​This month, I made it a mission to send ethical gifts as a thank you to some clients I was finishing up work with. Besides, what better way to celebrate sustainability then sending a gift during April (a.k.a the month that hosts Earth Day)?

So off I went online to research sustainable gifts. I enlisted the help of my daughter, who came up with some wonderful ideas as well. Here were the criteria I was looking for:

- It had to be something that could be shipped. Most of the clients I work with are scattered across the globe, so international shipments were important to consider.
- It had to be something that was environmentally friendly in nature. So no single use plastics, or tchotchkes that would be thrown out immediately.
- Something that I could brand. It would be a nice touch to have our logo on something to commemorate the work we've done together.

"What's the budget?" my daughter wisely asked. "Give me all types," I replied. Sometimes gifts were occasional, or sometimes they were regular so it all varied.

Here were some ideas she came up with, as well as some of my own. There were numerous other ideas, but we can save that for a part 2.

This is a no brainer. Reusable water bottles are a highly visible and impactful way of reducing our footprint on this planet and a great branding opportunity. There are so many choices out there for water bottles, but I'd generally select something that is glass (infinitely recyclable), metal like aluminum (also infinitely recyclable), or contains some post consumer recycled material.

Seed cards are plantable cards, or postcards, that have seeds embedded in them. They are a lovely and small way of dropping a thank you note to a client, and enabling them to actually plant the seeds! Read the card, and then drop it under some soil and voila! You should have some beautiful plants or flowers growing in no time. I chose to purchase cards from Mary Kay Apothecary, and BlueCorn Candles.

Yes, more plants- because what is a better way of celebrating sustainability than plants? My daughter found mini plants, both already grown or plantable, and they are a great way to add your logo as well. Lula's Garden is a great resource (they source from local family owned nurseries, and partner with water.org to support access to water in the developing world).

Most folks appreciate chocolate, which are great gifts. However, ensuring that chocolate is sourced ethically remains an ongoing battle. Cocoa is well known relying on child labour, and spreading child trafficking and deforestation. Source chocolates that carry a FairTrade label, or Rainforest Alliance label, which can provide some legitimacy to sustainability claims. Or look for single origin chocolate, ,which usually means that there is more transparency in the cocoa supply chain.

A donation is sometimes the easiest way to show appreciation to a client. Find a local charity that you can donate to, and make a donation in your client's name. Forward/mail the receipt and a note of appreciation to your client. These donations can range from biodiversity to forestry organizations, or can impact social causes such as fighting hunger and improving the livelihoods of farmers.

Recycled polyester is having a moment in apparel.

Textile manufacturers are using recycled polyester to create fabrics that they can tout as sustainable. And while it is great to be able to recycle a material into something else, there are a few hurdles with recycled polyester that hopefully industry will be able to overcome in the future. How sustainable is using recycled polyester?

First off, it’s important to understand where recycled polyester even comes from. Water bottles are one of the easiest sources for recycled polyester. They are usually colorless, and are foodgrade, making their quality quite high. These water bottles are cleaned and washed multiple times, baled, shredded, and melted down into pellets that are then fed to spinning machines that re-melt them and extrude them as polyester filaments that get woven into your clothes.

But therein lies the problem. Many countries already have water bottles that feed into robust recycling programs. These water bottles usually are turned into new water bottles, at least once and perhaps even 2-3 times.

If a water bottle is turned into a textile, the unspoken truth is that it is usually blended with another type of fiber (cotton, etc) to strengthen the material, and then is impossible to recycle again once the textile is used. Textile to textile recycling is incredibly hard to do because of blends and contamination of materials. In fact, it is estimated that only 1% of textile wastes, mainly white-colored wastes, are recycled and decolorization of these fabrics remain an issue for textile recyclers. So while a water bottle can be recycled upto 2-3 times, recycled polyester textiles will likely never be recycled again.
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In the end, no matter whether it’s used in bottles or textiles, polyester will have to go into the landfill unless chemical recycling occurs (which is still in early development, expensive, and sometimes politically charged). If it becomes a bottle, it’ll go in a little later than if it’s a textile. Perhaps the real solution is reducing the amount of water bottles etc that we use in the first place.

Since it's Halloween, I thought it would be a good idea to talk a little about one of the spookiest and Halloween-centric animals around- bats! And biodiversity! And tequila! (more on that later).

Bats are one of the most misunderstood creatures around, but are incredibly important to our ecosystem as eaters of insects, and pollinators of plants. It's been estimated that a bat can eat upto 1000 mosquitoes in an hour! They also eat pests that can harm crops.

