to save the planet. Then they run off into a forest in their gorgeous Forest Ethics undies. It’s adorable. The WearPACT commercial was laugh out loud funny. Like an expert author, it guides the viewer, and is not heavy-handed, it’s entertaining. Showing people taking sustainable action – watering plants, cutting plastic – then running off together into the wilderness in their underwear. Visual language is perfect because everyone gets it. The ad suggests a venue for people to get back to our natures through nature.
Yves’ studio fuseproject works with a number of other innovative startups, including One Laptop Per Child, Y Water, and others committed to redefining their industries. In expressing the popularity of OLPC, Yves explained that the only program the incumbent and incoming presidents of Uruguay agree on is OLPC. Yves said he is going to work in the “golden years” of his career for the next 10-15 years to prove people wrong who say that green has to be expensive and ugly.
My question to Julie- How do you convince customers it’s worth paying a little more for eco fashion, since it does cost more to produce?
Julie: I tried, but found that consumers perceived it to be inferior, they expect it to cost less, even though it does cost more to produce. Consumers assumed they were going to have to sacrifice something for sustainability, as has been the problem with sustainability messaging in the past decade. Our customers didn’t understand that the quality of eco clothing is at least as good as anything else we offer. So I stopped talking about it. What we sell has to be a great design, and for us it’s actually better if we don’t push the sustainability message.
She went on to discuss how she’s working with the head of PPR to develop consciousness in his companies. PPR owns many of the greatest fashion brands- Stella McCartney, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen, Gucci, and Puma, to name a few. Even though it’s been under the radar, PPR has done some very conscious things, including producing the film Home. He cares about the environment. PPR owns a lot of businesses that have found the ability to save money through sustainability.
Next question: Did you come across designers that weren’t open to it?
Julie: We came across many, but found we cannot push them.
thanks to Gaia Dempsey for help in this article.
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Interview with Jimmy Brandt, Venture Capitalist
Posted on 03. Nov, 2009 by Susanna Schick.
Jimmy Brandt is president of The Brandt Organization, Inc. of California, a personal investment vehicle he created to identify and fund Southern California startups that have developed, or almost completed development of, environmentally friendly new products or services.
OG: What are you looking forward to most about the conference?
Jimmy: Primarily networking. Secondarily, it would be great if I could identify an attractive investment opportunity.
OG: How do you see the investment climate for sustainable startups, in the midst of these economic times?
Jimmy: Angel money has dried up because there are far fewer exit opportunities, and angels have less money to invest. A lot are finding it necessary to provide additional funds to startups that didn’t grow as originally hoped. Indeed, some startups which likely would have been viewed favorably in good times will be unable to obtain funding today. For those that do, company valuations will be much lower than previously. As a result, it’s a very tough time for entrepreneurs. In contrast, there will be many opportunities for well-funded investors.
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Interview with Josh Mark, Director of Sustainability for FOX Broadcasting Company
Posted on 02. Nov, 2009 by Susanna Schick.
Josh Mark is the Director of Sustainability for FOX Broadcasting Company. FOX Broadcasting is deeply committed to greening the filming industry, and is kind enough to share their wealth of knowledge with their competitors through the FOX Green Guide.
OG: What are you looking forward to the most about the conference?
Josh: I went last year, it was great! It was very inspirational, I saw what others were doing, took ideas from totally different industries, and found ways to apply it in ours. Nothing specific, but I took bits and pieces of this and that, and later found myself more easily inspired. I was recharged, and felt like I could always do more to make FOX more sustainable.
OG: I love how clear and simple the FOX Green Guide Best Practices section is. How widespread is the FOX Green Guide? What are you doing to popularize it within and outside of FOX?
Josh: A team of us developed the guide to enable our productions to have a simple resource for greening their work.We designed it for internal use, for our employees, production crews, and vendors. We don’t plan to advertise it and there’s no money involved in the guide. Initially, we discussed making it password protected, but that was too costly. Besides, we want everyone to be green, and there’s no competitive advantage to us being green, so the more people who know about the guide, the better. If everyone is greening their productions, it escalates people’s baseline commitments to sustainability, which can only be good.
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Interview with Paul Bunje, Exec. Director of the Center for Climate Change Solutions
Posted on 01. Nov, 2009 by Susanna Schick.
