BeeP Blog

Highlights of this amazing event: Chris Anderson chatting with Mr. Wiki Leaks himself, the infamous (or is it famous) Julian Assange, in a surprise and very rare interview. Julian probably has to do these to protect his life, I’d imagine. Here’s a shot i am particularly proud of, but not supposed to shoot (tsk, tsk) of the two of them watching a brief clip of the US soldiers gunning down civilians and reporters.

I got an amazing insight into Julian mind when he answered a question from Chris by saying: “The question is – what sort of information is important to reform?”

Chris did a brilliant job interviewing him; i would have choked with admiration myself…asking him a very interesting question about his CORE VALUES. He says they came from his father and other men in his life, given this advice, “capable, generous men do not create victims, they nurture them.” I would add Women to that, and we have a wrap.

Other spectacular Talks and People to follow:

• My new-found friend, Chris Wild, time traveler and Retronaut: www.howtobearetronaut.com/
• Rachel Sussman photographing the oldest living things, like 3,000 year old lichen in Greenland and some creepy white fungus in Oregon.
• Jason Clay of World Wildlife Fund – who thinks the average European cat has a larger carbon footprint than the average African human; and who has successfully staged roundtable discussions to enact change with the SUPPLIERS of world food products. Like CarGill and the other 300-400 companies that control world food supply. Or is it really 30-40?
• I liked Johan Rockstrom, a sustainability expert and his model that looks at NINE different components of planetary health
• Sebastian Seung, MIT neuroscientist was outstanding at helping us all see how “we are our connectome” of MILLIONS of miles of connective tissue in our very own brains.
• Then there was the question of why we teach computational math at all, when we have computers, and the importance of eating BUGS for the human diet, followed by a meal of – guess what – during the break (and YES i did try it),  Annie Lennox from seven rows back, etc. etc.
• Lastly, I enjoyed the Hogwarts-lookalike Keble College, home to crew teams and the like.  Not so shabby, these dorms that we stayed in.

For those who couldn’t attend our Sustainable Brands workshop, we’re offering up some of the slides from our presentation, “Sustainability Leadership: The Making, Marketing and Thinking Behind Cradle to Cradle Products,” to further share some overview thinking on what Cradle to Cradle is, how it works, and why it’s so important.

Check out this presentation from Jay Bolus, the VP of Technical Operations from MBDC.  Jay’s presentation provides a very good description of Cradle to Cradle Certification and the benefits for companies and consumers.

Hope you enjoy.

We’re very happy to have produced a panel at this year’s Sustainable Brands conference.  Titled “Sustainability Leadership: the making, marketing and thinking behind Cradle to Cradle products”, we laid out the roadmap for building Cradle to Cradle programs, and highlighted how some of the most forward-thinking product companies are marketing C2C principles.

We brought together some crackerjack speakers, leading off with Jay Bolus, a chemist with 14 years at MBDC and our client, who opened with a stage-setting presentation on what Cradle to Cradle is all about, and how the certification process works. Speaking from the product side, we then had Kevin Owens, the Director Sustainability for Steelcase and Coalesse, Drummond Lawson, Greenkeeper at Method Home products, and CEO Jason Foster of RePlenish, who got everyone excited about his soon-to-launch concept of bottling.

It was great to hear how these guys are raising awareness by incorporating C2C into their manufacturing AND their marketing, and from the reactions of the people who packed the room to listen, I think there’ll be a lot of people leaving Monterey inspired to do the same.

UPDATE: Check out this great post by Sofia Ribeiro, which walks through the key takeaways from our panel.  Thanks, Sophia! You can read more of her posts on her blog.