Past Sustainability Leaders Forum Events:
Designing for Sustainability through Biomimicry (Sept 8, 2011)
- Have you wondered how to inspire sustainability thinking in different parts of your company?
- Have you pondered whether there is a more sustainable way for your company to design and make its products?
Design for Sustainability: There are many ways to make products and services more green. Through making products more energy and resource efficient and less toxic or by "dematerializing" products, companies can drive innovation, reduce costs and increase market opportunities.
Biomimicry is based on the idea that we can learn from natural processes to create products and buildings that are models of resource efficiency and beauty. Biomimicry has been used to more effectively and sustainably find solutions to design challenges by emulating nature‘s forms, processes and ecosystems.
Below you will find the presentations from the Biomimicry event hosted by Genentech on Sept 08, 2011:
- Sustainable Design and Biomimicry Introduction
- Biomimicry by Marianna Grossman
- mirasol displays inspired from butterfly wings, Brian Gally
- Water filtration based on kidneys, Gayle Pergamit from Agua Via - coming soon
- Biomimicry Handout
- Biomimicry Examples
- Comprehensive Book List categorized by subject, by Biomimicry Institute
A solutions lab event hosted by NetApp (June 1 2011)
SSV’s Sustainability Leaders Forum Peer-to-Peer event hosted by NetApp on June 1st, received high marks from the attendees. Nearly 80% of the attendees said that they found the event “Very Useful”.
Six speakers made presentations regarding an experience related to implementing a sustainability initiative. The format for the meeting was patterned on Pecha Kucha or Ignite, with each speaker making a 5-6 minute presentation with slides that auto-advanced every 10-30 seconds. The audience then split into groups and discussed one of the six presentations with a view to learning from the experience or brainstorming solutions to the challenges/setbacks presented. Finally one person from each group shared the synopsis of the discussion with the rest of the audience. The issues discussed were
(1) Spurring Energy Efficiency - Challenges and Opportunities: Rick Row, Energy Upgrade California
(2) Best Practices for Initiating and Establishing Sustainability Initiatives: Bruce England, Silver Springs Network
(3) Leveraging the VTA for Sustainability efforts: Mike Hursh, Santa Clara VTA
(4) Overcoming the challenge of being Green in a multi-tenant space: Danielle Bricker (Yahoo!), Frank Teng (Jones Lang LaSalle)
(5) Building Efficient Data Centers – lessons learned: Peter Perrault, NetApp
(6) Electronics Recycling and Recovery – the promise and the reality: Tom Hogye, ECS Refining
Click on the links to read more and discuss about the topics on EcoCloud!
Making the Case: Storytelling for Engagement and Investment in Sustainability (Apr 01 2011)
"Making the Case" was an active discussion on how to get management, employees or citizens to fund or participate in sustainability programs, and how to sustain momentum once the luster of newness wears off when everyone is stretched to capacity to meet basic business requirements.
It was a hands-on workshop where Sustainability Leaders, EcoCloud Participants, green team members and EcoBoard leaders learnt how to craft stories to create buy-in for sustainability strategies and programs and discovered new ways to make the case for investment and for engagement from executives, managers and individuals.
The workshop was led by master story-teller, Joel ben Izzy, and enabled the participants to apply principles and techniques of story "architecture" in order to draw in their audience, to discover for themselves the point they want to make.
Attendees:
- Developed story-lines for making their case for investment or engagement
- Built on financial or other performance data to show the "so what" that motivates commitment and action
- Found new ways to foster innovative thinking and to drive change
Workshop Instructor:
Joel ben Izzy is an internationally renowned storyteller, author and story consultant. After graduating from Stanford with a degree in storytelling, Joel spent the next fifteen years traveling the globe, gathering and telling stories. Over the past fifteen years Joel has been developing innovative ways to apply storytelling, helping people who do good work to craft stories that shape the world. His story consulting clients include Hewlett-Packard, The Federal Reserve Bank, Stanford University, Genentech and Pixar Animation Studios.
Carbon and Energy Strategy Workshop with EcoShift Consulting (March 11 2011)
Sustainable Silicon Valley and EcoShift Consulting collaborated for a workshop by Dr. James Barsimantov (Principal, EcoShift Consulting) and Dr. Alexander Gershenson (Principal, EcoShift Consulting). Attendees learnt how to create a comprehensive Carbon Reduction Strategy, an effective plan to reach their goals of emissions reductions and cost savings. Discussions included the strategy organizations can use to identify actions, gain support for them, and choose the best actions to pursue, with the large range of potential actions to reduce emissions. The focus was on the need for comprehensive strategies, steps to create an effective strategy, quantitative metrics for decision making, and practical information on how to achieve targets.
Topics covered in the workshop included:
- Collaboration: How to get the right people on board
- Approaches: What works to get organizations on a path to save money and reduce impact
- Setting Targets: When, how, and why to set pragmatic targets
- Carbon Reduction Strategies: Creating a realistic, actionable, and quantifiable strategy
- Where to Reduce: Tradeoffs and hotspots for making reductions
- Action Items Case Studies: Buildings, transportation, & employee behavior
- Decision Criteria: Metrics to compare projects & what to do when numbers aren’t available
- Prioritizing Action: How to choose which steps to implement and when
- Innovative Funding Strategies