Rewarding Innovation: A Sample of Great Ideas from Around the Globe

One of the most interesting and inspiring aspects of urban planning is the act of discovering innovative solutions that cities around the world are implementing to solve commonly held urban problems. The innovations might involve cutting-edge technology, or they might be a re-commitment to an age-old principle. Solutions might be driven by community volunteers, business entrepreneurs, mayors and even heads of State.

In advance of this year’s Financial Times and Citibank Ingenuity Awards, I had the opportunity to revisit some of the creative, exciting, and inspiring examples of recent innovation that could be replicated in cities around the world to provide a more sustainable, livable future for us all. I’d like to share some of them with you here. I encourage you to nominate projects you feel are deserving of recognition and support for the 2013 FT/Citi Ingenuity Awards (the deadline for 2013 nominations is April 30th).

Transportation Alternatives: People around the world have a shared understanding of the effects that conventional fossil-fueled vehicles are having on our environment and well-being. Providing effective alternatives, however, is a great challenge that is absolutely necessary in order to expect a shift in transportation habits. Here are a few projects that are tipping the scales towards sustainable, people-powered modes of transportation.

Towards Equal Infrastructure for Bikes: In April 2012, the first leg of a 26-route bicycle superhighway opened in Copenhagen, Denmark. Wanting to promote bicycling along these routes as a serious alternative to taking the train, bus or car, Copenhagen worked with 21 other municipalities to create "contiguous, standardized bike routes into the capital across distances of up to 14 miles." The bike highways are designed with clever features such as traffic lights that are timed to suit the travel patterns of cyclists during rush hour, garbage cans tilted at the right angle for bikers and solar-powered lights to enhance the cycling experience and reduce environmental impact. In response to the new infrastructure, innovative local initiatives such as a “bicycle school bus” for children commuting to class together have been developed.

Cardboard Bike for All: In Israel, Izar Gafni has produced the prototype for a bicycle whose frame and wheels are made entirely from cardboard and reused rubber. This bicycle is durable, lightweight, made from recycled materials, and importantly, is very inexpensive to produce. A bicycle that can be sold for $20 or less could go a long way towards equipping communities all over the world with the benefits of human-petaled transport. His next projects include a children's bike and wheelchair made from cardboard.

Sanitation: The concentration of people in urban areas necessitates effective and hygienic waste management. In many cities, however, people don’t have access to some of the most basic human needs: clean water, electricity and toilets. 

Build a Better Toilet: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, dedicated to achieving universal access to sustainable sanitation services, recently put out a call for the best and brightest minds to design a low-cost toilet that doesn't require piped water, a connected sewer, or electricity and that transforms waste into usable materials. The California Institute of Technology won first prize in August 2012 for a solar-powered toilet that generates hydrogen and electricity. The April 2013 TED talk by Rose George underscores why finding solutions to the lack of basic sanitation is so vital and urgent.

Smaller Flush, Better Public Access: For cities whose residents already have access to indoor plumbing, a priority should be on systematic, large-scale water conservation: for an example of progress, see the pilot program in Queens, New York that has retrofit all toilets at two public schools. The program has cut water consumption by 70% and will save 700 million gallons of water per year. Access to public toilets, already commonplace in cities like Melbourne, Australia, are another important step towards urban livability—the Australian Government even has a website dedicated to finding and using public toilets! 

Solar Alternatives: Powering lights, homes and cars, renewable energy is being harnessed in innovative ways to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Some cities are leading the way, particularly in the area of solar energy. 

City Powered by the Sun: R. Rex Parris, the Republican Mayor of Lancaster, California announced two years ago that his city would become the “solar capital of the universe” by producing more electricity from the sun’s rays than it consumes. Lancaster is well on its way, in part by requiring new homes to either be “equipped with solar panels or be in subdivisions that produce one kilowatt of solar energy per house.” It is estimated that the city tripled the number of residential installations in the past 18 months. This progress in the residential sector combined with outfitting government and school buildings with solar panels has resulted in 39 megawatts already being generated and the 50 megawatts currently under construction (out of a necessary 126 megawatts).  

Clean Energy Economy: South Korea is also leading the pack in terms of its cities promoting and implementing renewable energy, including photovoltaic. Intending to be among the top 5 clean energy economies, the Republic of Korea is investing 40 trillion Won to develop sources of clean and renewable energy before 2015. My city of Daegu is home to an innovative concentrating solar heat tower, the first of its kind in Korea. This is how it works: 200 angled reflecting mirrors concentrate sunlight towards the top of the 60-meter tall tower. The tower’s receiver then reaches temperatures of 700-1000 degrees Celsius, which generates 200 megawatts of electricity. 

