inkbluesky

broke down in flip-flops 

Pop-Up Cities: China Builds a Bright Green Metropolis

Three years ago, Alejandro Gutierrez got a strange and tantalizing message from Hong Kong. Some McKinsey consultants were putting together a business plan for a big client that wanted to build a small city on the outskirts of Shanghai. But the land, at the marshy eastern tip of a massive, mostly undeveloped island at the mouth of the Yangtze River, was a migratory stop for one of the rarest birds in the world — the black-faced spoonbill, a gangly white creature with a long, flat beak.

Strange story is a way. Taking an island with a few inhabitants and a rare bird and building a green city which is also on one of the world’s most polluted rivers. There will be green buildings, solar power and recycling - all the underpinnings of what we would imagine in a eco-friendly city of the future. China is in many ways a disaster, yet is on course to become the world’s largest economy. This green project is like an old house that has been so badly abused by its residents that building this experimental green city is like putting a band-aid on a bullet wound. I guess you have to take the attitude that they have to start on a better path and undoing the damage somewhere, somehow.

Even now, after three decades of rapid economic growth, more than 160 million Chinese still live on less than a dollar a day. The trouble is, environmental degradation has become a drag on China’s development. The government revealed last year that environmental damage costs the economy $200 billion a year, a full 10 percent of China’s GDP. The cost to public heath and quality of life may be even greater. Overcultivation, overgrazing, and massive timber consumption have turned a quarter of China’s land into desert. Over 400 million Chinese drink contaminated water.

broke down film-noir version 

The outdoor industry is its own worst critic

Few companies have an objective tool for rating how good a shirt or shoe is for the environment. But that may be changing. In May, leaders in the outdoor industry will meet in Boulder to discuss developing a universal system to rate a product’s environmental impact.

“It’s tricky to know if you’re really doing a good thing unless you have an objective way to look at the whole process,” said Betsy Blaisdell, manager of environmental stewardship at the shoe and apparel company Timberland, which recently created a rating called the Green Index. The Green Index looks at everything from materials to shipping and gives shoes a sustainability score from 1 to 10.

“When we looked at products from start to finish, we found some surprises,” she said.

The natural hemp that Timberland used in its Greenscape Mountain sneakers to replace a synthetic fabric turned out to be a bit limp, so designers added a stiff backing. The backing added weight. The weight burned more fossil fuels in shipping. Once a Green Index analysis was run, it showed the synthetic fiber was more sustainable. Out went the hemp.

“I think the designers were a little mad, but it’s been a great tool,” said Blaisdell.

Green Index tags are included with five shoe models, and the company hopes to tag all its shoes and clothing by 2009. Timberland officials will urge other manufacturers at the May meeting to develop a standardized “nutrition label” that tells how green a product is.

I’m glad someone finally got around to looking at the big picture. I used to think I was incidentally doing the environment a favor by buying clothing made of all cotton or some other natural fiber like linen. Then I read something that Patagonia put in one of their cataloque about the fertilizers and fossil fuels used on factory cotton farms and it kind of blew my envoronmental boat out of the water. At least if we start to get tags with ratings on shoes and clothes we can make smarter decisions.