The Distance Project

Why I Love ZipCar, by Zach L.

Posted on November 16th, 2007 by Zach.
Categories: Sustainability, Systems of the World, Urban Planning.

This title sounds like a 4th grade paper I wrote once. I was a good writer in 4th grade, my paper on the Tyrannosaurus Rex was Pulitzer worthy. Perhaps the highlight of my writing career - sadly it was all downhill from there.  4th grade talent notwithstanding, the ZipCar model really is cool.

If you haven’t yet, check out the concept of CarSharing. It is a fascinating model of managing the last mile (always the hardest piece) of public transportation systems. What is always frustrating about Public Transportation in this country is that often you are too far away for the train or bus stop. Getting to your final destination is expensive and difficult.

Parking Zipcars at subway, train, and bus stations solves this problem.  You still have the flexibility to go exactly where you need to, but you didn’t have to battle highway traffic to do it.  Plus CarShare programs  cover insurance and  the fuel for the time you use the car. Love this concept and I hope it spreads all over the country.  Recently the two biggies in this space; ZipCar and FlexCar announced that they will merge in the coming year.  This has to be the biggest no-brainer since XM and Sirius.  Oh right, those two still haven’t managed to figure out the merging process.

We support CarShare as a a key piece of the puzzle and this summer we signed a partnership deal with Zipcar to give all their members a discount on Reware products.  For us there is an interesting cross marketing concept here.  ZipCar and Reware both have been started with the hope that they will make changes to the system, while providing their customers a new service that they use.  Making change and making money. What could be better from a work standpoint?

It seems like there are more and more companies trying to figure out this model, and I envision us partnering more and more often. It makes sense because the customer base is so similar. For the most part the target audience is very mainstream. They live normal lives, they are not out on a commune weaving their own shoes .  But they see the world changing, they see their lives as impactful and if they can spend money with companies that make them feel like their actions are part of the solution, they are pleased.

Call it the Whole Foods model.  I have to go to the grocery store anyway,  why not go to the one that is espousing the values that I want in my life?

There is a growing lifestyle concept that I feel like more and more people are trying to figure out. ZipCar and the other car sharing services fit right into this niche.

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The Power of Hybrids

Posted on October 10th, 2007 by Zach.
Categories: Sustainability, Systems of the World.

The other night I was at dinner and found myself in discussion with someone unimpressed by the Hybrid car revolution. Fair point from the outside I suppose, but I thought it was worth a little bit of time here to show why hybrids matter.

When it comes to cars, one of the first thing people look at is gas mileage and on that front most of the Hybrids are pretty good, if not mind blowing - somewhere between 30 and 50 mpg depending on the size of the engine. This is better than the national average, but for a regular Civic driver or someone who drives a TDI from Volkswagen, it is not enough to pony up the extra bucks.

Fuel efficiency is a big deal obviously and I don’t want to devalue how important it is in the larger equation. Energy conservation is the single most important challenge facing the U.S. Vehicles are no different, and hybrid technology is addressing this as the technology matures. 

In terms of the impact of hybrid technology though, fuel efficiency is only part of the equation, and I would argue the smaller of the two. What really matters are the emissions.

In traditional cars and trucks a large majority of emissions are produced either when the vehicle is at idle, or moving at slow speeds. Stop-and-go traffic for example, is an emissions nightmare. So much so that cities see significant reduction of pollution when they use more timed traffic lights systems. By reducing the number of times cars have to stop for lights, the pollution levels are lower.

Because a hybrid vehicles operates on an electric motor during these critical times (0 -15 mph), the emissions are reduced by a large factor. The numbers are actually staggering: around 80% of the total emissions in a three mile drive are created during the first mile.

To put the impact of this into perspective next time you are stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic that forces you to slow down around 10 - 15 miles an hour, take a look around you and imagine every one of the cars putting out zero emissions. In every major urban area these days, this is a daily occurrence at rush hour.

Idling my not seem like a big deal to the average person, but it is. According to a Washington State University Study, trucks and buses burn in the neighborhood of 840 million of gallons of diesel a year JUST IDLING! Combine that with the emissions quotient and the numbers for trucks are just plain scary.

Trucks at idle, cars in traffic, imagine if every one of those vehicles were producing zero emissions. Hybrid system are a critical answer to these issues, and that is why they matter now.

They matter for future innovation as well. Emerging technologies like plugin hybrid systems up the electric speeds from 0-15 mph to actual cruising speeds - spurts of 50+ mph. The systems are only going to get better.

Most importantly, hybrid systems separate the energy production from the motor. In current examples like the Prius, a gas engine charges batteries which then run an electric motor. At high speeds the combustion engine kicks in as well, but increasingly the electric motor takes the load with the gas engine used for producing electricity.

Future systems will fully divorce the engine from the motor. This will enable a wide variety of energy production sources to be used in cars - hydrogen fuelcells, biofuels, sterling engines, etc. And that kind of flexibility is where innovation will continue develop.

A couple of facts:

• The transportation sector generates 27 percent of U.S. GHG emissions

• There are 200 million registered vehicles in the U.S.,  almost one per person.

• The average U.S. car each consumes 600 Gallons each year.

• 12,000 pounds of carbon dioxide is emitted from one U.S. car each year.

• U.S. cars and light trucks traveled 2.7 trillion miles in 2004. That’s the equivalent of taking 10 million trips to the moon.