Data and Technology: In today's information age, we often have access to massive amounts of data without the means to adequately analyze what we have gathered. The following initiatives help to make good use of the information we have in order to promote the best possible actions and outcomes in our communities.

Using Technology for Management: City officials and residents need the ability to analyze data about their environment into actionable information--in real time. As Eduard Paes, Mayor of Rio de Janiero stated as one of his 4 commandments of cities, “A city of the future has to use technology to be present.” That’s why he created a command center for Rio that integrated the data and operations management of all major city functions into a single control room.

Harnessing Data for Social Benefit: Community or participatory mapping has emerged as a terrific way to put maps and data into the hands of individuals working to identify assets or challenges faced in their neighborhood. Excellent example of community mapping include the Center for Community Mapping and the youth mapping program IMSOCIO, both founded by Dr. Wansoo Im, President of VERTICES.  Some of their projects include a Safe Routes to School mapping event where high school students assessed and mapped the safety and pollution levels of sidewalks and crosswalks in Somerset, NJ, and an interactive gas station map where IMSOCIO students mapped the availability of gas at local gas stations immediately following the devastation of Hurricane Sandy.

Culling the Data: In New York City, Mayor Bloomberg has created a small "geek squad" to find precious needles in the haystacks of big data at the new Office of Policy and Strategic Planning. By strategically analyzing data to answer a question such as "which restaurants are illegally dumping cooking oil into the City's sewers," members of the Office were able to achieve a 95% accuracy rate on a list of likely culprits. Used in this way, data can help cities be more efficient and effective.

The list of innovative and timely solutions to our city's challenges grows longer by the day. I'm grateful that awards programs such as the FT/Citi Ingenuity Awards give us an opportunity to think about all of the positive work being done around us, and urge us to keep sharing, thinking, working and implementing together.

Thinking Beyond the Pale: Re-imagining Waste as Resource

In my article on collaborative consumption, I discussed a new framework of thinking that involved making use of surplus capacity in our cities: ensuring that latent opportunity for collaboration and sharing of resources made individuals better off than when they were working alone. This concept, which is taking off in so many arenas including the sharing of parking spaces, is helping us to not "waste" opportunity by maximizing the use of what already exists, rather than producing more.

Another vital paradigm that must be applied in the planning and revitalization of cities is the "cradle to cradle" or "closed loop" system. Beyond the traditional concepts of recycle and reuse, cradle to cradle aims to redirect entire streams of waste from the landfill into the raw material of another purpose or product. Or, it challenges us to create products from the beginning that will, by virtue of their design and construction, be able to be used and then reused indefinitely.

The twin loops of 'biological metabolism' and 'technical metabolism' designed by MDBC.

The first step in creating a cradle to cradle loop is to examine every component of a product and ensure that what remains of the product once it is "used" can either be recycled into a material that re-enters the production stream or biodegrade completely into nature. An example of this is the U.S. Postal Service's shipping envelopes and boxes. Every dye, glue and paper pulp that makes up the boxes and envelopes were examined from the design stage, and ingredients were chosen that reduced water and energy use throughout production and would not leave any toxic remnants behind when recycled or left to biodegrade. And what about that second "cradle" in this two-part process? According to the US Postal Service, that recycled content comes right back into their office locations, for new postal customers to purchase and use:

"We purchase more than $200 million worth of products containing recycled content each year. Many of the containers in our mail system are made from recycled materials, and so are the stamped envelopes, post cards, stamp booklet covers, and packaging materials we provide."

A closed loop system can also generate revenue while preserving the environment when a business collects a "spent" product and turns it around, for a fee, to another company that needs this as a raw material for the creation of their product. In a recent TED talk, Michael Pawlyn discusses an innovative Cardboard to Caviar program which creates a wonderful closed loop for cardboard that ends up producing caviar:

"…in their area they had a lot of shops and restaurants that were producing lots of food, cardboard and plastic waste. It was ending up in landfills. Now the really clever bit is what they did with the cardboard waste.…So they were paid to collect it from the restaurants. They then shredded the cardboard and sold it to equestrian centers as horse bedding. When that was soiled, they were paid again to collect it. They put it into worm recomposting systems, which produced a lot of worms, which they fed to Siberian sturgeon, which produced caviar, which they sold back to the restaurants. So it transformed a linear process into a closed-loop model, and it created more value in the process. Graham Wiles has continued to add more and more elements to this, turning waste streams into schemes that create value. And just as natural systems tend to increase in diversity and resilience over time, there's a real sense with this project that the number of possibilities just continue increasing."