Paul Bunje is the Executive Director of the Center for Climate Change Solutions (CCCS) at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment
OG: So what are some of the projects you’re working on at the center? It’s a little hard to tell from your website.
Paul: We never have enough time to update the website, but you can find the most up-to-date information at UCLA’s Climate Change Portal, which is like one stop shop for all things going on in climate, energy, sustainability. It’s still in the beta phase, but it is live. We try to stay on the cutting edge of interdisciplinary studies, so this keeps UCLA people aware of what’s going across campus, to better learn from each other, and prevent redundancies in research.
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Interview with Rita Rausch, VP and Sr. Sustainability Officer, Comerica Bank
Posted on 01. Nov, 2009 by Susanna Schick.
Rita Rausch is the Vice President and Senior Sustainability Officer at Comerica Bank. Under her guidance, Comerica has developed a 32-member sustainability council representing managers from all business units.
OG: What are you looking forward to the most about the conference?
Rita: What I’m most interested in is the opportunity to hear people in other industries as well as some in my own, with respect to where they are in the sustainability process. Many North American companies are just now getting started, coming to the table a bit late, and I’d like to know how they’re integrating their initiatives and goals within the corporation, as well as how upper management is viewing the process.
OG: Within banking, who would you name as leaders in sustainability?
Rita: Comerica is a mid-sized bank, with total assets of $60-70 billion. We benchmark ourselves against the mega-banks such as Bank of America, Citibank, and others. We then use the information from that to decide which sustainability initiatives we’ll pursue, what makes the most sense for a bank of our size.
Mainly, we focus on facilities, since that’s where the bulk of our greenhouse gas emissions are coming from. But the banks we benchmark against are now also going into their portfolios and addressing the GHG of companies they invest in. We’re just starting to look into that. Our inaugural Sustainability Report was released in September of this year, and it details where we stand regarding GHG emissions and other Corporate Social Responsibility issues.
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Opportunity Green Rolls Out the Green Carpet for the New York City Debut
Posted on 22. Jul, 2009 by Chathri Munasinghe.
Who would be bold enough to take over one city block of Manhattan on Bastille Day? Opportunity Green and MINI E, of course. Last week the Opportunity Green team went bi-coastal and headed to New York to host over 300 guests for a night of metropolitan mingling. As guests strolled into the three-story Environment showroom, they were able to catch a glimpse of ten electric MINI E vehicles, proudly driven by a diverse set of MINI E Pioneers.
Notable guests in attendance included Graham Hill, Treehugger Interactive Founder & CEO; Julie Gilhart, Fashion Director & SVP at Barneys; Rohit Aggarwala, Director of New York City Mayor’s Office of Long Term Planning nd Sustainability; and Helen Walters, Innovation Editor at Businessweek. Movers and shakers in the clean tech space included Micah Kotch, Operations Director of NYC Accelerator for a Clean & Renewable Economy and Lex Heslin, MINI E Pioneer & CEO of Beautiful Earth Group.
Party attendees interacted with other executives, artists, designers, and academics from around the Tri-State Region. In between conversations, many guests indulged in organic delights from Sage Events and fruit cocktails splashed with natural mixers and organic vodka. In true Opportunity Green fashion, a NYC Photobooth was set up on the second floor of Environment to capture guests up close and personal. As the night started to wind down and the NYC humidity went up, guests left with new connections and a fresh taste of California cool.
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Opportunity Green welcomes Yann Arthus-Bertrand for the screening of HOME
Posted on 03. Jul, 2009 by Chathri Munasinghe.
Opportunity Green had the privilege to partner with the French Consulate and American Cinematheque in the screening of HOME, a film by French director Yann Arthus-Bertrand. Held at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, the screening was attended by over 600 fans & celebrities such as Friends star Lisa Kudrow. Prior to the screening, VIPs attended an Opportunity Green supported luncheon at the home of the French Consulate General David Martinon. Hollywood’s own Sharon Stone and Rosanna Arquette along with Opportunity Green CEO Karen Solomon were on hand to mingle with the French elite.Arthus-Bertrand used amazing cinematic examples from 54 countries to highlight global warming, resource shortages, and endangered species asking each viewer to reconsider their everyday human impact. The production, like an alarm clock, alerts each viewer to wake up and realize we barely have ten years left to reverse the exhaustion of natural resources.
