Ochiwata-fukin by Muji

Last year, Muji (Mujirushi-Ryohin) introduced kitchen cloths made by waste cotton from manufacturing process.

It is called "ochiwata"(I think it means the cotton ends up on the floor during yarning process) "fukin"(kitchen cloths). It is manufactured in Bangladesh at the factory that yarns the cotton in a very traditional way.

Cotton manufacturing had been practised for long time in the region. The product (textile) is purely simple, but suited the humide climate. Unfortunately however, it is increasingly replaced by modern mmanufacturing system and the old style cotton production has become almost extinct.

Muji contracted one of these few surviving traditional manufactures that also make use of waste cotton. Muji's website shows (Japanese, but a lot of pictures) the manufacturing process for ochiwata-fukin. It is interesting to learn the process; what is waste cotton, how it needs to be mixed with virgin material to be yarned, how the final product looks like.

Despite the nature of the product (there is nothing fancy with kitchen cloths), Ochiwata-fukin was a hit! It sold very fast.

What strikes me with this case is that the consumers these days are buying the story behind the product. The story that is as compelling and inspiring as the product itself.

Reminds me of Patagonia.

Photo: Mujirushirohin

Promoting reusable grocery bags!

Whenever I go to the grocery stores, I try to check how many people are using reusable bags. According to my observation, the ratio is 1 to 30 at the local grocery stores. At Trader Joe's or Whole Foods, it is 1 to 10. It is my observation at where I live, so it's not a representative sample.

But in anyways, it's far below 20% or 50% participation rate.

What can be done to increase the participation then?

How about a little incentive? Japanese shops love this mileage-like system called "point-card" or "stamp-card". It is a credit card sized card that you can put in your purse. Whenever customers purchase something, they get a point or a stamp on it. When the card gets full, the customers get credits. (maybe $5 worth). It's not much. But this has been a widely used marketing program just to increase the loyal customers that visit the shop on a regular basis.

These days, a lot of Japanese grocery stores use this card as an incentive for using reusable bags. On the other hand, I recently noticed that the grocery store in my town started to give 5 cents discount for reusable bag users. The idea is completely the same.

However, if you are a store owner concerned with the expense for incentivizing cusotmers, you might choose stamp-card because you'd only reimburse to the loyal customers who purchase at your place so many times!

I am not advocating minimizing expense for environmental causes though. My point here is that even reluctant business owners can begin this just as a marketing program, thus reaching much wider public for participation.

photo: http://www.expo2005.or.jp/jp/E0/E3/img/ecorepo_16_09b.jpg

Prius goes mini? Toyota launches iQ

Look how small this car is!

And look what this car can do!

2980×1680×1480mm --- designed to accomodate 3 adults and 1 child

Estimated MPG --- 70???? ( I took the info from Japanese news source that says 30 KPL (kilometers per litre) )

CO2 emission /mile -- estimated to be less than 160 grams (Prius is 166 grams)

Projected to be released end this year in Japan, next year in Europe.

I didn't see any information if Toyota is introducing iQ in US market in the near future.

Usually car makers don't market compact/small cars in US because there is not much demand. (By the way, Toyota does not make/sell trucks in Japan. Roads are too narrow, parking lots are expensive and not easily available. Garages are also too small..... There is no room for trucks for personal use, so there is no market.)

Given that, Toyota might not introduce iQ in North American market?? I don't know. But gas price is very high now, so there must be increasing demand for smaller, super-efficient and affordable cars in US? Probably??

iQ at Geneva auto show

Priu-sizing world, Priu-sizing life

Prius.

No explanation is needed....icon of energy-efficient, eco-friendly product.
Made the green the new black.



But where does it come from? I mean, why did Prius have to come from Toyota, Japan?

Japan has no oil and very little coal or natural gas. Almost all the oil import comes from Middle-East. Clearly, energy security has always been a major issue.

In Japan, gas price has always been high. It was around $3.5o -$4.00 for the last several years, and now it's gone up to $5.5!!
In US, when the gas hit $3.5o - $4.00 level recently, I heard people saying "this can't be possible....this isn't right...... Hey I can't drive my truck anymore!"

But wait a minute.

Japanese car makers started to develop tremendous energy efficiency technology and skills in reaction to the "oil crisis" in 1973 (Middle East oil producers sharply raised the price of the oil due to political issues). The crisis triggered a panic and fear in Japanese society; people raided grocery stores to buy all the toilet papers they could find on the shelves! (why toilet paper, I don't know....)

Faced with the high energy price, Japanese businesses desperately sought the way to be super-efficient....to survive! It was a matter of whether they could overcome the high price, or go out of business. Over the course of variety of efforts, cars became one the most successful efficient products that made Japanese brands so strong. After decades, Prius now is sweeping the world in greening the industry.

Even when faced with hardship, people always have strength and power to come up with improvements/innovation to address issues. In a sense, oil crisis helped Prius come to the world.

I am sure many creative businesses/people will come out of today's high gas price to offer product/services that maximize output with minimized input. Efficiency and down-sizing is the key to survive low-carbon society toward sustainability.

Now is the time to Priu-size world, and Priu-size life.

Got a broom?

Producing eco-friendly products doesn't always have to be innovative and cutting-edge.

An alternative is to rewind the time till the point where people were living only on renewable energy. In Japan's case, Edo era (1603 - 1868) is often referred as a successful closed-loop & sustainable society.