Michael Pawlyn's talk can be viewed here:



And if turning cardboard into caviar isn't creative enough, Starbucks recently announced it is exploring the possibility of taking used coffee grounds and making bioplastics. This example of a cradle to cradle system is twice as potent because used coffee grounds, an otherwise "finished" product, could replace crops like corn in the creation of bioplastics - thus encouraging food crops to actually feed people, rather than be made into plastics. If Starbucks is able to manufacture its own disposable cups from the spent coffee grounds of its cafes, the closed loop would be immensely instructive to other businesses who may be able to achieve something similar with their waste streams.

The tightest loop can be created when the same company can reuse its spent product over and over again to create a new version of the same product. Take a look at Shaw Floors, which has designed carpets, rugs and other flooring that can be recycled into...new carpets, rugs and flooring! The impact is tremendous:

"Did you know around 3.5 billion pounds of carpet ends up in landfills each year? We're committed to reducing that amount through the Green Edge Recycling Program. Since 2007, we've already reclaimed more than 460 million pounds of carpet for recycling and reuse – and that number is growing every day."

This is how it works: a consumer purchases wall-to-wall carpeting or a floor rug. After years of use, when the consumer decides the carpet has worn out, the consumer simply contacts Shaw Floors and they'll help you arrange for it to be recycled and regenerated into new flooring by their company.

The concepts of cradle to cradle or closed loops are akin to to the recycling process, with a few important improvements. First, a priority is placed on examining the the design stage of a product - ensuring that its design and the selection of materials are such that it can be disassembled and separated for recycling or to biodegrade completely, rather than leaving bits and pieces of the product that are fated to land in a garbage heap. Think of the reduction in chemicals and hazardous materials littering the land and poisoning individuals if all products were designed from cradle to cradle. Second, these concepts focus on establishing the "plug-in," the designated after-use of the recycled product. Recycling in and of itself is good, but there needs to be demand for the recycled material. Encouraging such demand is what makes this process a loop, rather than a flat line. Finally, it is important to see these waste streams as potential revenue generators - where brokers can make capital by collecting and transporting waste, and producers can see their input costs decrease when they replace virgin material with recycled material. William McDonough and Dr. Michael Braungart, founders of Cradle to Cradle Certification and the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute, view the creation of a regenerative product loop as a way to maximize "eco-effectiveness" (maximizing opportunities) rather than "eco-efficiency" (minimizing harm).

In the urban context, one begins to see how these closed loops could weave together waste streams with energy and food production, creating multiple benefits for the city and its residents. William McDonough illustrates how his group designed a city in China to embody such an approach:

"If you flush a toilet, your feces will go to the sewage treatment plants, which are sold as assets, not liabilities. Because who wants the fertilizer factory that makes natural gas? The waters are all taken in to construct the wetlands for habitat restorations. And then it makes natural gas, which then goes back into the city to power the fuel for the cooking for the city.... And then the compost is all taken back to the roofs of the city, where we've got farming, because what we've done is lifted up the city, the landscape, into the air to -- to restore the native landscape on the roofs of the buildings. The solar power of all the factory centers and all the industrial zones with their light roofs powers the city."

William McDonough's talk can be viewed here:



In some cities we are already beginning to see waste being diverted to secondary uses. The City of Colombo, Sri Lanka has established a program in partnership with CITYNET and HELP-O whereby food waste is being generated into gas that is used to fuel the kitchen stoves of homes in the Mt. Lavinia municipality. This replaces the use of firewood or LP Gas cylinders and diverts waste. We need to create incentives for more of such thinking (and implementation) in our cities in order to slow the enormous amounts of waste being collected in our landfills.

The U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program creates some incentives by granting points for new construction that selects products produced with a minimum percentage of recycled materials (LEED New Construction Rating System, page 54). Examples that have earned projects LEED points in this area include installing reused/reusable carpeting like Shaw's or pouring concrete comprised in part of fly ash--a waste product of coal-fired energy--or other post-consumer material. "With nearly 9 billion square feet of building space participating in the suite of rating systems and 1.6 million feet certifying per day around the world..." LEED is one helpful arena in which to promote cradle to cradle implementation, but we need more incentives to really get people thinking outside the box or beyond the pale.