• Emissions for the first km are 80% of total emissions for the 4km journey.

• The U.S. produces 45% Percent of the world’s automotive carbon dioxide emissions.

• The Toyota Prius reduces normalized tailpipe emissions by up to 90% and greenhouse gas emissions by around 50%.

• The City of Ottawa estimates that reducing idling by only 5 minutes per day in all City vehicles will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 384 tonnes and save $80,000 in fuel costs across the fleet.  5 minutes!

         Sources: pewclimate.org, Evironmental Defense, University of Bath (UK), City of Ottawa

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I hate packaging.

Posted on May 8th, 2007 by Zach.
Categories: Sustainability, Systems of the World.

Can I be any clearer than that? Let me try: I hate Blister Packaging with a fiery passion that knows no bounds. You know this stuff - every electronic gizmo comes in it. It’s a clear plastic shell that is totally impenetrable, the Fort Knox of packaging. If you were stuck on a deserted island with no tools and had to get it open to eat, you would either starve to death, or else die accidentally slicing an artery on the razor like edges.

I mean is there anything quite so stupid? It is such a nightmare, people are developing special tools to open this kind of packaging. Check out this one.

Pretty smart, but according to an article I read, the tool comes in Blister Pack. Great. Still dying on the island.

Vendors love this stuff I guess, and factories make the packaging process easy (plus there is no currently viable alternative, so the point is moot). If I order a pallet of items from overseas, not only do I get my product all packaged up coming out of the factory, but they will put my branding and instructions in the thing so I don’t have to do any assembly afterwards. You would not believe what a hassle reduction that is for a company. And reduced hassle is my dream come true these days.

Blister packing protects the products from damage really well too. Plastic really can get fairly beaten up and still look decent on an in-store display.

You want to experience waste? In my life it is when stores send back product because the PACKAGING is damaged. I love this, it always makes my day - the product is fine, it is just the protective shell that is beaten up. What? But this is not a knock on the stores. People don’t buy things with beaten up packaging. They just don’t. This may sound like stupid reasoning, but I have recently learned a lot about how people buy in stores (myself included) and presentation means a whole lot, it may be the only thing that matters in many cases.

It is hard to steal anything that is contained in Blister Packaging and that is a plus, but this is mainly due to the fact that there is so much plastic around the product. As an example, I recently bought a set of earbud headphones. There was at least double the amount of plastic in the packaging than in the product itself.

These aren’t the ones exactly, but you get the idea.

Douglas Adams once announced that a society which had instructions on toothpicks was broken. Me? I think when the material in packaging exceeds the product, we are all in big trouble.

What is truly excellent is that our plastic trash will be here a while. This stuff sits around for the odd 3-6 thousand years. It is typically a low grade plastic too which cannot be recycled. Instead we throw it away about 12 seconds after tearing into it as consumers. Broken System Alert.

The worst part of the whole thing is that plastic is made of petroleum. In an age where oil is getting more and more valuable, it is insane that we use so much in such useless situations. Thinking about the Oil economy takes up way too much of my time these days, but at least it is usually based around situations where Oil is being used because there are no other systemic options. This is true in packaging of course, there are no other great options, but it seems like this is a fairly easy systemic fix. Proof yet again that if I was a billionaire it would be fun to start the next generation plastics lab. There is no reason packaging has to stay around the way it does. And maybe we could save the oil for, you know, driving firetrucks around or something?

Next up in the Packaging Vent-A-Thon: Cardboard….

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Hello world - Take 3.

Posted on March 18th, 2007 by Zach.
Categories: General.

So TDP has been gone for a minute, but now we’re back - call it the third generation.

A little background:

For those of you who have tracked our evolution through the years may remember that we started as a small group in San Francisco in 1999. While the mission changed fundamentally a couple of years ago, we have always tried to keep true to the original concept - A little edgy, a little irreverent, avoid myopia as much as possible.

When we refocused in 2003, we really wanted to talk about the rising “Green Economy”. At that point the frenetic energy around renewable energy and sustainability had yet to rise to its current heights. Credit Al Gore, Rising Oil Costs, whatever you wish - the point is “Green” is everywhere you turn, and by this I mean The Oscars, WalMart, G freaking E! You can’t get more disparate than that. It is an exciting time, and there are a set of news sites that will come up on this blog again and again in the coming years: Grist, Treehugger, Renewable Energy Access, Greenwire. We love these sites, and we felt like didn’t need to compete for attention when they are all doing such good job representing the space.

Additionally, it felt like sustainability and the green revolution, was just one piece of a larger shift going. It was something we could see going on everywhere, in every facet of life. Yet I seem to struggle framing the whole picture for myself.

And with that we begin. I don’t have answers, just a gut feeling that something big is on the horizon. Bigger than any of us can even imagine. Treehugger and Grist, GE and WalMart, these are tangible examples of the shift. Friedman touches upon it, as does Gladwell. Add in Jared Diamond into the mix.

Architecture, Global Trade, Rising Population, the changing strategy of messaging around the environment, Pop-Culture - the shift is everywhere.

And all of it fits together somehow, I just am not sure how yet.

It is my hope that I can use this site to help explain this shift for myself, maybe bounce some ideas off people I respect and start to build a framework of the new order of things in the world - what is coming and what is here.

Thanks for checking in.

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