Automobile marketing is pretty standard stuff, right? Newspaper ads, billboards, and the big, flashy exhibits at the auto shows — that about covers it. If you want to find out more, you go to a website or the dealership — right?

Toyota’s attempting to turn some of those conventions on there heads with the (literal) roll-out of its Highway to the Future: the Mobile Hybrid Experience tour. Begun in January at the San Jose International Auto Show, the tour consists of two rolling museums: 53-foot trailers that contain high-tech exhibits meant to bring hybrid technology to the masses. The feature exhibits of the Experience include:

• “Alternative Fuels: Fueling the Future” identifies the differences in various types of alternative fuels and how they are produced.
• “Environment and Resources: Small Steps, Big Difference” shows attendees what they can do to make a difference to the environment.
• “The Prius Driving Experience” simulates the current Hybrid Synergy Drive technology, allowing visitors to interact with the system while on-screen instructions offer driving tips.
• “Hybrid Technology: Not All Hybrids are Created Equal” gives visitors a better understanding of the various hybrid technology options on the market and how hybrids benefit the consumer and the environment.

Where’s the tour going? Auto shows, of course, but also to fairs, film festivals, and environmental gatherings — it’s also just making stops in various locations. All together, the Experience will make 150 different stops.

Is this marketing? Certainly. But it’s definitely a unique form of marketing for a car company. First, and most obvious, there’s a genuine educational effort here. Second, Toyota’s not only bringing its hybrid line-up to potential customers, but also using the tour to literally move into weaker markets: as LA’s Daily Breeze notes (sorry — looks like the actual article is unavailable on the site), Toyota pretty much owns the hybrid market in the US. The bulk of those sales, though, occur on the coasts. By taking the Prius, Camry and Highlander on the road, and into flyover country, the company can get people behind the wheel (or, at least, playing with an exhibit) and introduce them to these vehicles in a fun, non-threatening manner.

Of course, the big question someone’s bound to ask: what’s the environmental impact of taking these trailers trucks on the road for 18 months? Probably sizable, but Toyota has attempted to offset that impact in several ways. First, they’ve partnered with the National Arbor Day Foundation, and will be planting over 50,000 trees in honor of Experience visitors — that should offset some of the carbon emissions. They’ve also partnered with 3form in building the Experience: ceiling tiles, wall coverings and flooring are all made from recycled and/or eco-friendly materials. This could ultimately be a moot point: if the Tour gets more people driving hybrids, that in itself could offset this effort’s carbon footprint in fairly short order. A definite “win-win…”

The Experience hasn’t made it to St. Louis yet, but the folks at Toyota have promised to keep me in the loop. Has anyone been? What did you think?

Categories: toyota, hybrid, event, automobile, car

Last September, I took a look at research in Australia aimed at creating synthetic chlorophyll in order to produce much more efficient solar panels. Today’s National Geographic News points to other experiments that involve attempts to mimic how plants convert sunlight into energy, with a focus on the process of “water splitting.” According to the article,

Water splitting is a complex chemical reaction that takes place in leaves, algae, phytoplankton, and other green organisms.

The plants use the sun’s energy to break down water into its components: oxygen and hydrogen.

The oxygen produced is released into the atmosphere. The hydrogen is used to convert carbon dioxide taken from the air into the carbon-based organic molecules that form plants’ tissues.

Researchers in London believe they’ve discovered the enzyme responsible for this process, called photosystem II. Like their Australian counterparts, these scientists believe that creating a synthetic version of this enzyme could allow us to mimic the process of photosynthesis, and create either hydrogen from water, or “…further mimic plants and combine the hydrogen with carbon compounds to produce fuels.”

It sounds like this research is in fairly early stages, but the idea is kind of staggering: literally making fuel from water and sunlight by harnessing natural processes. According to lead scientist James Barber from Imperial College London, “If the leaf can do it, we can do it.” That may strike some as arrogant, but I’d say these scientists are definitely looking at the right model for clean energy production.