Check out those brooms (since 1830) that are made of highly-skilled, distinguished broom artisan.

Price ---- $500!!!!!
The price is because it only uses domestically-grown broom materials and is hand-made by the skilled artisans.

Green/LOHAS consumers didn't miss them. The highest price model ($700) is currently out of stock because of the high demand! It is especially nice to hear after the decades where they were almost forgotten.

Going sustainable can mean investing in new technology, alternative energy or innovative concept.

But it can also mean investing in people's knowledge, skills and wisdom that have been quietly accumulated for centuries and centuries. We need to capture them before they quietly die away.

Products by: Shirokiya

What to do with used vegetable oil? - Bring it to gas station!

What is the best way to get rid of used vegetable oil (cooking oil)? I am having hard time finding oil straightener/container to reuse vegetable oil, or oil-solidifier (I don't know what to call it) to toss in a garbage bin. I really don't know what to do. So my solution to address this issue right now is.......don't fry at home!

Well, can I bring it to gas station for recycling????:

Yes you can, if you live in this little town of Toyosato, Shiga, Japan.
Here is how the business works.

1) Gas station collects used vegetable oil (pick-up and drop-off) from households and restaurants

2) Gas station refines collected oil on-site

3) Refined diesel is sold to contracted businesses (bus services for elderly day care, package delivery company....)

This project turned to be effective in many ways.
* Gas station generated more customers because of the variety of collection boxes available on-site, including vegetable oils (in Japan, garbage source-separation is strictly enforced).

* One of the first users of refined diesel, bus services for elderly day care, placed a "eco-friendly energy" sticker on a bus, which worked as an ad and generated more diesel-users.

* Gas station got an offer from a major electronics factory (2500 employees)
-- it is to collect and refine used vegetable oil that comes from factory's cafeteria, and then deliver it back to the factory. Factory will use the oil for their trucks.

Previously, the owner of the station had been struggling to survive the price war, but now found the way to add value, differentiate his station from competitors making it so unique, and run a business sustainably.

Now that the gas price is so high, used vegetable oil can possibly charge so many cars I guess!

What is an energy-efficient room?

In winter, we use heater for our house. In summer, air conditioner. Ordinary central heating system....nothing fancy. But is it just me who feel guilty to keep warming /cooling the rooms that nobody is using?

Typical North-American style home does not have many partitions between rooms. I can't stop feeling guilty to central-heat the house that ends up heating/cooling the space that nobody is occupying.

I don't mind living in rather a small house with doors in each room with localized heating equipments, because it is an easy way to reduce my carbon/ecological footprint. But I have never seen such a house, at least here in California. This idea wouldn't sell, I know.

So......what is the middle ground?

Japanese old style house uses fusuma (pic) and shoji for door/wall. Basically, it is a wall made of 4 to 6 panels that slide on the rail. If you wanted, you can leave 2-4 panels open, or close them all, or take them out all, depending on the weather, and the number of people you are accommodating. (With this old Japanese style, you can take the fusumas out and use two or three rooms altogether for gathering)

Most Japanese no longer live in such a traditional old style house. But I just wonder if this concept of "adjustable wall/door", hand in hand with localized heating/air conditioning system, somehow, can be Incorporated in eco-housing or energy-efficient home design.

Any views from professionals?

photo above by: yo kelley yo
photo below by: yuki yaginuma

They lied about recycled paper!

Back in January, Japanese paper industry got involved in dishonourable "recycled paper scandal". Major paper manufacturers were all lying about the mixture ratio of post-consumer paper in their products - "recycled paper".

I have no intention to support those companies that betrayed the consumers. But this case reminded me of my lingering question again: Honestly, is recycling so environmentally beneficial and economically feasible?

Well before it's been found that these companies were cheating, one of them, Nippon Paper Group had posted their policy on recycled paper on the website. According to that information,

1) Nippon Paper found that post-consumer paper that has been mixed was affecting the yield of final product (recycled paper) because of its deteriorated quality. As they mixed more post consumer paper, they got lower yield.

2) Due to the quality, using post-consumer paper could result in increased amount of energy use during manufacturing process, thus leading to more CO2 emission.

I interpret this to: Post-consumer paper is of low quality. You cannot really produce good quality stuff from bad quality stuff. If you want to do this, you will have to: 1) dilute bad quality material with virgin material so as it's not a problem anymore (which will inevitably lower the mixture ratio of post-consumer paper!) 2) use more energy along the process to compensate the low quality (more costly and bigger carbon footprints!), or 3) lie and cheat! (worst solution you could ever think of!!!)

Is my interpretation true? Were the companies not creative enough to overcome those obstacles? If not, why did so many companies have to lie?

In 2005, I did short-term research in Netherlands. Their recycled paper was not pure-white and much thinner than normal paper. (I mean, looked like of"recycled" quality!) But it is totally acceptable with me. I have no problem in using those papers......a bit worse quality than that is still okay, as long as it is environmentally beneficial!

I really want to define "recycled paper". What is the input to the system, what is added (virgin material, energy, chemicals.....compared to using 100% virgin material), and what is the output. If the output is much worse than normal paper, what is the acceptable level?

Unfortunately, when we say promote "recycling", it's moslty about how to raise collection rate. Not much discussion is made about the recycling process itself among consumers. This is one part because recycling process is highly technical, and part because recycling often happens in the third countries where you cannot really track the final destination.

But I am very interested in knowing what's actually going on. I am curious to know more about the recycle paper in the Netherlands.