While about 70% of bats are insectivores, a good number of them eat nectar and are important pollinators of fruits such as mangoes and avocados. They are also important in desert regions like parts of Mexico, where catcti and other plants often only bloom at night due to the hot desert sun and limited water. While we think of pollinators as bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds, bats are important nocturnal pollinators, flitting from flower to flower and helping the plant to produce seeds that are vital to their long term survival.

And of course, with Halloween here, liquors such as tequila and sweet syrups made of agave are flowing. What do these have to do with bats?

Well tequila and agave syrup come from agave, which take notoriously long to mature (and flower). With the rise in demand for tequila and agave, many farmers forgo actually planting diverse species of agave. Instead, they grow clones of agave, and harvest the plant BEFORE they flower to get as much nectar as quickly as possible to the growing syrup and tequila markets.

So bats end up without a huge food source (flower nectar), and farmers end up with less biodiversity in the crops they grow. Should a plague come about that can hurt the farmed agave, the entire agave crop is at serious risk. 
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This is why as a consumer it's important to purchase bat friendly agave products, such as bat friendly tequila. As this NRDC article states, "where can you get this bat-friendly tequila? Well, don’t look for it from the likes of Jose Cuervo and Patrón. Instead seek out small-batch producers like Siete Leguas, Tequila Tapatio, and Tequila Cascahuín...In the meantime, there is one way to change your drinking habits that may help the bats and the agave. Start drinking mezcal. If you’re like me, the thought of mezcal conjures up images of soggy worms and bloody elbows. (Don’t ask.) But unlike tequila and almost every other commercialized spirit on earth, mezcal comes from the wild."  

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So there you have it. Drink Bat Friendly agave products & tequila and let's help save both agave and bats.

Have a Bat-tastic Halloween!!

The past few weeks I got sent links to articles in well established magazines that both pushed a rosy picture of sustainable fashion, as well as a depressing one.  Ironically, the some of the SAME COMPANIES were featured in both. For example, Prada scored a F in one of the articles, while the other touted Prada for making their nylon fabrics out of plastic waste. What gives? 

A couple of things:
1) The less rosy article by Fast Company is based on Stand.earth's methodology. Their methodology is focused on how well brands are attempting to shift their supply chains away from fossil fuel. So instead of scoring brands against an average, or against each other (which is what most methologies do), they score brands against one hard yardstick.

2) The more rosy W Magazine article is focused on touting brand's innovations to combat myriad sustainability issues, from GHG emissions to microplastics to ethical sourcing.

What's my take? I like Stand.earth's concept of focusing on fossil fuel use. They are correct in stating that- generally speaking- manufacturing tends to be the highest emitter of GHGs, and the majority of that is based on the energy used. Some greenwashing does happen when there is no evidence of changing the hotspots in GHG emissions. In addition, changing your supply chain is incredibly complicated because of all the pieces involved; brands that are trying to shift to renewable energy at every step of their manufacturing and shipping should be lauded.

On the other hand, sustainability (as I've explained to a lot of non-sustainability people) is much more than carbon accounting. The environment is a dynamic, non-linear system; fossil fuel is tied to water scarcity, land use, and biodiversity. Cotton, for example, is much more water intensive than many other fabrics, and organic cotton is better in this regards. At the same time, some may argue that synthetics have a longer lifespan than cotton. I could go into this incredibly complicated topic much more, but will save that for another post.

And to add to all of the above, sustainability's meaning has expanded in recent years to include social elements as well. It's not necessarily wrong for brands to try and pick the ones that resonate the most for their product and customer. Because honestly, sourcing cotton from regenerative farms that provide living wages is a way more engaging story than auditing far off overseas factories on their energy efficiency.   

Both articles however point to the concept that brands are innovating at a rapid pace, while not doing enough at all. The truth is, none of us are doing enough, which is why we're in this mess in the first place. While it's great to applaud the innovative steps we take, and therefore raise enthusiasm and curiousity, ultimately we need to take approaches like stand.earth for a more robust measurement against reality's yardstick. I'd love to see a future where we take a measurement approach for all sorts of sustainability issues.



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Excited to announce that I am officially an approved verifier for the Airport Carbon Accreditation program, which is a voluntary carbon management certification for airports, supported by the UN Environment Program and the International Civil Aviation Organization. The program assesses and recognizes continual performance improvements in carbon and energy management by airports.