Categories: fuel, energy, renewable, photosynthesis, research, london, uk

Reporting from Day one of OFFF Barcelona: International Festival for the Post-Digital Creation Culture Mario Klingemann seems like a cheerful guy from Munich, but he’s actually a heavyweight of the Flash-scene and showed a couple of his projects here, many of which deal with digital found footage. After playing around a bit with images from Flickr to create kaleidoscopic effects, he realized that this is actually an interesting way to create small narratives that have an inherent unpredictability about them. His piece Flickeur “randomly retrieves images from Flickr and creates an infinite film with a style that can vary between stream-of-consciousness, documentary or video clip,” a technique which gives it a suggestive power that comes, apart from the sound, without any influence by the artist. Built on that is Islands of Consciousness, in collaboration with sound artist, Oleg Marakov, which gives back a bit more control since it is doing a kind of “tag-surfing” that narratively ties together a bit more closely what appears on the screen, though it’s still random. One of his latest projects is The Stake, a sort of Anti-Amazon, which allows you to burn the media you’ve always hated and have only ever been allowed to… (more)

(Posted by Regine Debatty in Movement Building and Activism at 12:07 PM)

Ever grab a handful of napkins at a fast-food restaurant, or paper towels in the restroom, and end up throwing a good part of them away mostly unused? Guilty as charged. Pete Kazanjy took notice of this widespread practice one day at the In-N-Out Burger, and decided that their had to be a way to make people recognize the waste it involved. His solution: the “green guerrilla public service announcement project” TheseComeFromTrees.com. The idea behind the project is pretty simple: make people think about what they’re doing; if they do, they likely will change this behavior. According to Pete,

…this wasn’t an example of someone calling into question whether the use or misuse of a resource was “justified.” This wasn’t the same as someone saying “Wow, you shouldn’t drive that Hummer, because you have no use for it” or making some other value judgment. Any reasonable person, when asked “should unused paper goods be thrown into the trash” would probably look at you sideways before saying, “Duh, no Pete.”

That’s what was amazing about this situation. If actually made to think of about these actions, everyone would be in agreement. I think if you asked anyone in there dumping napkin after napkin into the trash if they cared about conservation and the wise use of resources, we’d all say “yes.” Of course we would. It was just that the thought process to intervene wasn’t immediate, and internalized. But maybe there was a way that it could be.

So, how do you make someone see that unused napkin as a resource? You simply remind them… at the very place they’re likely to engage in such wasteful behavior. Pete created a sticker (shown above) that anyone can place on a napkin or paper towel dispenser to make that thought process immediate. He’s asking people to join him in placing these stickers in prominent places where people are likely to grab that handful of paper: fast food restaurants, coffee shops, and public restrooms.

Yep, just put up a sticker — that’s the full extent of your guerrilla activity. If you wondering if it’s working, the These Come From Trees website claims that:

• Testing shows a “These Come From Trees” sticker on a paper towel dispenser reduces paper towel consumption by ~15%
• From our field testing, each sticker deployed saves about a tree’s worth of paper (~100 lbs.) a year. Crazy, isn’t it?

Pete’s also created a Flickr tag for photos of placed stickers: take a picture of your work, upload it to Flickr, and tag it “tcft.” If you want stickers, Pete’s got them available on his website for dirt cheap… I’m guessing from these prices that he’s not looking to make a profit.

This is a great idea that shows encouraging people to waste less really isn’t that difficult: they just have to recognize that they’re doing it. Any other projects out there that use a similar MO?

Categories: activism, waste, paper, stickers, trees, resources

Last September, I took a look at research in Australia aimed at creating synthetic chlorophyll in order to produce much more efficient solar panels. Today’s National Geographic News points to other experiments that involve attempts to mimic how plants convert sunlight into energy, with a focus on the process of “water splitting.” According to the article,

Water splitting is a complex chemical reaction that takes place in leaves, algae, phytoplankton, and other green organisms.

The plants use the sun’s energy to break down water into its components: oxygen and hydrogen.

The oxygen produced is released into the atmosphere. The hydrogen is used to convert carbon dioxide taken from the air into the carbon-based organic molecules that form plants’ tissues.

Researchers in London believe they’ve discovered the enzyme responsible for this process, called photosystem II. Like their Australian counterparts, these scientists believe that creating a synthetic version of this enzyme could allow us to mimic the process of photosynthesis, and create either hydrogen from water, or “…further mimic plants and combine the hydrogen with carbon compounds to produce fuels.”

It sounds like this research is in fairly early stages, but the idea is kind of staggering: literally making fuel from water and sunlight by harnessing natural processes. According to lead scientist James Barber from Imperial College London, “If the leaf can do it, we can do it.” That may strike some as arrogant, but I’d say these scientists are definitely looking at the right model for clean energy production.

