The speaker, Joel Makower, provided his insight on the state of the green economy. Joel has been described as, “The guru of green business practices” and he is the Chairman and Co-founder of Greener World Media, Executive Editor of GreenBiz.com, and the author of “Strategies for the Green Economy”. The EcoTuesday blog provides more information about him here.

What did I learn from his presentation? Joel provided a clear, thoughtful perspective on trends in the green economy as well as the encouraging and discouraging parts of these trends. Here are some key themes I took from the speech:

1. Generally speaking green practices have been integrated into businesses and the economy in two ways. (1) Big businesses have had the ability, resources, and funds to integrate successful green practices and make fundamental, well-received changes in green economy. It has allowed companies like Walmart to become green leaders. (2) It has been challenging for everybody else to get traction and attention with these practices in the marketplace.  Storytelling is crucial to making progress: How has integrating environmental practices increased profits, reduced costs, enhanced branding, etc? What should individuals know to have a better understanding of your business and how they could be a part of it?

2. Green economy technologies will likely revolutionize the market like the internet has. Innovative energy, building, information, and vehicle technologies are transforming industries across the board, providing us with the ability to do things that haven’t been done before. For example, let’s think about cars. Why do we own cars? For mobility. Innovative technologies provided us with increased convenience, sharing, on-demand access, etc that make alternatives to vehicle transportation more viable appealing.

3. The green economy is not looking optimistic. There is lack of direction and clear leadership. There has yet to be a prevailing theme of urgency. Businesses and people want to know how they fit into the green economy and where the business and personal opportunities are. Everyone is looking for help. The green economy has also moved slowly and has not scaled. Political barriers have discouraged growth and not connected the dots as they should. There also seems to be an appetite for green but not for change. People love change as a noun but not as a verb. Three ingredients that are necessary for change in the business community are (a) policy, (b) technology, and (c) money or funding. It takes committed, passionate people to bring forth this change with strong leadership, movements, and collectiveness.

4. Many small businesses are on the edge of green economy but not at the epicenter. How do we change this? Policy, technology, and money are important factors here. How do we transform sustainability from small local scales, to states, and the nation?

What are my thoughts? I agree a lot of what was said but I think there are some smaller companies and non-profits that have boomed in the industry. Looking forward, I’m interested to see how city environmental programs develop across the US. This is what crosses my mind:

San Francisco has many progressive environmental policies and programs – will they be successful and sustainable in the long-term? Will other cities see these pilot programs as successes and follow the trend? How do we measure success and reduced carbon footprint?

A few notable environmental programs and policies in San Francisco include:

- GoSolarSF residential and business solar incentives (and the California Solar Initiative) have really spurred growth in the solar industry. But what does the future look like as funds dry up and how does it hurt local businesses? For example, the program budget has reached its capacity for this fiscal year ending June 30, 2010 and so only low income residential applications are being accepted. Will new initiatives like GreenFinanceSF serve as a safety-net or alternative to programs like GoSolarSF?

*On a side note the city has a cool map of solar activity and installations: http://www.sf.solarmap.org.

- The Zero Waste program instated mandatory recycling and composting with goals of 75% landfill diversion by 2012 and zero waste by 2020. I think this is a great and ambitious program overall but think it will be difficult to enforce this mandate with all the shared waste collection containers. I hope to see other cities incorporate mandates and goals similar to Zero Waste.

- Other programs I’m keeping my eye on include: PlantSF (permits for sidewalk gardens), Recology’s Artist In Residence (AIR) program, and Pavements to Parks.

How does Bay Area activity fit into the green economy now and how will it shape the future? What about other leading green cities/urban regions – New York, Boston, Seattle, Chicago, Portland, etc?

I went to the HVF ‘Work Party’ last Thursday (February 11th) and learned a little about the process of a sustainable farm. The HVF team was very knowledgeable and many of them come from a strong background in permaculture. Permaculture, the basic theme behind HVF, is the process of designing agriculture systems to mimic nature.

Here’s the bit I learned about the initial steps of creating a nutritious soil at HVF:
i. To begin, cardboard was placed at the foundation of the farming area to kill all plants and weeds below it as well as add nutrition to the soil.
ii. Next mulch was transferred over to the space – this is where I participated. Wheelbarrows, tarps, and, later on, the back of a pickup truck were used to transfer eucalyptus-scented mulch to the farming area.
iii. Then mulch was smoothed into rows on a hilly area at the southeast edge of the site. Each row needs enough space so you could walk through and do work without trampling over spots dedicated to seeds and plants.
iii. Once the mulch is order, next on the to-do list is to plant fava beans and clover. Both of these items will add nitrogen to the soil.
iv… TBD! I’m not sure what happens next but I’m excited to learn more.

HVF will also be offering workshops & classes, and its first course will be on Greenhouse Basics. I heard HVF will eventually take workshops into the backyards of community residents, to show people how to transform the space into edible gardens. I’d love to be involved in something like that.

On another note, San Francisco hosts an established 4.5 acre organic farm in the southeast part of the city called Alemany Farm. I’ve heard great things about this farm and plan on checking it out myself one day.

Expect to see posts in the future about Alemany Farm and perhaps some of my own gardening efforts.

The visit: The employee helping me was incredibly nice. I was provided the devices after filling out minimal paperwork and she went through our water usage history, provided feedback, and set up an appointment for an on-site Free Water-Wise Evaluation.

The SF PUC employee pulled up water usage history over the last few years via a new online system that will be available to customers in the future. Our numbers were actually quite good, except for three months of outliers (between 2 and 14 times our usual amount) likely due to leakage. I was informed that ideal usage is 5 units (or 748 gallons) per person over 60 days.

Potential water-savings: I’m really excited to evaluate this in the future. Here is a rundown of what is EXPECTED:
+ Low-flow showerhead: Water flow reduced to 1.5 gallons per minute or less. This could save thousands gallons per year.
+ Kitchen/bathroom aerator: Water flow also reduced to 1.5 gallons per minute or less. In combination, they could potentially reduce usage by 4%.
+ Toilet flapper: Warn out flappers could allow leaks/more water flow into the toilet. Replacing it within two years is ideal. We recently replaced ours so I stored the new device.

Next: I will providing updates about (1) the Water-Wise Evaluation next week and (2) our water usage in the upcoming months.