Why would airports join the Airport Carbon Accreditation (ACA) program? Having conducted a number of GHG analyses, one of the main issues I always find is that clients are left with a "Now What?" question once they get their carbon footprints. The ACA allows airports to not only calculate their footprint, but depending on the level of accreditation, allows them to also map out a strategy for reducing their footprint. The program is easy to apply to, and is systemic in its way of ramping up mitigation goals that is specific to airports. I am always supportive of GHG programs that are industry-specific; these types of programs are uniquely able to maximize reductions in ways that value and understand that particular industry's needs.

For more information on the Airport Carbon Accreditation program, click here. 

I’m a bit of a policy nerd, which is unusual for an engineer. But I love reading about environmental policies and understanding the way science and the public can eventually influence policy that affects large swaths of communities.

One piece of legislation I’ve been really excited about is SB 1335. Back in 2018, California passed a law (SB 1335) requiring disposable food service packaging items at certain California state facilities to be reusable, recyclable, or compostable by 2021. The reason this is very, very important: California will essentially be defining what makes a plastic recyclable, reusable, or compostable, and that’s bound to make a subset of plastic manufacturers, composters, and recyclers very unhappy.

The time has now arrived to craft the rule, which CalRecycle is doing. They’ve submitted drafts of the rule and it is now on its way to be approved. So what is CalRecycle defining as reusable, recyclable and compostable?

Reusable: The material must be able to be reused after 780 cycles in a cleaning and sanitizing process.
Recyclable: The material is collected by at least 75% of recycling programs statewide, have sufficient commercial value to be marketed for recycling, and is sorted and .
Compostable: The material is regularly collected for composting by at least 50% of organic waste recycling programs statewide and 50% of the compost facilities that accept mixed materials.

There are other provisions in the rule, such as allowing for takeback programs, which seem like they can help facilities that have a singular relationship with a composter or recycler who can actually process their items.  Other provisions include PFAS bans as well, and more stringent floors after 2026.

So who is not happy with this rule? Some of them are below:

• Composting manufacturers. Because most composters in the state do NOT accept compostable plastics, these types of plastics would essentially be banned from the facilities in this rule.  
• Chemical recyclers. Chemical recyclers, or manufacturers who are working with chemical recyclers, are not welcomed in the new rule. This could put some pressure on chemical recyclers who are seeking to pilot projects to transform otherwise hard to recycle plastics.

On my end, I’m curious where the 780 cycles for reusable came from, and will be interested in seeing how compostable plastics shake out with these new definitions. Although it’s a rule that affects only a subset of facilities, it’s the first of its kind in California and will likely affect bigger pieces of legislation (like single use plastic bans, etc) in the future. 

Sustainable fashion is trending these days, with circular economy principles such as repair and reuse rising to the forefront. While these concepts are critical to ensuring that we use resources as sustainably as possible, what’s not talked about as much is how we dispose of these materials. Once they get thrown out, do they break down? The news is not great.

1. If they go into a landfill, the answer is No. Or at least it’s Not For a Long Time. Landfills are typically not the type of environments that are meant to degrade much of anything, even easier to degrade fibers such as cotton.
2. If they go into a composting facility, the answer is MAYBE but Probably Not. But probably not. Textiles degrade at rates much different from many commercial composters, and there’s many types of materials that are difficult to sort through. Even if composters do accept them (many do not), they may interfere with the highly controlled composting timelines and environments companies have to deal with.

So what’s a everyday person to do with their biodegradable textile? Perhaps try composting it yourself, or re-using it in your home. Turn them into a mask during these COVID days. Or find someone who will take them and use them for industrial purposes such as insulation.

Finally, support organizations like the National Stewardship Action Council that can help support programs that promote recycling or composting textiles.

Diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ) are terms that have come to the forefront of 2020.

Recently, I worked on a project with Hovland Consulting on diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice in transportation, with a focus on the U.S. and Europe. We conducted interviews and research to advise funders and non-profits on best practices in DEIJ issues.

Three key lessons I took away from the project were the following:

1) The terms are not interchangeable. There can be confusion among the terms. It's important to remember that justice is the outcome, while diversity, equity, and inclusion are pathways to achieve justice. There is also confusion between diversity and inclusion; inclusion is an approach to ensure that those new to the table or not traditionally involved feel welcome and are accommodated in terms of their time and culture. In turn, diversity should not turn into tokenism.

2) Create metrics for BIPOC involvement. We did a lot of research into how to measure the success of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice measures. There are a myriad of ways to measure and track progress, and it's important to choose metrics that allow you to measure your project's success.
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3) Equity should be focused on communities with less power. In determining whether BIPOC or low-income communities should be prioritized in transportation (or any policy realm), coalitions and organizations should carefully consider who has the least power and voice while balancing who would be most impacted by a prospective policy or program.