Categories: fuel, energy, renewable, photosynthesis, research, london, uk

An article in this week’s Economist (subscription or free day-pass needed) profiles a soon-to-be-published paper by Harvard’s Robert Jensen that demonstrates mobile phones’ positive relationship to economic growth. This is related to another paper, profiled here back in 2005, by London Business School’s Len Waverman. In both papers, econometric analysis of time-series data is used to demonstrate a statistically significant relationship between mobile phone adoption/penetration and economic growth. The new paper, The Digital Provide: Information (technology), market performance and welfare in the South Indian fisheries sector, uses micro data from fish markets in the Kerala state of India starting in 1997. I won’t re-write what the Economist has to say, but rather quote: As phone coverage spread between 1997 and 2000, fishermen started to buy phones and use them to call coastal markets while still at sea. (The area of coverage reaches 20-25km off the coast.) Instead of selling their fish at beach auctions, the fishermen would call around to find the best price. Dividing the coast into three regions, Mr Jensen found that the proportion of fishermen who ventured beyond their home markets to sell their catches jumped from zero to around 35% as soon as coverage became available… (more)

(Posted by Robert Katz in Emerging Technologies at 10:29 AM)

Reporting from Day one of OFFF Barcelona: International Festival for the Post-Digital Creation Culture Mario Klingemann seems like a cheerful guy from Munich, but he’s actually a heavyweight of the Flash-scene and showed a couple of his projects here, many of which deal with digital found footage. After playing around a bit with images from Flickr to create kaleidoscopic effects, he realized that this is actually an interesting way to create small narratives that have an inherent unpredictability about them. His piece Flickeur “randomly retrieves images from Flickr and creates an infinite film with a style that can vary between stream-of-consciousness, documentary or video clip,” a technique which gives it a suggestive power that comes, apart from the sound, without any influence by the artist. Built on that is Islands of Consciousness, in collaboration with sound artist, Oleg Marakov, which gives back a bit more control since it is doing a kind of “tag-surfing” that narratively ties together a bit more closely what appears on the screen, though it’s still random. One of his latest projects is The Stake, a sort of Anti-Amazon, which allows you to burn the media you’ve always hated and have only ever been allowed to… (more)

(Posted by Regine Debatty in Movement Building and Activism at 12:07 PM)

An article in this week’s Economist (subscription or free day-pass needed) profiles a soon-to-be-published paper by Harvard’s Robert Jensen that demonstrates mobile phones’ positive relationship to economic growth. This is related to another paper, profiled here back in 2005, by London Business School’s Len Waverman. In both papers, econometric analysis of time-series data is used to demonstrate a statistically significant relationship between mobile phone adoption/penetration and economic growth. The new paper, The Digital Provide: Information (technology), market performance and welfare in the South Indian fisheries sector, uses micro data from fish markets in the Kerala state of India starting in 1997. I won’t re-write what the Economist has to say, but rather quote: As phone coverage spread between 1997 and 2000, fishermen started to buy phones and use them to call coastal markets while still at sea. (The area of coverage reaches 20-25km off the coast.) Instead of selling their fish at beach auctions, the fishermen would call around to find the best price. Dividing the coast into three regions, Mr Jensen found that the proportion of fishermen who ventured beyond their home markets to sell their catches jumped from zero to around 35% as soon as coverage became available… (more)

(Posted by Robert Katz in Emerging Technologies at 10:29 AM)

Photo Exhibit Depicts Magnitude of Product Consumption
LEDs Emerge to Fight Fluorescents
Will Greensburg Bloom Again as a ‘Green’ Town?
Plans for British Eco Towns
Deforestation: The Hiden Cause of Global Warming
(more)

(Posted by David Zaks in News and Views at 6:42 PM)

Posted by Erik (in New York)

Our first two batches of sugar cookies.

(Erik writes to Dave: Dang, sorry the bakesale report seems to have slipped between the cracks)

On the last weekend in April, people across the United States organized bakesales for the whales, in a push to generate grassroots pressure directed toward the US delegation to the IWC.

Now the results are in: In schools, churches, and public parks, at parades and community get togethers, and at at least one motorcycle shop in Nevada, 350 bakesales were held, with all 50 states represented (and Washington DC and Puerto Rico, too)! The nationwide effort was coordinated from US Greenpeace Online Organizing (GOO) headquarters in Brooklyn, and was made possible through the help of the very dedicated US Frontline team. Together we generated over 40,000 petitions, letters, and phonecalls to the White House.

Continue reading Dispatch From Brooklyn, NYC: Bakesale Headquarters Of The World…