If the "cradle to cradle" or "closed loop" system concept catches on in the way that the collaborative consumption concept has begun to catch on, the world's cities could begin seeing some tremendously creative ways of dealing with what is currently landfill-clogging, end-of-life waste.

Beg, Borrow and Share: Leveraging Surplus Capacity

In an effort to create cities for the future - cities that will work for a new era of inhabitants - we can no longer employ the same prescription. A box store here, a school there, a library over there, all connected by automobile-centric roads just isn't going to cut it. These days, a growing number of people are learning to better utilize the surplus capacity present in machines, objects and even our fellow neighbors. Our cities should serve as an ideal training ground for this new wave of innovation that is bringing cost-sharing and lowered environmental impact to the needs of everyday life.

"Surplus capacity" is the difference between the maximum amount of time a machine can be used and the actual amount it is being used. Many machines or products in our lives are severely underutilized, and therefore possess a high amount of surplus capacity. We should be creative about how we can use more of this capacity, thereby reducing costs for individual households and lowering our environmental impact both at the source and at the landfill.

Consider, for a moment, your power drill. How often do you use it? According to Alex Steffen, "The average home power drill is used somewhere between six and 20 minutes in its entire lifetime depending on who you ask. And so what we do is we buy these drills that have a potential capacity of thousands of hours of drill time, use them once or twice to put a hole in the wall and let them sit. Our cities, I would put to you, are stockpiles of these surplus capacities. And while we could try and figure out new ways to use those capacities -- such as cooking or making ice sculptures or even a mafia hit -- what we probably will find is that, in fact, turning those products into services that we have access to when we want them, is a far smarter way to go." View "The Shareable Future of Cities," Alex Steffen's TED talk, here.

The solution to lowering surplus capacity in products we don't use very often, as well as keep a little more of our money in the bank rather than on our shelves, is to engage in collaborative consumption. Collaborative consumption operates on the premise that individuals or households can rent or borrow machines when they need them, rather than purchasing them new. CollaborativeConsumption.com documents the many ways we can share, barter, lend, trade, rent, gift and swap.

Rachel Botsman, co-author of "What's Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption" gave an excellent TED talk about this movement. She talks us through the different arenas of redistribution markets, collaborative lifestyles and product service systems and gives many compelling examples of how collaborative consumption is occurring. View "The Case for Collaborative Consumption," Rachel Botsman's TED talk, here.

Personal vehicle ownership is one arena where collaborative consumption is making an impact. According to RelayRides (via a great infographic on futureofcarsharing.com) "the average car is used for only one hour a day," but "costs $715 a month." We are all familiar with Zipcar and other companies that have created extensive car-sharing programs. RelayRides is a new concept that allows individuals to put their cars up for rent just like zip car (but with 65% of the proceeds going to the car owner, not a corporation). Car-sharing benefits the environment: "In 2009, car sharing diminished global carbon dioxide emissions by 482,170 tons" (Frost & Sullivan).

Food also has surplus value when it is not consumed. Dumpster divers have long understood this, "harvesting" and consuming fresh and processed foods that were tossed by grocery stores for being just over their expiration date. This practice, or the practice of donating excess food to soup kitchens was often stigmatized or fraught with rules and regulations. This is beginning to change, with US Environmental Protection Agency now encouraging and giving tax incentives to businesses that donate surplus food. Other food-related sharing includes a "kitchen tool library" in Portland, Oregon that makes canning and other food preservation equipment available to local residents for week-long rental.

There's also a lighter side to "collaborative consumption." Used clothing has become a lot sexier as friends and neighbors get together for clothing swaps or "swishing parties." Lucy Shea, founder of Swishing.com and CEO of a sustainable communications firm describes swishing in this way: "Save money, save the planet, have a party: swishing effortlessly touches all of these buttons. Swishing parties are for all those women who want to combine glamour, environmental protection and frugality."

Personal skills and talents are surplus capacities as well. See an earlier article on "time banking," a practice in which people can log hours sharing their time or talents with a neighbor and redeem that earned time in a way that is most beneficial to them.

CollaborativeConsumption.com has an extensive list of initiatives that have been launched in cities and countries around the world. These collaborations are an exciting development that should be fostered and implemented on a wider scale.

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This article was featured April 2, 2012 on the Sustainable Cities Collective site.

For more information:
How 'Collaborative Consumption' is Transforming Startups, Huffington Post

10 Websites for Collaborative Consumption, My Life Scoop
The Gen Y Guide to Collaborative Consumption, Shareable.net