Last fall I attended the first Finovate conference in New York City, where a bunch of innovative startup financial services companies presented their products in live demos. I covered one of the stars of the day in Fast Company: Mint.com, which offers free online personal financial organization for 20 and 30-somethings. Since then, Mint's become a category leader, with 500,000 users; their rate of new signups has doubled, to 3,000 or 4,000 a day since the financial downturn. Even Intuit's Quicken Online, a new product launched in January and aimed at the same demographic, can't compete yet in numbers, probably because Intuit charges $2.95 a month; for the members of Generation Debt, it seems, free is the right price for financial advice.
Today's the date of the second Finovate conference, and Mint.com CEO Aaron Patzer got on the horn to show me some new features they're introducing. Most exciting is the ability to add all your investment accounts in one place. With Mint's simple interface, you can look at your entire portfolio, your performance vs. the market, and total allocation—and you can sort holdings by highest value, best performers, and worst performers. "We redesigned it three times and brought in 30 people to do user testing before we got it right," Patzer says. "We want it to be very powerful when you need it, but not overwhelming at the same time. That really fits with Mint's vision—to be effortless." Of course, with the market the way it has been this year, Patzer's (and my) best-performing assets are in cash—a fact that only underscores the need for an easy tool to make portfolio management as painless as possible. Patzer aims to make Mint break even by the end of the year; I like his chances.
Some other companies that will be presenting this year and that are worth checking out: WeSeed, which aims to humanize stock investing; MoneyAisle, where banks bid for your business, and Thrive, which I met with on Friday and will be writing about soon. Stay tuned!
An article in the New York Times earlier this week described an effort by the legendary print magazine Esquire to make “a nod to the digital age” by using something called E Ink on its cover. That’s pretty much what it sounds like: electronic ink, so the cover can blink like a Times Square billboard, as opposed to a staid old highway billboard.
One problem: Did anyone stop to consider the environmental implications? Check out this description of the process, from the Times article:
The batteries and the display case are manufactured and put together in China. They are shipped to Texas and on to Mexico, where the device is inserted by hand into each magazine. The issues will then be shipped via trucks, which will be refrigerated to preserve the batteries, to the magazine’s distributor in Glazer, Ky.
Editor David Granger described it as “a 21st-century technology” combined with “a 19th-century manufacturing process.” Can’t argue with the second part, at least. The article goes on to note that this process is expensive, and hence requires sponsorship from a Ford SUV (not exactly a 21st-century technology itself). But what about the other cost… the carbon one? Some back-of-the-envelope calculations show it’s not small, and Ford’s not picking up the tab.
Let’s start at the beginning. According to the article, “The batteries and the display case are manufactured and put together in China.” The manufacturing phase is the biggest question mark in the life cycle of any product. According to life cycle analysis by Nokia, the manufacturing phase, alone, of another battery-powered electronic device, their 3G phones, is responsible for 12.3 KG of CO2 equivalent per unit. Granted, the E Ink display is a lot simpler and uses much less material than a cell phone, so let’s say the carbon footprint is one-tenth as much—1.2 KG per user. That would be 135 tons of CO2 for the entire run of 100,000 devices.
Next, the devices will be shipped to Texas. According to E-Ink, a comparable prototype device weighs about 150 grams (5.3 ounces). According to the calculator on ShipGreen.net, shipping 100,000 of those overseas from Shanghai to Houston is worth another 2.6 tons –189 tons if they for some reason chose air freight.
From there, the little magic doohickeys will make their way to a Mexican maquiladora (where the work conditions are certain to be just lovely—ditto the Chinese factory) to be inserted by hand into the magazine covers (1.28 tons from Houston to Monterrey, Mexico), and from there, the completed issues, about one-third heavier than normal, will travel about 1,400 miles to the magazine’s distribution center in Kentucky (11 more tons). Oh, and because of the delicacy of the electronics, they’ll have to travel in refrigerated trucks. Certain kinds of refrigeration units can consume a half gallon of fuel per operating hour – that’s an additional 10 gallons for that 20 hour trip—per truck. So for 5 trucks (let’s say), the refrigeration adds about another half a ton. Then the blinking magazines go to their final destinations.
So… the total outlay in greenhouse gas emissions for this little experiment—again, this is based on loose estimates—comes to 150 tons of CO2 equivalent, similar to the output of 15 Hummers or 20 average Americans for an entire year, and a 16% increase over the carbon footprint of a typical print publication (based on calculations by Discover Magazine, Time, and In Style). The potential environmental impact of the E Ink covers increases even more when you consider that the units are designed to be disposable after one use and they’ll make it more difficult or impossible to recycle the paper portion of the magazines.
Maybe Esquire should go back to the drawing board for a truly forward-looking concept of the possibilities of print. Fast Company would be glad to advise them on where to go to get printed on 100% recycled paper.
(Thanks to Greenlife.com for help with the carbon calculations).
Over 20,000 beaches were closed or warnings posted in 2007 due to contamination from stormwater runoff. Previous solutions to the problem included UV, chlorine treatment, or elaborate systems in some new LEED-certified buildings and factories that recycle runoff or treat it with wetlands, green roofs or filters.
Now, a company called ABTech industries has patented a new, low-tech green approach that does more with less.
Smart Sponge is a white material, looking a bit like packing styrofoam, fits inside stormwater drains to trap debris, pollution and trash before it can flow into the ocean or into the water supply. The patented polymer is specially engineered to trap and encapsulate oil into an easily removed solid and has an antimicrobial agent bonded to its surface as well. The technology has been installed in 36 states, including on a muncipal basis in Norwalk, CT, Key West and most recently Miami, Florida.
The idea of a physical filter to replace complicated chemical and mechanical systems is appealing enough. But best of all, Smart Sponge can be made from recycled plastic material found in car dash boards, diapers and sneakers. That really is smart!
Recently, articles in both the New York Times and Slate have warned that American stores may no longer be so awash in supercheap Asian imports. Not only is the dollar weakening, but inflation and economic growth in countries like China and Vietnam are inexorably raising the costs of doing business. And there are few obvious backup countries ready to step into the wings as cheap manufacturing powerhouses.
We're dealing with complex global economic factors here, but I wanted to point out the potentially positive side to this shift from both human rights and environmental perspectives. The first is stated directly in Alexandra Harney's article:
"China is rolling out wage increases around the country and tightening
its labor laws. Wages are rising at double-digit rates in coastal China...China's Generation Y, the children born after the one-child policy came
into effect, are increasingly aware of their rights to a legal wage,
health insurance, and a certain number of days off every month."
Now, I shop at Forever 21, H&M and Tar-zhay just like everyone else. But it's a pretty heartless person who would grudge their tanktops going up from $5 to $12, if the tradeoff was better working conditions for the poor in developing countries.
The possible environmental benefits here are more conjectural. Critics of globalization have devoted much scholarly ink to the outsized environmental costs of export-oriented agriculture and manufacture. Increasing volumes of raw materials and finished products are crossing the globe, with bigger and bigger CO2 trails following them in the form of airplane, ship, train, and truck fuel, not to mention the environmental impact of all those highways, roads, ports, canals, locks, bridges, and airports (see this story about the new China-financed Asian superhighway linking Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam.)
Global trade made economic sense despite the distance because of extremely cheap labor and extremely cheap fuel. Now that the costs are rising, just maybe, the advantages of re-localized, sustainable supply chains have a chance to come to the fore.
