Surfing Sewers

I surf a place called Sewer Peak in Santa Cruz relatively regularly. And a buddy moved to Santa Monica recently near a place called Shit Pipe. And a quick search online finds many other surf spots with similar names. Nice.

Often times the names originate from an outfall pipe buried in a jetty or one that dumps into the surf (or used to). And if you walk down San Francisco's Ocean Beach you'll find a couple of outfall pipes for wastewater overflow during heavy rains. Right onto the beach and into the surf lineup.

Everything used to go into the ocean. Growing up in San Diego, I would regularly find used medical waste on the beach. It used to be taken for granted that water was going to be clean, but its unclear if that was just ignorance. Today it's generally recommended that you wait a couple of days before getting into the water after a big storm, unless you want a nice sinus infection or worse.

The Thin Green Line blog has a nice thread on SF Swimming in Sewage; interesting how reporting has evolved. A tiny, almost throwaway post without much new info or research churned out a bunch of context from the crowd that creates a compelling article from the seed of the story.

San Francisco is pretty advanced in its approach to wastewater. But we can always do better. Having worked in energy efficiency for years, I can see a similar effort needed for water efficiency. Big rains cause peak demand on the wastewater systems; we need to raise awareness to not use appliances during peak times, same as we do for electricity. Water appliances include showers, toilets, dishwashers, clotheswashers and any faucet.

So the next time there's a big rain, please put off that load of laundry or dishes, or shower in the morning if the forecast is for clearer weather. Every gallon out of ths system gives it more time to clean up what's in it, so it doesn't regurgitate it onto the beach. And who wants that really?

Dell's Integrated Approach to Green

Dell continues to be a leader in the corporate sustainability space, recently announcing that it plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions from its facilities by 40% by 2015. And that's after announcing it went carbon neutral awhile back. Good stuff on the corporate end. And they're doing plenty on the product end (often with my employer's client AMD) to tap into consumer demand and keep up with the Joneses.

From a marcoms perspective, it's pretty integrated in its approach to the topic, which is impressive and shows is this isn't just sitting in the CSR group, where it tends to have less power to change the business.

For my quick review, I started with a Yahoo! search for "Dell sustainability," which gave me its sustainability report. Not the most interactive thing and it sits outside of other marketing efforts; I'd rather have a microsite come up that ties it all together and hopefully generates some sales leads at the same time. And a search for "Dell green" was pretty worthless.

But a Google Search gives us Dell Earth, the microsite that pulls it together, which also has a link to another microsite, where the ReGeneration concept comes to life a bit more, with a further link to a Facebook group (adminned by Dell guy) with almost 1,200 members and some good interactivity. Nice use of social web to bring it all together. But it's missing an opportunity with the Yahoo! search community (and Live.com, which returns results focused on the government vertical).

To round out the communcations channels, a search for "green" on the Dell YouTube channel brings up dozens of vids, which is great in this time of video obsession. I don't see any green-specific groups on Twitter (though it's advanced in other areas such as @IdeaStorm and @Digital_Nomads campaigns). And there's a section called The ReGeneration on Flickr and a Green Room forum, but both of those are pretty limited.

All in all, Dell is doing a great job shifting its business toward sustainability and communicating and creating community around the topic across multiple channels.

Doing the Social Media & Cleantech Thang

Neglecting my blog. Bad man. Been spending more time on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn to engage in conversations.

That said, been doing a ton of stuff in the cleantech space.

--Recurrent Energy: had a great NYC tour, which resulted in some nice pieces on NPR, BusinessWeek and Dow Jones, as well as solid relationships with several other key cleantech media.

--Lime Energy: met with them yesterday to talk about six month plans. Great traction in vertical and trade media to date.

--Sun Microsystems: Did a mid-year CSR report today and supporting a Datacenter Pulse Event next week.

Economic Nosedive Impact on Cleantech

A little more on the economic turmoil and cleantech over on my employer's blog: http://blog.bitepr.com/2008/11/economic-nosedive-impact-on-cleantech.html

Commitment to Green

With the economy nosedive, everyone's questioning the commitment to sustainability - both by businesses and consumers. A slew of research has come over the transome and the blogosphere is spreading it all over the place. RSS feeds lit up like Vegas on this topic in the past couple weeks.

It seems the market is still jittery about how real this shift to sustainability is - I haven't heard the "is green just a fad?" question lately, but there does seem to be fatigue in the media and general consumers about the topic. My stock answer about the cleantech category is that it's not going anywhere - it's as stable as biotech is - and the VC funding figures back that up. Q3 08 saw a billion dollars go into 73 deals. But this jitteriness can threaten marketing investments as CMOs get the axe out.

The sense of doubt about the longevity of sustainability is probably a hangover from being beaten over the head with political and Chamber rhetoric of the past several decades that "dirtier" technologies are the safe bet where all the jobs are, and that any move forward toward a new energy and sustainable business economy would drive the US lifestyle to the brink. Ironically, it turned out sticking to the old ways of thinking has driven Detroit to the taxpayer handout window and put the US behind the EU in wind and solar - big margin business with lots of jobs.

Here're a handful of links to some interesting stats:

Sustainable Life Media -
70% of IT Managers Say "Green" is Still Top Priority

IDC Touts Business Benefits of Green

Markets Chucking Green Campaigns as Economy Slows

Are Consumers Rethinking Their Commitment to Green?

Center for Media Research - Green not Consumers "Go" Button

Christian Science Monitor - Even as Economy Lags, Corporate "Green" Push May Advance

CIO Magazine - How CIOs are Responding in the Economic Downturn

Investment Tax Credits (ITC) as Pork

Very happy that the ITC extension made it into a bill and signed into law by the Prez. But bummed that it took a national implosion to get the other side to call mercy on this and accept it being grafted onto the bailout bill - which could almost be called pork.

Luckily, this government largess will create thousands of jobs and encourage continued investment in solar and wind projects - leading us further toward a healthier, more stable energy regime. More detail on the ITC is offered by SEIA.

As Heather Clancy of ZDNet points out, solar leaders have been "plowing ahead without waiting for the government," but this added support will certainly help (as incentives have done for oil, gas, coal and nuclear for years). She cites projects like the one announced this week by San Domenico School and Recurrent Energy (a client).

Working with folks in solar, I have a vested interest, but this is the type of incentive that I want my government spending my tax dollars on. Let's right-size this government, shifting funding from "dirty" energy to cleantech.

Global Shipping and Renewables

Globalization has resulted in huge growth in international shipping. Off-shoring manufacturing and shipping products to far-away markets makes economic sense when oil costs are cheap. The models appear to be breaking down a bit, as reported by the New York Times earlier this month (Aug. 2008). And from a climate change perspective, the shipping industry is apparently worse than air travel.

A couple of renewable energy options are floating out there...

Could ships be mobile solar power plants? The Japanese plan to harvest some solar energy to power engines and well as living quarters, as reported by Reuters. And with some additional investment, other renewables could work. I assume all waste is dumped overboard (contributing to other environmental issues, including the Great Pacific Garbage Patch). This could be an option for a waste gasification project (if technically possible/safe). Methane/biofuels could be harvested from waste, as well.

And from the "everything old is new again" department, we have a startup using wind to pull boats. KiteShip has a steady track record over the past couple of years chatting up it's innovative sail system - even grabbing a Guinness World Record for the largest kite ever.

I thought they started out with commercial marine applications, but it looks like they have equal emphasis on recreational marine and even plan to harness solar and Martian winds. I see talk of trials but no named customers.

Let's hope these high oil prices tip the scale in favor of renewable energy in global shipping.